PENpages: A public information source for the National Information Infrastructure

PENpages was originated with the intent of providing practical information to the public. A full-text document database that is publicly accessible via Internet, PENpages is one component of an information infrastructure that was initiated by the College of Agricultural Sciences of The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) in 1984. The mission of this information infrastructure was to use telecommunications to serve better the information needs of the citizens of Pennsylvania.

In July, 1984, the college received an additional appropriation from the Pennsylvania General Assembly to develop a telecommunications network that linked all of the college's 67 county extension offices--a mandate that involved the purchasing of microcomputers for all offices, installation of a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) VAX 11/785 and contracting for dedicated telecommunications lines for each of the county offices. The initial service provided over the network was an electronic mail system. This was followed in 1986 by PENpages, developed using DEC's Video Text document delivery software (VTX). This software has been extended by a custom index and keyword search program developed at Penn State.

Since 1986, PENpages has grown from an initial 600 documents to more than 12,000. Subjects include agriculture, as well as information dealing with family, youth, nutrition, health, aging and economic and education issues. In 1992/93, PENpages documents were accessed 66,000 times by dial-in users in Pennsylvania and 76,000 times from users in other states and some 37 countries. Since 1988, PENpages has been available via the Internet (psupen.psu.edu).

In 1987, the Pennsylvania Department of Education contracted with the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences for electronic mail and bulletin board service for all school districts.

This service--called PENN*LINK--has grown to include all but two school districts in the state. Each year, PENN*LINK exchanges 150,000 electronic mail messages and generates 190,000 accesses to the PENN*LINK bulletin board.

In September, 1993, another free public document database for teachers became available. Called Teacher*Pages, it is operated in the same manner as PENpages. The target audience is K12 teachers and access is unrestricted.

Our staff has gained many insights in the development and provision of access to information for public consumption. Among other things, we now know that technical processes are extremely easy when compared to the energy and frustration involved in the development of information sources and documents for a "free" database. Other lessons we have learned:

* We would never have sufficient staff to load enough documents to attract public users. We needed to recruit, nurture, train and support college faculty as information sources.

* The development of PENpages could be accelerated by the timely offering of new information. For example, during the drought of 1988, we built a new audience of users by carrying water conservation tips and drought stress strategies.

* By offering use data to information providers, we could help them assess the utilization of their information by the user community

* The user interface must remain consistent over time. Changes that affect users cause frustration and decrease access to our information.

* Marketing and promotion took more time than we expected.

Testimonials from users suggest that PENpages is a valuable demonstration of an information resource for the National Information Infrastructure.

G. Arthur Hussey is the director of computer services for the College of Agricultural Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University.

Copyright American Society for Information Science Dec 1993/Jan 1994
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