President William J. Clinton's first hundred days and first year in
office were major media events, a time for analysis and review of the
new administration. Now, after his first year plus a hundred days is
the time to ask the more important question of "how is the President
doing on the net?" While Clinton has had little time for tennis (oops,
no, that's at the net), the White House has made a profound
advancement in electronic communication with its Internet presence.
The administration makes full-text electronic versions of speeches,
proclamations, executive orders, press briefings, daily schedules, and
other public papers available through multiple channels. Nor are the
White House offerings only limited to ASCII full text. Pictures of the
first family and SGML versions of some text files are available as
well. The U.S. Presidency has indeed arrived on the Internet.
Clinton started early with the electronic dissemination of his
messages. His campaign established an e-mail presence and made
position papers and speeches available on the net. Through an
"experimental system" run out of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab,
press releases and other documents were sent to those who expressed
interest during the campaign. After taking office, Clinton's staff set
about updating the primitive White House e-mail system and
establishing an even more ambitious program of distributing
documents to the Internet community.
SOURCES OF CLINTONABILIA
The searcher looking for White House documents will find that
multiple sources result from the use of any Internet resource locator
tool. An archie search on the string "clinton" pulls up over 50 hits. A
veronica search through gopherspace on "white house" retrieves
hundreds of menu items. Tapping into the WAIS directory-of-
servers.src file will turn up a couple of databases full of documents.
Browsing in a World-Wide Web client under a Universal Resource
Locator (URL), such as http://english-server.hss.cmu.edu/
WhiteHouse.html (all on one line), will turn up yet more connections to
the executive branch. The sheer quantity of the thousands of possible
connections can become overwhelming. Bear in mind, however, that
given the interlocking nature of the Internet, most of these link to only
a handful of original sources.
Many of the presidential document repositories are highly selective
and/or haphazardly chosen. Not all of the possible sources are equally
useful. For example, in December 1993, the documents collection at
wiretap.spies.com, a frequently mentioned source, contained only
selected Presidential documents from the first six months of 1993,
nothing for the later half of the year. Other collections are limited to
certain specialized subject areas, such as electronic privacy or the
National Information Infrastructure (NII).
Any effort to evaluate White House materials must recognize the
vast quantity and varied kinds of documents that follow in the
footsteps of a United States President: speeches, press briefings,
letters, phone conversations, nominations, bill signings,
proclamations, and executive orders are just the beginning. Larger
documents, such as proposed federal budgets or the health care reform
plan, are also produced by the White House.
Tracing the many sites back to the source will turn up two major
originators of Internet accessible material. One is the Office of the
Press Secretary (OPS), which distributes press releases. While most
documents from the OPS are speeches, briefings, or other remarks,
some executive orders or proclamations may be included (but not all of
them). The more definitive source for executive orders, proclamations,
memoranda, notices, and determinations is the _Federal Register_,
which is fortunately available on the net as well.
The OPS distributes their material through many channels. In
addition to the Internet, these files are available on services such as
CompuServe, GEnie, and America Online. Mail servers, LISTSERVs, and
USENET provide Internet folks with Clinton's words. Such USENET
groups as alt.politics.clinton receive almost daily postings from OPS.
These daily updates are then transferred by various means to a WAIS
database or gopher server menus for archival purposes. (Archival in net
terms means longer than a week or two. It remains to be seen what
will happen to the documents after a few years.)
To the best of my knowledge, no site has gathered all of the White
House documents (or even pointers to them) in one Internet location.
Despite what some on the net might say, the print _Weekly
Compilation of Presidential Documents_ still manages to do a more
complete job of gathering all of Clinton's documents in one place.
However, the Internet offerings are substantial, and it may not be long
before the online versions are equally comprehensive.
WHERE TO LOOK
As is all too common on the Internet, most sites that offer some
presidential documents have only the most abbreviated description as
to the scope of documents available. Many gopher servers have a
heading for "Clinton" or the "White House" that may contain only very
limited information, such as the White House FAQ or Clinton's
inaugural address. Others only offer certain types of documents or
ones with a specific subject focus.
I suggest the gopher bookmarks listed in Figure 1 as a starting
point. The names are ones that I have created, in an attempt to make
them a bit more descriptive than the usual "White House" or "clinton."
The names can certainly be adapted to reflect local or personal
preference. To add any of these suggested links to your own gopher
bookmarks, add the given information to the .gopherrc file (for UNIX),
the GOPHERRC. file (for VMS), or other gopher record files as
appropriate to the operating system.
Two principal WAIS databases cover Clinton's documents: white-
house-papers.src and clinton-speechess. src. The white-house-
papers.src database includes the press releases sent out by the OPS.
The clinton-speechess.src (yes, that's two s's in speechess) contains
documents only from the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign. Often,
access methods to these two WAIS databases do not clearly identify
what is contained in the database, so be forewarned.
While these .src files can be searched directly via a WAIS client,
there are many gopher-to-WAIS connections available as well. The
second gopher bookmark in Figure 1 is one such connection that allows
searches of the white-house-papers.src file. The last bookmark, at
Texas A&M (or "tamu" in Internet lingo), includes a menu choice that
does roughly the same thing.
However, due to the limitations with WAIS searching and the
varying ways in which titles are given to the documents, menu access
by date may well be a preferred means of retrieving specific
documents. The menu format may make browsing easier as well. The
first bookmark suggestion in Figure 1 from the University of North
Carolina, as well as the last (from tamu), offer a menu interface to the
press releases.
The larger documents from the White House, such as the proposed
federal budget, Gore's _National Performance Review_, healthcare
reform documents, or the _Economic Report of the President_, appear
in many gopher servers. One that does a good job of keeping up-to-date
is the Library of Congress server, MARVEL (see the fourth bookmark
suggestion in Figure 1). Most documents can be searched full text, or
via the menus, can be browsed by section.
COUNTERPOINT
For retrieving executive orders, proclamations, memoranda,
directives, and notices, the white-house-papers.src or other versions
of the documents disseminated by the OPS may well fall short. Only
certain proclamations, for example, are included full text. Fortunately,
they are all available in the electronic versions of the _Federal
Register_. Even more fortunately, presidential documents are included
in the freely-available portion of the _Federal Register_ that
Counterpoint Publishing offers on the Internet.
Using the third suggested bookmark presents the proclamations,
etc., in reverse chronological order. While this is roughly equivalent to
reverse numeric order, the executive orders, proclamations, and others
are all interfiled, and since they are not always released in the order
signed, the sequence may be a bit out of sync. However, the menu
listings are descriptive enough that a specific document can be quickly
located. In addition, the documents themselves are marked with
Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML).
The SGML tagging is a handy feature for those of us obsessed with
bibliographic information, or the lack thereof on the net. The header
provides the _Federal Register_ citation, the title, and the date. The
text appears very accurate when compared to the printed _Weekly
Compilation_. Even the boldface used in the _Weekly Compilation_ is
usually reflected in the ASCII text version by putting those sections in
uppercase.
Counterpoint is a commercial company that sells Internet access to
the _Federal Register_. So one caution with using this source is that
there is no guarantee that Counterpoint will continue to permit free
access to the presidential documents component. However, those that
make heavy use of the _Federal Register_ may want to consider
subscribing to the full service anyway. Subject retrieval will depend
on the effectiveness of the WAIS or gopher search engine. Single
distinctive keyword searches may offer the best results.
SEARCH TECHNIQUES
Successful searching for Internet-accessible presidential
documents requires an understanding of the different varieties of
documents available and knowing which site has the most
comprehensive collection of each. As mentioned above, for executive
orders, proclamations, etc., the Counterpoint gopher connection to the
_Federal Register_ is the first choice. For the large documents, try LC
Marvel. And for press releases and other odds and ends, either the UNC
or the Texas A&M gophers should do.
The easiest and generally quickest way of finding specific
documents is by date, as long as the date of the document is known.
Either move through the menus, from year to month and then browse, or
try searching for the date or significant keyword via WAIS or the
gopher search option (often a / followed by the search string).
Unfortunately, depending on which database of documents is being
searched, the way in which dates are expressed varies greatly. Some
use only a month and day designation, leaving off the year completely.
At other times, even in the same database, dates will be expressed
either with or without dashes. The dates 1110, 1993-11-10, and
111093 could all be referring to November 10th, 1993. Wouldn't some
authority control be nice?
Subject searching is possible but still rather limited. It is at its
best when searching through a large document for a specific phrase.
Remember that no subject indexing is being added to the records.
Subject retrieval will depend on the effectiveness of the WAIS or
gopher search engine. Single distinctive keyword searches may offer
the best results.
One last caution when searching: the most recent documents may
not have made it into the WAIS file or gopher menus. For the most
current documents, check the alt.politics.clinton newsgroup, if the
document is not yet available in the other locations.
COVERAGE
So how do the Internet versions of the President compare to the
traditional print vehicles? Comparing the contents of the best
hardcopy source of Presidential documents, the _Weekly Compilation
of Presidential Documents_, to Internet sources in terms of coverage
and accuracy shows that at this point, the hardcopy is still more
comprehensive and accurate. I found all the documents from the OPS in
the _Weekly Compilation_, but a number of short pieces included in the
_Weekly Compilation_ were not to be found on the net. I could find
neither the two paragraphs nominating Daniel Hurley as a U.S. District
Court judge (_Weekly Compilation_ 29(45):2323, Nov. 15, 1993) nor
the letter to Janet Reno on child pornography (_Weekly Compilation_,
same page) in any of the Internet-accessible sources.
In terms of accuracy of content, the Internet version compared
favorably in the body of the text. There are minor differences between
the two versions of some documents. A comparison of remarks in a
phone call to the Vice-President on Nov. 10, 1993 shows the kind of
variations. The Internet version is entitled "Remarks by the President
in telephone callÉ" as opposed to the "Remarks in a Telephone
Conversation with theÉ" in the _Weekly Compilation_ (compare
_Weekly Compilation_ 29(45): 2310-11, Nov. 15, 1993 to the Internet
version, vpphone.1110, which can be retrieved from the Texas A&M
bookmark in Figure 1 with a search in the first menu heading with the
search argument vpphone 1110.) There are other slight variations in
wording in this example, with one source leaving out a "hey" and the
other a "bye-bye." A more troubling feature of the Internet versions is
that the file titles given by the database or gopher administrator are
often rather cryptic in their abbreviations.
E-MAIL
And what about those with e-mail-only access to the net? There
are a number of mail servers that can send documents and allow
searching, all via e-mail. Send the e-mail message send info to
publications@whitehouse.gov (no subject line) for more information on
how to retrieve documents by e-mail directly. Those familiar with the
almanac software may prefer the interface at the USDA Extension
Service at almanac@esusda.gov. With blank subject lines, send
subscribe wh-summary to receive daily summaries, search white-
house keyword (replace "keyword" with appropriate search terms) to
search for specific documents, and send white-house # (replace # with
the appropriate number) to retrieve documents.
In addition to e-mail traffic from the White House, we can now
send messages to Pennsylvania Avenue. Both Clinton and Gore have e-
mail addresses: president@whitehouse.gov and
vice.president@whitehouse.gov. Comments, critiques, opinions, and
other expressions can now be sent, but don't expect a personal reply.
Due to the overwhelming volume of e-mail received at the above
addresses, an automated response is used. Figure 2 shows the
beginning of that automated message from the president@
whitehouse.gov address. However limited or problematic the current
system may be, the White House should be commended for its efforts
in providing Presidential documents to the Internet community and
offering a means for communicating with the White House. The
electronic community may provide a new forum for the democratic
process and perhaps change the way in which a government
communicates with its people.
Communications to the author should be addressed to Greg R. Notess,
Montana State University Libraries, Bozeman, MT 59717-0332;
406/994-6563; greg@notess.com ; http://www.notess.com.
Copyright © 1995, Online Inc. All rights reserved.