Winter 2003
Serving Citizen's Needs: Minimizing Hurdles to Accessing Government Information Online
Eszter Hargittai, Sociology Department Princeton University
With the rapid spread of the Internet across society, government institutions are taking advantage of using digital technology to distribute materials to citizens. Here, I report on a project that looked at people's ability to find tax forms on the Web. Findings suggest that people look for content in a myriad of ways and there is considerable variance in how long people take to complete this online task. Users are often confused by the ways in which content is presented to them. In this paper, I discuss two common sources of confusion in users' online experiences with respect to locating tax forms online: 1. URL confusion; and 2. page design layout. In addition to describing these problem areas, I also suggest ways in which these two sources of frustration could easily be curtailed yielding less exasperating and more productive user experiences.
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April, 2002
Second Level Digital Divide" Differences in People's Online Skills
Eszter Hargittai, Sociology Department Princeton University
Much of the existing literature on the digital divide - the differences between the "haves" and "have nots" regarding access to the Internet - limits its scope to a binary classification of technology use by only considering whether someone does or does not use the Internet. To remedy this shortcoming, in this paper I look at the differences in people's online skills. In order to measure online ability, I assigned search tasks to a random sample of Internet users from a suburban county in the United States. My findings suggest that people search for content in a myriad of ways and there is considerable difference in whether individuals are able to find various types of content on the Web and a large variance in how long it takes to complete online tasks. Age is negatively associated with one's level of Internet skill, experience with the technology is positively related to online skill, and differences in gender do little to explain the variance in the ability of different people to find content online.
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Amicus Briefs:
Arguments by Markle-funded Law Clinics Head to the Supreme Court
Three law clinics that contend with Internet law and policy have seen their amicus briefs submitted to the Supreme Court in a case that could prove critical to Congress' recent extension of the terms of copyright law.
In the case, Eldred v. Ashcroft, the Court is asked to consider whether the copyright clause and the First Amendment place substantive limits on Congress' ability to extend the terms of copyright. The challenge was brought by Harvard's Berkman Center and the Stanford Center for Internet and Society on behalf of Eric Eldred, who makes books available free on the Internet, and others who make use of works in the public domain.
The Samuelson Clinic at Boalt represented The Internet Archive, a public non-profit founded to build an "Internet Library." The Glushko-Samuelson Clinic represented several library associations.
Amicus brief on behalf of American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, Digital Future Coalition, Medical Library Association and Society of American Archivists
Peter Jaszi
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Amicus brief of Internet Archive in support of Eldred's petition for certiorari
Samuelson Clinic and Mark Lemley
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