ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 676 / C&RL News The Presidential Campaign Hotline: Its Use in Libraries By Ellen Sutton Form er Social Sciences R eference Librarian University o f North Carolina at C hapel Hill and M argaret Jack son Social Sciences R eferen ce Librarian University o f North Carolina at C hapel Hill The Hotline (until just recently called the Presi­ dential Cam paign Hotline), an online daily cur­ rent awareness service, gathers and distributes the latest available information on political campaigns and candidates. It is produced by the American Po­ litical Network (APN) of McLean, Virginia. Begun on September 15, 1987, the Hotline’s purpose is to furnish a central means by which reporters and po­ litical analysts can exchange or simply obtain local and regional news surrounding the upcoming pres­ idential election. Formerly, this type of informa­ tion was exchanged by political insiders making telephone calls to each other or by reading or view­ ing others’ news and editorial features when they appeared in the standard media. Reporters may call in news to the Hotline after receiving editorial approval from their own orga­ nization, so responses to the news or opinion often appears the next day, rather than several days later. The Hotline’s sources of information include the candidates’ campaign organizations, political analysts retained by the APN, national or regional newspapers, television networks, and wire ser­ vices. According APN’s Andrew Crosby, the Hotline’s base of subscribers has grown from the original group of reporters and analysts to include political action committees, corporations, foreign embassies, universities, and private individuals. The Business Administration/Social Sciences Reference Department at Davis Library at the University of North Carolina began subscribing to the Hotline in October 1987. The daily updates of the Hotline are printed and housed as a part of the reference collection. Subsequently, the Hotline has become a significant resource to members of the university community. Background The American Political Network is the creation of Douglas Bailey, a Republican political consul­ tant, and Roger Craver, a Democratic direct mail expert. Other members of the staff of the American Political Network have experience with political campaigns or administrations and represent a bal­ ance of political affiliations. The Hotline’s policy is to provide a balanced account and representation of the political events and candidates. Each Presi­ dential campaign organization is allowed 200 un­ edited words per day in the Campaign Reports sec­ tion of the Hotline. The H otline runs approximately 20 pages in length and is printed in a readable format which includes daily highlights, a table of contents, major news stories on the campaigns themselves or on news events surrounding the campaigns, reports from the campaign organizations, latest poll infor­ mation in tabular format, and each candidate’s “media market schedule” (which in recent months has been curtailed to a handful of lines as the presi­ dential candidates have been weeded out). Follow­ ing each item within a section, abbreviated source data is provided. For example, “(C B S,2/22),” “(N.Y. Times, 2/23),” etc. “Hotline Highlights,” which represents the major news stories of the day covered by numerous reporters, may refer the reader to “(L.A. Times, Baltimore Sun, USA To­ day, N.Y. Times, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, 2/22, See [Hotline item] #3).” Although the Hotline is inferior to the W all Street Journal or New York Times bibliographic elements which in­ clude page and column in addition to date, one can locate the article with a bit of effort. Originally intended to run from October 15, 1987, through March 1989, the H otline is now scheduled to continue indefinitely, shifting its fo­ cus to U.S. Senate and House races and other re­ gional contests. As the field of Presidential candi­ dates has narrowed, more attention has been devoted in recent months to Senatorial elections. In addition to news briefs on targeted Senate races, reports from various campaigns are now included. In the future, APN may concentrate on major gu­ bernatorial and mayoral races as well as possible inclusion of Supreme Court activities. Searching the Hotline Subscribers to the Hotline pay varying rates, de­ pending on their status and level of contribution to the Hotline. The Hotline is evolving in other ways as it matures: in January of 1988, the APN an­ nounced the creation of a new “Hotline database,” searchable via CompuServe. The database could be searched by candidate, by date, major sections (like the “Poll Update” section) and a limited num­ ber of keywords such as “Bork” or “abortion” (an appendix lists the keywords), which can be re­ quested in combination (Bork and abortion). This searching option was an extension of the regular subscription but has now been dropped indefi­ nitely. Should the user exceed the monthly time al­ November 1988 / 677 lotment for downloading of approximately 3.5 hours, a charge of $50 per hour is incurred. Until the development of the searchable data­ base, one could not retrieve a given day’s Hotline after the next day’s had been loaded online. This searching capability is now available through a more sophisticated database, via the Dialcom com­ puter network. The Dialcom database, which is “searchable by virtually any word, subject, or combination,” was announced in the APN promo­ tional literature in January and became available in early spring. As of June 1988, access to the Hotline is obtained in several ways. The most common is to subscribe to it directly from the APN office and receive it through a telecommunications utility, primarily CompuServe. APN offers varying subscription rates for non-profit (such as college and university libraries) and profit-making organizations. A sec­ ond way is via Dialcom, a subsidiary of British Telecommunications based in Rockville, Mary­ land. Dialcom is a database vendor which has of­ fered the Hotline under the code PEN (“Political Election News”) since February 10, 1988. PEN carries a database surcharge of $65 per hour plus an average connect fee of $14 per hour. It includes the H otline from its inception in Septem­ ber of 1987. Each day’s update is available at 9:00 a.m. PEN can be searched as a retrospective data­ base, using Boolean operators. A third source is NewsNet, a database vendor whose search system is more sophisticated than the keyword searching Dialcom offers, but provides coverage of only February 1 to the present. Sub­ scribers to NewsNet may read the H otline each day after it becomes available at 9:00 a.m. Currently, costs for the NewsNet service include a $15 monthly subscription fee for telecommunications and documentation and an $84 per hour full-text royalty charge to read the daily Hotline. Finally, one can obtain the H otline database by section di­ rectly through CompuServe. Coverage is same day only. The searcher is limited to searching by section using the CompuServe database capabilities. Addi­ tionally, library users with access to ALANET also have access to the H otline. A LA N ET is also searched via the Dialcom system. Use of the Hotline at UNC Faculty and other instructors at UNC in the De­ partments of Radio, Television, and Motion Pic­ tures, Political Science, Journalism, and Speech Communication have expressed an interest in the H otline either for instructional purposes or their own research. The influence and recommenda­ tions of several members of the faculty of these de­ partments was instrumental in the Library’s deci­ sion to subscribe to the Hotline. Special research funds were used for the subscription and the deci­ sion to renew it will be reviewed annually. One research project involving the H otline con­ cerns the effect the H otline may be having on the reporting of political news—the communication behavior of reporters and political analysts as well as the effect on the content of the reporting. One theory being explored is that this political news may become more homogenous and less regional or reflective of individual analysts’ original opinion now that opinion and reaction are so immediately and centrally available. In N ew sw eek, as early as November 2 ,1 9 8 7 , Mickey Kaus and Eleanor Clift describe the pattern of the convergence of opinion on the part of reporters and political analysts, cit­ ing the phenomenon of “pack journalism” in which reporters rely on computerized, rather than first­ hand information. Thus far, the Hotline has been used at Davis L i­ brary only in its static form, as a daily printout, and not as a computer-searchable database. This is due in part to the APN’s timing and delays in pro­ ducing and documenting the database. The search­ able aspects of the Hotline have not yet been widely promoted at UNC. The H otline is downloaded to disk and printed out after reformatting using a word processing pro­ gram in the mornings, usually shortly after it is made available at approximately 10:00 a.m. This pertains to weekday mornings only, as it is not is­ sued weekends or holidays. The H otline can be downloaded in approximately seven to nine min­ utes. An archival disk and a backup disk are kept in BA/SS for future reference. The current day’s printout is kept at the reference desk. Patrons must leave an identification card to take it from the desk area. Previous issues are kept in a publicly accessible file cabinet until recently. A number of printouts were removed from the collection and not re­ turned, which had to be reprinted from disk. The printouts were moved to a cabinet behind the refer­ ence desk, from which patrons may check them out. Only one week’s Hotlines (five files) are placed on a single floppy disk, and disks are copied by re­ quest if the patrons furnish their own disks. Thus, each disk is a definable unit, and is more easily used by faculty assigning a given week’s news to stu­ dents. Conclusion The H otlin e has proven to be an important source of information at Davis Library. Continued accumulation of daily political data can serve a useful purpose as a historical resource to scholars in various disciplines, particularly those involving communications or American political behavior. The evolution of political campaigns and the effect of media on these campaigns can be studied. Addi­ tionally, the daily downloaded information serves the obvious purpose of keeping the university com­ munity informed about a wide variety of informa­ tion concerning the election of its officials. 678 / C&RL News With APN’s plans to shift the focus of the Hotline to broader political coverage, it should continue to be an option for subscribers. By summarizing and analyzing current political events, it provides the most up-to-date source for a wide variety of users. We anticipate that increasingly it will become a standard source for students in political science and related disciplines. The library newsletter: Is it for you? By Sylverna F o rd Assistant to the D irector o f University Libraries Carnegie Mellon University Newsletters can be a vital public relations tool fo r the library administration. D u r i n g the Spring of 1984, a decision was made to start a newsletter at the University Libraries of Carnegie Mellon. The first issue of the newsletter was produced in October of that year. Since that time a total of eleven issues of the newsletter have been produced. For nearly three years the newslet­ ter remained under the editorship of the original editor. In the summer of 1987, I inherited the re­ sponsibility for editing Resources: The CMU L i­ braries’ News. Editing a newsletter was a new ex­ perience for me and I found that I had many questions for which there were no immediate an­ swers. I spent several days considering the hows an whys of producing the newsletter. Turning to the professional literature for guidance I learned, to my chagrin, that there was not much available. Little has actually been written on producing a li­ brary newsletter; certainly the necessary planning process has not been addressed. The articles that have been written are primarily geared to commer­ cially produced, for-profit publications. This d dearth of information prompted me to document my own experience. Out of that grew a working guide which in time evolved into the guidelines and specifications for the newsletter of the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries. Why a newsletter? In the commercial markets, the newsletter seems to be emerging as the medium of the new era. There are newsletters addressing almost any sub­ ject you can think of.1 There are thousands of news­ letters being produced today; they range in price from free to hundreds of dollars per year—and they keep coming. Newsletter production is a busi­ ness in its own right. What does the newsletter have to offer that makes it so attractive in the mar­ ketplace? W hat is the impetus behind the in­ creased interest in this form of publication? Simply 1“Starting Your Own Newsletter,” Changing Times 40 (April 1986): 77.