The Digital Government Reference Library

History of the DGRL

Since 2005, an ongoing project has been chartered at the University of Washington to create and maintain a comprehensive reference library dedicated to academic digital government (DG) literature. Originally, the project started with references from a review of the literature. Criteria for inclusion of an article or paper in the DGRL were established next.

From its first public release in 2006 under the name of Electronic Government Reference Library (or, EGRL), the number of entries in the reference library has grown rapidly from the initial two hundred to thousands of references. With the release of version 14.0 in June of 2018, the reference library passed the mark of 10,000 references. This event also marks the reference library's renaming in "Digital Government Reference Library" following a worldwide trend of referring to the study domain. Since the introduction of the DGRL in 2005 the volume of recorded academic knowledge in e-Government has grown more than tenfold.

We estimate that the references contained in DGRL represent more than 90 percent of the extant peer-reviewed, English-language literature in DG research.

If you believe a reference is missing, please check that it meets all the required criteria for inclusion. If the missing reference meets those criteria, please send an email with the reference information to egov@uw.edu.

Release History

Beta Version 0.9 - Fall 2005
922 references
Version 1.0 - July 16, 2006
1,452 references
+57.5%
Version 2.0 - January 22, 2008
2,159 references
+48.7%
Version 3.2 - August 23, 2008
2,536 references
+17.5%
Version 4.5 - April 29,2009
2,685 references
+5.9%
Version 5.0 - May 17, 2009
3,100 references
+15.5%
Version 6.0 - January 1, 2010
3,521 references
+13.6%
Version 6.5 - December 2, 2010
3,697 references
+19.3%
Version 7.0 - March 18, 2011
4,284 references
+15.9%
Version 7.5 - December 14, 2011
4,681 references
+9.3%
Version 8.0 - June 13, 2012
5,050 references
+7.9%
Version 8.5 - December 14, 2012
5,525 references
+9.4%
Version 9.0 - June 15, 2013
5,829 references
+5.5%
Version 9.4 - December 10, 2013
6,148 references
+5.5%
Version 9.5 - March 12, 2014 (minor update)
6,283 references
+2.2%
Version 10.0 - July 28, 2014
6,520 references
+3.8%
Version 10.5 - January 25, 2015
7,237 references
+11.0 %
Version 11.0 - July 17, 2015
7,553 references
+4.0 %
Version 11.5 - December 17, 2015
7,899 references
+4.6 %
Version 12.0 - July 6, 2016
8,181 references
+3.6 %
Version 12.5 - March 7, 2017
8,805 references
+7.6 %
Version 13.0 - June 26, 2017
9,287 references
+5.5 %
Version 13.5 - December 15, 2017
9,901 references
+6.6 %
Version 14.0 - June 15, 2018
10,299 references
+4.0 %
Version 14.5 - December 15, 2018
11,211 references
+8.9 %
Version 15.0 - June 15, 2019
11,760 references
+4.9 %
Version 15.5 - December 15, 2019
12,546 references
+6.7 %
Version 16.0 - June 15, 2020
13,532 references
+7.9 %
Version 16.5 - December 15, 2020
14,527 references
+7.4 %
Version 16.6 - January 15, 2021 (minor update)
14,940 references
+2.8 %
Version 17.0 - July 10, 2021
15,731 references
+8.3 %
Version 17.5 - December 15, 2021
16,531 references
+5.1 %
Version 18.0 - June 17, 2022
17,184 references
+4.0 %
Version 18.5 - December 15, 2022
17,987 references
+4.7 %
Version 19.0 - June 15, 2023
18,668 references
+3.8 %
Version 19.5 - December 15, 2023
19,390 references
+3.9 %