Government Documents Selection Rebecca Norris
Directed Field Experience ranorris@umich.edu
The University of Michigan April 4, 2002
During 2001, GPO released 60% of its documents to depositories libraries via the Internet using its the new electronic titles list <http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/locators/net/index.html> as the notification tool. At the same time it discontinued sending archival physical copies of government reports. This posed several problems for libraries:
For now, Grace York decided that she would look at the list of new electronic titles for each month beginning January 2001 and choose ones that would be valuable permanent additions to the University of Michigan Library collection. Then I would examine the documents on the Internet, gather information about them, determine if they could be ordered, and what the fee would be.
One hundred and sixteen documents were examined. During this process we found:
·
Important serials which
exist in paper but are deposited electronically. In some cases (e.g. Current Population Reports) we ordered a
subscription.
Although we had success ordering various reports from individual agency web sites for free, we have been disappointed with some of the reports that were actually sent. Instead of a paperbound copy, we have often received computer printouts that are not on acid free paper and do not have margins suitable for binding. This has been true for all GAO reports that have arrived as stapled pages with narrow margins instead of their traditional blue covers. There is no way to know a report’s format when the order is placed, so it is hard to determine if it is better to order from the agency or print the report ourselves, where we have a control over the paper and margins. Because some reports are now designed only for the web, obtaining a hard copy is impossible and printing the document from a multi-page or dynamic web site is not satisfactory. We ultimately made a list of items that we would like to have printed and bound within our library. Printing in-house using an on-demand service may prove to be the best way to provide hard copies of documents that we anticipate our patrons needing the most for many years to come.
This is the process we used:
1. Grace would print the New Electronic Titles list <http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/locators/net/index.html> and choose items that she wanted to investigate. She printed weekly lists through November 2001. The format changed to the Catalog of Government Publications search engine in mid-December 2001 so she printed the remaining lists on a monthly basis.
2. I created a Word document to keep track of the titles, PURLs and notes. I would look at the document to see what kind of report it was and whether it was something that was printable, rather than an interactive or multi-linked document. I also noted the issuing agency, its total page count, and if there was any ordering information within the document itself. Sometimes there would be a statement to contact a person for copies or a website to order from. The page count was important to decide if we should have it printed by the print-on-demand library service or try to order it. Since it was difficult to tell just by the title, I had to examine the document to determine if it was something worth tracking down depending on its currency, format, scope, content, etc.
3. Next, I checked the following sources:
The following sites offered easy online ordering for GAO, ED and Criminal Justice:
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/ordtab.pl
http://www.ed.gov/about/ordering.jsp
4. Finally, Grace and I would go through the notes about each title to determine if we should pursue the item, pay for ordering it or add it to our in-house print list.
During our discussions, Grace and I identified numerous related issues:
Next Steps:
Number
of Items Reviewed: 116
Number
of Free Copies Received: 21
Number
of Publications Ordered: 5
Number
of Publications and Pages to Be Printed: 17 documents; 1277 pages
Number
of Titles Abandoned: 39
Number
of Titles Owned or on Fiche: 34