SOUTHERN CONNECTICUT STATE UNIVERSITY H.C. BULEY LIBRARY - GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS COLLECTION COLLECTION OVERVIEW What are Government Documents? Government documents are defined as publications sold through the Government Printing Office, the National Technical Information Service, or those made available directly from a federal agency. Basically, government documents are written and published by a federal government agency. Government documents can be issued in a variety of formats: books, journals, maps, posters, records, microfiche and electronic formats. Documents cover a wide range of topics in the public health field. You can find information on statistics, diseases, morbidity and mortality, health trends, consumer information, federal laws and their legislative histories, and U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Most of our collection circulates for one month, with the option to renew for an additional month. Reference government documents do not circulate and must be used in the library. There are xerox machines located on each floor of the library for your use. Reference Service is available most hours that the library is open. How do I find Government Documents? Most documents in Buley Library, issued after 1968, are not catalogued and are not listed in the card catalog on the first floor. The indexes and abstracts in government documents will become your "card catalog", and provide access to the documents collection. The Monthly Catalog of U.S. Government Publications and the GPO on Silverplatter database are the two primary indexes that will help you locate government documents at Buley Library. You can search these indexes by subject, title, keyword, author, and report/series number. Once the bibliographic citation is found, the citation will provide you with the author, title, publication year and SuDocs number. The SuDocs (Superintendent of Documents) number is an alphanumeric number, similar to a call number, and will enable you to locate the government document in our collection. Please remember to write or print out this number. Also remember that our government documents collection is a selective depository collection and doesn't receive everything listed in the indexes. Please ask for help in using the indexes and the general collection. What Are Some of the Key Indexes / Abstracts? The following indexes/abstracts are located on the index wall in government documents: 1. Monthly Catalog of U.S. Publications.1941- Present. 2. GPO on Silverplatter (Government Printing Office Computer Database) 1976-Present. 3. CIS - Congressional Information Service Index. 1973-Present. 4. Index Medicus. National Library of Medicine. 1903-Present. The Monthly Catalog and GPO on Silverplatter indexes will be the primary indexes used to access the documents collection. The Monthly Catalog, started in 1895, is the most comprehensive paper index to government publications issued by all federal agencies, on all subjects and in all formats. Southern began receiving the Monthly Catalog in 1941, and became a depository in 1968. The Monthly Catalog is issued monthly, with semi-annual and annual indexes. Here's How You Use the Monthly Catalog: A.) You find the author, title, subject, or report number in the index and obtain the Monthly Catalog entry number. For example: 91-100 - The 91 represents the year 1991, and 100 represents the 100th citation in the catalog. B.) You then take this entry number and find the entry number in the bibliographic section. C The bibliographic citation will provide you with the SuDocs number, and basic bibliographic information such as author, title, federal agency, and publication year. D.) Now you need to check the documents shelflist to see if the publication is in our collection. If we receive the publication you will find it either in paper or microfiche by SuDocs number. GPO on Sllverplatter is the CD-ROM computer version of the Monthly Catalog. The database includes the entries from 1976 to the present. The current disc is updated every 2 months. GPO on Silverplatter's remarkable searching capabilities enable the library patron to search many terms and many years all with only one or two simple commands. With a few simple commands, you can search by author, title, subject, SuDocs number or report number. The search can be expanded by using the term "or"; the search can also be restricted by using the terms "and" or "not". For Example, you can combine terms like "homeless and "AIDS", or "homeless" and publication years 1989- 1992. Like the paper index, the computer will provide you with the full citation, including SuDocs number. Index Medicus is the National Library of Medicine's monthly international bibliography of the literature of biomedicine. The first volume of Index Medicus was published in 1879. Index Medicus currently indexes over 3,000 of the world's major biomedical journals and several hundred selected monographs. The documents department began receiving Index Medicus in 1903. Index Medicus is divided into five parts. You can search by the following ways: A.) Subject Index - Each article is listed under MESH subject headings. English language items come first; foreign language items come after the English language items. B.) Author Index. C.) List of Journals Indexed in Index Medicus. D.) Bibliography of Medical Reviews. E.) Medical Subject Headings (MESH). This is a thesaurus of 13,000 descriptors that the indexers have used to assign subject headings. CIS - Index to Congressional Publications and Public Laws. The library has from 1973 to the present. Each year CIS publishes more than 100,000 index references and abstracts to congressional publications. Since 1970 CIS has included legislative history citations for all public laws enacted during the congressional year. Beginning in 1984, legislative histories are published in a separate volume. This is an excellent source to use if you need federal legislative histories. Shirley B. Cavanagh H.C. Buley Library - Government Documents Southern Ct. State University Sept. 1992