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Federal depository libraries on the campus: Practices and prospects
tiovernmenr Pubhcalmns Revrew. Vol. 4. No. 3. pp. 209-214.
Pergamon Press, 1977. Prmfed in Great Britam.
FEDERAL DEPOSITORY LIBRARIES ON THE CAMPUS: PRACTICES AND PROSPECTS
BENJAMIN SHEARER Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri 63108, U.S.A.
It is commonplace to note that many federal depository collections have languished in obscurity for years even in academic libraries. As the documents come up out of the basements, but not quite yet into the light, old attitudes prevail, old organizational structures live on and the content of debates over the administration of documents collections remains largely unchanged. A documents librarian seeking advice on very real problems will find little of practical value in a search of library literature of the past ten years. The virtues and drawbacks of the Superintendent of Documents (SUDOCS) classification scheme are dutifully noted in textbooks, but no one system is recommended”‘. Even the teachers of future librarians are still insistent on providing their students with bibliographies of U.S. government publications rather than acquainting them with current practices, attitudes, and concrete, day to day problems of administering documents collection@. Yuri Nakata’s article, which happily looks toward a “new image” for federal depositories does not mention the place where the image will be changed - the individual documents department 13’.Catherine Reynolds’ list of forty ways to promote “greater user awareness of the government documents collection” is very helpful, but of little use to a librarian with no time to begin such a projecV’. The debates are valid enough, the suggestions are well-taken, and flow charts are always in vogue, but the practical problem of how a documents librarian is to upgrade a documents collection which has long been neglected to the point that it is unused or unusable must be addressed. But in order to attack this problem squarely and finally to offer some solutions, the real state of the art of federal depository collection administration must be identified. Factual information has been collected by means of a questionnaire which was sent to 100 (2 in each state) of the 666 designated federal depository libraries (a 15% sampling) which are affiliated with four-year colleges or universities, excluding regional depositories, law and medical libraries. The response rate was 93%, which constitutes a 13.9% sampling of those academic libraries. The purpose of this survey was to determine the status of documents departments in college libraries as far as staffing, budgetary concerns, and the handling and amount of depository material, as well as to ascertain the opinions of documents librarians themselves in regard to the support they receive from directors, the use of the collection, and the time they have to promulgate the use of the collection. The questionnaire with raw scores and percentages is reproduced below.
210
BENJAMIN
Questionnaire
SHEARER
Table I. with raw scores and percentages
YES 31 (33.33%) NO 62 (66.67%)
1. Does the Documents library?
YES 20 (21.5%) NO 73 (78.5%)
2. Is the Documents development?
Dept. Dept.
added
have independent given
an
departmental
independent
budget
status for
in your
collection
For binding?
YES 10 (10.8%) NO 83 (89.2%) 3
0 -
61 (65.6%) 25 (26.9%) 2 or more 7 (7.5%)
How many
full-time
librarians
work exclusively
in the Documents
Dept.?
1-
How many part-time
0 - 37 (39.8%) 1 - 43 (46.2%) 2 or more - 13 (14%)
4. How many hours Documents Dept.?
See Table 3.
librarians?
of clerical
5. Which of the following material? 3
a b c -
support
statements
per
week
best applies to your handling
(3.2%)
a. All depository
documents
are cataloged.
18 (19.4%)
b. All depository
documents
are put in SUDOCS
72 (77.4%)
c. Some depository numbers.
documents
are cataloged,
6. Which of the above (a, b or c) do you think promote the use of the Documents collection?
24 (25.8%) 30 (32.2%) 39 (42%)
are designated
for
the
of depository
numbers. some are put in SUDOCS
would
be the best system
to
If all depository items are not cataloged, is a Documents Reference section maintained separate from the regular reference collection in which would be found reference material such as Index Medicus, STAR, ERIC, etc,?
YES 37 (45.7%) NO 44 (54.3%) See Table 2.
what percentuge of the over 3000 current 8. Approximately the GPO does your library receive?
YES 80 (88.9%) NO 10 (11.1%)
9. Do you feel that you have a good working relationship with the director of your library, one which would allow you to present your ideas to him about the Documents collection at any time and expect them to get just consideration? library
is supportive
item numbers
from
YES 80 (87.9%) NO 11 (12.1%)
10. Do you feel the director of your collection and aware of its value?
of the Documents
YES 79 (87.8%) NO 11 (12.2%)
staff is aware of and makes use of the 11. Do you think the Reference Documents collection? Do the Reference librarians point people toward the collection as a matter of practice?
YES 34 (37%) NO 58 (63%)
the use of the Documents 12. Do you feel that you have the time to promulgate collection by giving lectures and tours, or by writing pamphlets, guides, etc.?
From the results of this survey some generalizations can be made about the status of documents departments in academic libraries. Only 33.33% of the documents departments have independent departmental status. 78.5% of the documents departments have no independent budget for binding. These statistics are not surprising, for they seem to reinforce common experience. However, of the 31 libraries that maintain independent documents departments, 48.4% have no budget for collection development, and 80.6% have no binding budget. The table below lists the raw figures and percentages for depositories surveyed ranked by the percentage of item numbers they receive. There is a wide uiation in the percentage of items received by the libraries surveyed, but generally it can be said that
ost academic
libraries
(62.6%)
receive less than 50% of the items available.
Federal depository libraries on the campus: practices and prospects
211
Table 2. Libraries ranked by percentage of available item numbers received (91 libraries responding). No. of Libraries
% of items received
13.2%
61-70% 71-80% 81-90% 91-100%
12 14 9 8 14 3 10 7 5 9
O-20% 21-40% 41-60% 61-80% 81-100%
26 17 18 17 13
28.6% 18.7% 19.8% 18.7% 14.2%
O-50% 51-100%
57 34
62.6% 37.4%
l-10% 1l-20% 21-30% 31-40% 41-50% 5 l-60%
A depository that has ordered 1000 documents per monthr5’. adequate
staff
to manage
Voof Libraries 15.4%
9.9%
8.8% 15.4% 3.3%
10.9% 7.7% 5.5% 9.9%
50% of the available item numbers can expect to receive approximately This is a sizable number of publications, and such a load demands
it properly.
Nevertheless,
65.6% of those answering
the survey
have no
librarian who works exclusively with documents. Of the 57 depositories (62.6%) which receive less than 5 1% of the available items, 50 of them, or 92.5% have no full-time documents librarian. Of full-time
those 34 libraries (37.4%) which receive more than 51% of the available items, 10 of them, or 29.4% have no full-time documents librarian. Many libraries depend on part-time librarians, that is, librarians who work part-time in documents. 56 of the libraries responding (60.2%) employ at least one librarian in the documents department on a part-time basis. Clerical help is, of course, an absolute necessity in a documents department. The table below indicates the average hours per week of clerical aid designated for documents department according to the percentage of item numbers received. Table 3. Average hours of clerical support per week by the percentage of item numbers received % of item numbers received
Average hours of clerical supportper week
O-20%
21-40% 41-60% 61-80% 81-100%
12.6 27.1 22.9 61.1 79.7
O-50% 51-100%
20 64.5
These figures seem again to be not extremely surprising at first glance, yet it should be noted that the difference between twenty percentage points of items received is, in real terms, about 400 documents per month.
212
BENJAMIN
SHEARER
A definite pattern emerged when documents librarians were asked how depository documents were classified. Only 3.2% of the libraries catalog all documents, while 19.4% of the libraries put all documents in SUDOCS numbers. (Two of the latter catalog their documents, but use SUDOCS numbers as the call number.) The vast majority, however, 77.4% of the libraries use a mixed system of cataloging some documents, especially periodicals and reference material, and putting the rest in SUDOCS numbers. 45.7% of the libraries maintain a documents reference section separate from the regular reference collection in which would be found material such as Index Medicus, Resources in Education, etc. The clear pattern that resulted from tallying statistics on actual practice broke down completely when the documents librarians were asked which of the three systems for classifying documents they thought would be the best system to promote the use of the collection. The figures indicate that there are supporters on every side of the debate. 25.8% of the documents librarians were of the opinion that cataloging all documents would be the best system, 32.2% believed putting all documents in SUDOCS numbers would be the best system, and 42% of the librarians preferred the mixed system. There is obviously no consensus on this question. This situation reflects the confused notions of educators, evident in library literature too, and the difference in the common experiences of librarians in varying environments. Most all documents librarians seem to enjoy the support of their directors. 88.9% felt they have a good working relationship with their director, one which would allow them to present ideas to him and expect those ideas to receive just consideration. 87.9% of the librarians answered that they felt their director was supportive of the documents collection and aware of its value. 87.8% of the documents librarians thought the reference staff was aware of and made use of the documents collection; but 63% responded that they did not have enough time to work on promulgating the use of the collection by giving lectures and tours or writing guides and pamphlets. Out of this abyss of statistics we can draw a picture in shades of gray of the most probable academic depository documents department. The department will probably be tied to another department, and without its own budget for collection development or binding. It will be staffed by a part-time librarian with 20 hours of clerical support. Less than 50% of the items available on depository will be received, and some of those that are received will be cataloged, while most will probably be put in SUDOCS numbers. The librarian in charge of documents will enjoy a cordial relationship with the director of the library and his or her support for the documents collection. On the other hand, the documents librarian will feel some frustration because there will be little time to make patrons aware of the value of the collection. The quantification of current practices and opinions allows us to identify some of the prevailing attitudes that mitigate against the rationalization of documents collections. Documents collections still seem to be viewed as free collections complete as they stand. In most cases, no money is committed to collection development, to filling in gaps or adding relevant material. The directive to depository libraries that documents should be treated like any other library material, and this includes binding, has been largely ignored. That almost half of the documents departments which are independent have no budget for collection development, and that fully 80% have no binding budget is a tribute to the old ways of thinking and anachronistic budgetary structures. Perhaps the most pernicious practice in the past has been the cataloging of depository documents considered to be interesting or important. Recently, more precision has entered into decisions on what to catalog and what to put into SUDOCS numbers, as reference and periodical titles are commonly cataloged. In the days of the not too distant past, a monograph or even one number of a series was sent to the cataloging department because it was deemed very important or of special interest. Although the mixed system is the most commonly used today, it carries with it an insipient attitudinal swing away from the documents in SUDOCS numbers, the thinking being that what is vital is what is cataloged and, therefore, appears in the public catalog. Less than half of the libraries surveyed have overcome this
Federal depository libraries on the campus: practices and prospects
213
subtle problem by maintaining a separate documents reference section which leads patrons and fellow librarians into documents and SUDOCS numbers. If documents collections are going to become truly useful and rationally organized, it is going to be the task of the documents librarians to be innovative, to create and suggest new budgetary systems, new organizational structures, and new or different methods of handling depository documents. Only through the very real character of budgetary organizational concerns can a documents department hope to achieve a definite and necessary status in the library as a whole. The documents librarian must lead administrators and coworkers away from the path of old habit. A change of consciousness brought on by a change in organizational structure is necessary if documents collections are no longer to remain stepchildren with a quasi-existence. The following suggestions are offered in the belief that, if carried out, they would lead to the recognition of a documents department as a necessary entity, heavier use of the collection as well as a rational systemization of the material, and the final breakdown of the old ways which have been institutionalized in organizational structure: 1. One system of classification should be used for all depository documents. 2. A documents reference section should be maintained separate from the regular reference collection in which would be located titles which are often considered important for reference (i.e., Index Medicus, U.S. Government Reports & Announcements Index, the Monthly Catalog, Resources in Education, etc.). 3. The documents department, whether independent or part of another department, should have an independent budget for collection development. 4. The documents department should have an independent and guaranteed binding budget. 5. Any depository that receives more than 50010of the available item numbers should have a full-time documents librarian. 6. Clerical support should be budgeted to the documents department according to the percentage of item numbers received. A minimum of twenty hours per week should be allotted for each 25% of the items received, or even better, one hour per week for every 1% of the items received. Although slightly more than 25% of the librarians answering the questionnaire thought that cataloging all documents would be preferable, only about 3% actually follow this practice. This lends credence to the fact that cataloging is a desirable, but expensive process. The cheapest system for classifying documents is clearly the SUDOCS scheme. If this system were used exclusively for depository documents, the confusion that has resulted in the past from having used a mixed system would be alleviated. Most importantly, the collection would remain intact in one place. Setting up a documents reference section, preferably near the reference department, would answer the objections of many librarians who feel that it is necessary to catalog depository reference tools in order to get them into the reference collection. For the same reason it would be desirable to display current periodicals. These suggestions help to maintain the integrity of the collection as well as to lead people into documents gently. It is not necessary that the documents department be independent. As a matter of fact, it may be preferable to include documents as a division of reference services. However, it is important that the documents department (or division) be given its own budget for collection development, binding, and clerical staff in order first to give organizational recognition to the documents department and secondly, to insure that budgetary allotments for documents are not consumed due to what may be viewed as a more pressing need by a larger omnivorous department. The recommendation that libraries receiving over 50% of the available items should employ a full-time document librarian is made for obvious reasons. Someone must be fully in charge of a collection which grows at the rate of 1000-2000 publications per month, and that person must make decisions for which he or she is responsible. This is a full time job. Equally as important is that some free time be available for a documents librarian to begin to develop the collection, to communicate with users
214
BENJAMIN SHEARER
about their needs, and to promulgate the use of the collection. A part-time documents librarian hardly has the time to do anything but clerical work. None of these suggestions is particularly new or novel, nor are they all together quickly and easily attained. They are offered as relatively inexpensive methods which could be utilized by documents librarians, especially in academic libraries, to eradicate once and for all the prevailing attitudes, structures and methods of the past so that documents collections can truly be brought into the light. In these days of seemingly universal budget crunches, we must seek positive measures which promise to help us give better service to library patrons, measures which will effect meaningful change at a low cost. I would venture to say that if the questionnaire used for this unpretentious study had been sent out ten years ago, the results would have been astonishingly different. We have come a long way in realizing the value of a solid documents collection, but we have yet to complete the process whereby the collections will be maintained as any other library collection. The aegis for this transformation will be the administrators and documents librarians who are willing to be dynamic, to bring about change in an enthusiastic, but rational and gentle way.
REFERENCES
-. 3. 4. 5.
See Ruth Erlandson’s paper entitled “The Organization of Federal Government Publications in Depository Libraries” in Anne Morris Boyd’s United States Government Publications, 3rd rev. edn., (Edited by Rae Elizabeth Rips). H. W. Wilson. New York (1949). pp. 570-577, for a rather thorounh treatment of the uros and cons of various classification. systems. Rebekah Harleston and Carla .I. Soffle provide a less cumbersome and more modern discussion of the same topic in their Administration of Government Documents Collections Libraries Unlimited, Littleton, Colorado (1974) pp. 25ff. Laurence Schmekebier and Ray Eastin’s Government Publications and Their Use, 2nd rev. ed. The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. (1969) avoids the problem completely, while Joe Morehead in his otherwise excellent Introduction to United States Public Documents Libraries Unlimited, Littleton, Colorado (1975) p. 73, circumlocutes the question. Doris Dale concludes her article “The Development of Classification Systems for Government Publications” Library Resources and Technical Services 13 (Fall 1969) 471-483, with some muted praise for the SUDOCS system due to its foundation on organizational structure, but she qualifies her enthusiasm by mentioning that analytical subject indexes would be desirable with such a system. A fine recent example of this kind of thinking is Robert Ballard’s “Government Publications: A Course Outline” Government Publications Review 2 (Spring 1975) 177-184. Yuri Nakata, “Toward a New Image: A Look at Federal Depository Libraries,” Wilson Library Bulletin 48 March 1974) 568-571. Catherine Reynolds, “Discovering the Government Documents Collection in Libraries,” RQ 14 (Spring 1975) 228-23 1. This figure was provided by Sandra Schelling, documents librarian at the Thomas Jefferson Library, University of Missouri at St. Louis, which is a full depository. The 2000 figure excludes congressional bills and resolutions, and represents a rough average of documents received in the last half of 1976.
Pergamon Press, 1977. Prmfed in Great Britam.
FEDERAL DEPOSITORY LIBRARIES ON THE CAMPUS: PRACTICES AND PROSPECTS
BENJAMIN SHEARER Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri 63108, U.S.A.
It is commonplace to note that many federal depository collections have languished in obscurity for years even in academic libraries. As the documents come up out of the basements, but not quite yet into the light, old attitudes prevail, old organizational structures live on and the content of debates over the administration of documents collections remains largely unchanged. A documents librarian seeking advice on very real problems will find little of practical value in a search of library literature of the past ten years. The virtues and drawbacks of the Superintendent of Documents (SUDOCS) classification scheme are dutifully noted in textbooks, but no one system is recommended”‘. Even the teachers of future librarians are still insistent on providing their students with bibliographies of U.S. government publications rather than acquainting them with current practices, attitudes, and concrete, day to day problems of administering documents collection@. Yuri Nakata’s article, which happily looks toward a “new image” for federal depositories does not mention the place where the image will be changed - the individual documents department 13’.Catherine Reynolds’ list of forty ways to promote “greater user awareness of the government documents collection” is very helpful, but of little use to a librarian with no time to begin such a projecV’. The debates are valid enough, the suggestions are well-taken, and flow charts are always in vogue, but the practical problem of how a documents librarian is to upgrade a documents collection which has long been neglected to the point that it is unused or unusable must be addressed. But in order to attack this problem squarely and finally to offer some solutions, the real state of the art of federal depository collection administration must be identified. Factual information has been collected by means of a questionnaire which was sent to 100 (2 in each state) of the 666 designated federal depository libraries (a 15% sampling) which are affiliated with four-year colleges or universities, excluding regional depositories, law and medical libraries. The response rate was 93%, which constitutes a 13.9% sampling of those academic libraries. The purpose of this survey was to determine the status of documents departments in college libraries as far as staffing, budgetary concerns, and the handling and amount of depository material, as well as to ascertain the opinions of documents librarians themselves in regard to the support they receive from directors, the use of the collection, and the time they have to promulgate the use of the collection. The questionnaire with raw scores and percentages is reproduced below.
210
BENJAMIN
Questionnaire
SHEARER
Table I. with raw scores and percentages
YES 31 (33.33%) NO 62 (66.67%)
1. Does the Documents library?
YES 20 (21.5%) NO 73 (78.5%)
2. Is the Documents development?
Dept. Dept.
added
have independent given
an
departmental
independent
budget
status for
in your
collection
For binding?
YES 10 (10.8%) NO 83 (89.2%) 3
0 -
61 (65.6%) 25 (26.9%) 2 or more 7 (7.5%)
How many
full-time
librarians
work exclusively
in the Documents
Dept.?
1-
How many part-time
0 - 37 (39.8%) 1 - 43 (46.2%) 2 or more - 13 (14%)
4. How many hours Documents Dept.?
See Table 3.
librarians?
of clerical
5. Which of the following material? 3
a b c -
support
statements
per
week
best applies to your handling
(3.2%)
a. All depository
documents
are cataloged.
18 (19.4%)
b. All depository
documents
are put in SUDOCS
72 (77.4%)
c. Some depository numbers.
documents
are cataloged,
6. Which of the above (a, b or c) do you think promote the use of the Documents collection?
24 (25.8%) 30 (32.2%) 39 (42%)
are designated
for
the
of depository
numbers. some are put in SUDOCS
would
be the best system
to
If all depository items are not cataloged, is a Documents Reference section maintained separate from the regular reference collection in which would be found reference material such as Index Medicus, STAR, ERIC, etc,?
YES 37 (45.7%) NO 44 (54.3%) See Table 2.
what percentuge of the over 3000 current 8. Approximately the GPO does your library receive?
YES 80 (88.9%) NO 10 (11.1%)
9. Do you feel that you have a good working relationship with the director of your library, one which would allow you to present your ideas to him about the Documents collection at any time and expect them to get just consideration? library
is supportive
item numbers
from
YES 80 (87.9%) NO 11 (12.1%)
10. Do you feel the director of your collection and aware of its value?
of the Documents
YES 79 (87.8%) NO 11 (12.2%)
staff is aware of and makes use of the 11. Do you think the Reference Documents collection? Do the Reference librarians point people toward the collection as a matter of practice?
YES 34 (37%) NO 58 (63%)
the use of the Documents 12. Do you feel that you have the time to promulgate collection by giving lectures and tours, or by writing pamphlets, guides, etc.?
From the results of this survey some generalizations can be made about the status of documents departments in academic libraries. Only 33.33% of the documents departments have independent departmental status. 78.5% of the documents departments have no independent budget for binding. These statistics are not surprising, for they seem to reinforce common experience. However, of the 31 libraries that maintain independent documents departments, 48.4% have no budget for collection development, and 80.6% have no binding budget. The table below lists the raw figures and percentages for depositories surveyed ranked by the percentage of item numbers they receive. There is a wide uiation in the percentage of items received by the libraries surveyed, but generally it can be said that
ost academic
libraries
(62.6%)
receive less than 50% of the items available.
Federal depository libraries on the campus: practices and prospects
211
Table 2. Libraries ranked by percentage of available item numbers received (91 libraries responding). No. of Libraries
% of items received
13.2%
61-70% 71-80% 81-90% 91-100%
12 14 9 8 14 3 10 7 5 9
O-20% 21-40% 41-60% 61-80% 81-100%
26 17 18 17 13
28.6% 18.7% 19.8% 18.7% 14.2%
O-50% 51-100%
57 34
62.6% 37.4%
l-10% 1l-20% 21-30% 31-40% 41-50% 5 l-60%
A depository that has ordered 1000 documents per monthr5’. adequate
staff
to manage
Voof Libraries 15.4%
9.9%
8.8% 15.4% 3.3%
10.9% 7.7% 5.5% 9.9%
50% of the available item numbers can expect to receive approximately This is a sizable number of publications, and such a load demands
it properly.
Nevertheless,
65.6% of those answering
the survey
have no
librarian who works exclusively with documents. Of the 57 depositories (62.6%) which receive less than 5 1% of the available items, 50 of them, or 92.5% have no full-time documents librarian. Of full-time
those 34 libraries (37.4%) which receive more than 51% of the available items, 10 of them, or 29.4% have no full-time documents librarian. Many libraries depend on part-time librarians, that is, librarians who work part-time in documents. 56 of the libraries responding (60.2%) employ at least one librarian in the documents department on a part-time basis. Clerical help is, of course, an absolute necessity in a documents department. The table below indicates the average hours per week of clerical aid designated for documents department according to the percentage of item numbers received. Table 3. Average hours of clerical support per week by the percentage of item numbers received % of item numbers received
Average hours of clerical supportper week
O-20%
21-40% 41-60% 61-80% 81-100%
12.6 27.1 22.9 61.1 79.7
O-50% 51-100%
20 64.5
These figures seem again to be not extremely surprising at first glance, yet it should be noted that the difference between twenty percentage points of items received is, in real terms, about 400 documents per month.
212
BENJAMIN
SHEARER
A definite pattern emerged when documents librarians were asked how depository documents were classified. Only 3.2% of the libraries catalog all documents, while 19.4% of the libraries put all documents in SUDOCS numbers. (Two of the latter catalog their documents, but use SUDOCS numbers as the call number.) The vast majority, however, 77.4% of the libraries use a mixed system of cataloging some documents, especially periodicals and reference material, and putting the rest in SUDOCS numbers. 45.7% of the libraries maintain a documents reference section separate from the regular reference collection in which would be found material such as Index Medicus, Resources in Education, etc. The clear pattern that resulted from tallying statistics on actual practice broke down completely when the documents librarians were asked which of the three systems for classifying documents they thought would be the best system to promote the use of the collection. The figures indicate that there are supporters on every side of the debate. 25.8% of the documents librarians were of the opinion that cataloging all documents would be the best system, 32.2% believed putting all documents in SUDOCS numbers would be the best system, and 42% of the librarians preferred the mixed system. There is obviously no consensus on this question. This situation reflects the confused notions of educators, evident in library literature too, and the difference in the common experiences of librarians in varying environments. Most all documents librarians seem to enjoy the support of their directors. 88.9% felt they have a good working relationship with their director, one which would allow them to present ideas to him and expect those ideas to receive just consideration. 87.9% of the librarians answered that they felt their director was supportive of the documents collection and aware of its value. 87.8% of the documents librarians thought the reference staff was aware of and made use of the documents collection; but 63% responded that they did not have enough time to work on promulgating the use of the collection by giving lectures and tours or writing guides and pamphlets. Out of this abyss of statistics we can draw a picture in shades of gray of the most probable academic depository documents department. The department will probably be tied to another department, and without its own budget for collection development or binding. It will be staffed by a part-time librarian with 20 hours of clerical support. Less than 50% of the items available on depository will be received, and some of those that are received will be cataloged, while most will probably be put in SUDOCS numbers. The librarian in charge of documents will enjoy a cordial relationship with the director of the library and his or her support for the documents collection. On the other hand, the documents librarian will feel some frustration because there will be little time to make patrons aware of the value of the collection. The quantification of current practices and opinions allows us to identify some of the prevailing attitudes that mitigate against the rationalization of documents collections. Documents collections still seem to be viewed as free collections complete as they stand. In most cases, no money is committed to collection development, to filling in gaps or adding relevant material. The directive to depository libraries that documents should be treated like any other library material, and this includes binding, has been largely ignored. That almost half of the documents departments which are independent have no budget for collection development, and that fully 80% have no binding budget is a tribute to the old ways of thinking and anachronistic budgetary structures. Perhaps the most pernicious practice in the past has been the cataloging of depository documents considered to be interesting or important. Recently, more precision has entered into decisions on what to catalog and what to put into SUDOCS numbers, as reference and periodical titles are commonly cataloged. In the days of the not too distant past, a monograph or even one number of a series was sent to the cataloging department because it was deemed very important or of special interest. Although the mixed system is the most commonly used today, it carries with it an insipient attitudinal swing away from the documents in SUDOCS numbers, the thinking being that what is vital is what is cataloged and, therefore, appears in the public catalog. Less than half of the libraries surveyed have overcome this
Federal depository libraries on the campus: practices and prospects
213
subtle problem by maintaining a separate documents reference section which leads patrons and fellow librarians into documents and SUDOCS numbers. If documents collections are going to become truly useful and rationally organized, it is going to be the task of the documents librarians to be innovative, to create and suggest new budgetary systems, new organizational structures, and new or different methods of handling depository documents. Only through the very real character of budgetary organizational concerns can a documents department hope to achieve a definite and necessary status in the library as a whole. The documents librarian must lead administrators and coworkers away from the path of old habit. A change of consciousness brought on by a change in organizational structure is necessary if documents collections are no longer to remain stepchildren with a quasi-existence. The following suggestions are offered in the belief that, if carried out, they would lead to the recognition of a documents department as a necessary entity, heavier use of the collection as well as a rational systemization of the material, and the final breakdown of the old ways which have been institutionalized in organizational structure: 1. One system of classification should be used for all depository documents. 2. A documents reference section should be maintained separate from the regular reference collection in which would be located titles which are often considered important for reference (i.e., Index Medicus, U.S. Government Reports & Announcements Index, the Monthly Catalog, Resources in Education, etc.). 3. The documents department, whether independent or part of another department, should have an independent budget for collection development. 4. The documents department should have an independent and guaranteed binding budget. 5. Any depository that receives more than 50010of the available item numbers should have a full-time documents librarian. 6. Clerical support should be budgeted to the documents department according to the percentage of item numbers received. A minimum of twenty hours per week should be allotted for each 25% of the items received, or even better, one hour per week for every 1% of the items received. Although slightly more than 25% of the librarians answering the questionnaire thought that cataloging all documents would be preferable, only about 3% actually follow this practice. This lends credence to the fact that cataloging is a desirable, but expensive process. The cheapest system for classifying documents is clearly the SUDOCS scheme. If this system were used exclusively for depository documents, the confusion that has resulted in the past from having used a mixed system would be alleviated. Most importantly, the collection would remain intact in one place. Setting up a documents reference section, preferably near the reference department, would answer the objections of many librarians who feel that it is necessary to catalog depository reference tools in order to get them into the reference collection. For the same reason it would be desirable to display current periodicals. These suggestions help to maintain the integrity of the collection as well as to lead people into documents gently. It is not necessary that the documents department be independent. As a matter of fact, it may be preferable to include documents as a division of reference services. However, it is important that the documents department (or division) be given its own budget for collection development, binding, and clerical staff in order first to give organizational recognition to the documents department and secondly, to insure that budgetary allotments for documents are not consumed due to what may be viewed as a more pressing need by a larger omnivorous department. The recommendation that libraries receiving over 50% of the available items should employ a full-time document librarian is made for obvious reasons. Someone must be fully in charge of a collection which grows at the rate of 1000-2000 publications per month, and that person must make decisions for which he or she is responsible. This is a full time job. Equally as important is that some free time be available for a documents librarian to begin to develop the collection, to communicate with users
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about their needs, and to promulgate the use of the collection. A part-time documents librarian hardly has the time to do anything but clerical work. None of these suggestions is particularly new or novel, nor are they all together quickly and easily attained. They are offered as relatively inexpensive methods which could be utilized by documents librarians, especially in academic libraries, to eradicate once and for all the prevailing attitudes, structures and methods of the past so that documents collections can truly be brought into the light. In these days of seemingly universal budget crunches, we must seek positive measures which promise to help us give better service to library patrons, measures which will effect meaningful change at a low cost. I would venture to say that if the questionnaire used for this unpretentious study had been sent out ten years ago, the results would have been astonishingly different. We have come a long way in realizing the value of a solid documents collection, but we have yet to complete the process whereby the collections will be maintained as any other library collection. The aegis for this transformation will be the administrators and documents librarians who are willing to be dynamic, to bring about change in an enthusiastic, but rational and gentle way.
REFERENCES
-. 3. 4. 5.
See Ruth Erlandson’s paper entitled “The Organization of Federal Government Publications in Depository Libraries” in Anne Morris Boyd’s United States Government Publications, 3rd rev. edn., (Edited by Rae Elizabeth Rips). H. W. Wilson. New York (1949). pp. 570-577, for a rather thorounh treatment of the uros and cons of various classification. systems. Rebekah Harleston and Carla .I. Soffle provide a less cumbersome and more modern discussion of the same topic in their Administration of Government Documents Collections Libraries Unlimited, Littleton, Colorado (1974) pp. 25ff. Laurence Schmekebier and Ray Eastin’s Government Publications and Their Use, 2nd rev. ed. The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. (1969) avoids the problem completely, while Joe Morehead in his otherwise excellent Introduction to United States Public Documents Libraries Unlimited, Littleton, Colorado (1975) p. 73, circumlocutes the question. Doris Dale concludes her article “The Development of Classification Systems for Government Publications” Library Resources and Technical Services 13 (Fall 1969) 471-483, with some muted praise for the SUDOCS system due to its foundation on organizational structure, but she qualifies her enthusiasm by mentioning that analytical subject indexes would be desirable with such a system. A fine recent example of this kind of thinking is Robert Ballard’s “Government Publications: A Course Outline” Government Publications Review 2 (Spring 1975) 177-184. Yuri Nakata, “Toward a New Image: A Look at Federal Depository Libraries,” Wilson Library Bulletin 48 March 1974) 568-571. Catherine Reynolds, “Discovering the Government Documents Collection in Libraries,” RQ 14 (Spring 1975) 228-23 1. This figure was provided by Sandra Schelling, documents librarian at the Thomas Jefferson Library, University of Missouri at St. Louis, which is a full depository. The 2000 figure excludes congressional bills and resolutions, and represents a rough average of documents received in the last half of 1976.