DSP & Switching from CODOC to LC

Question

This question is with regard to the increasing trend in the integration of government documents into a library's main collection.

One concern that the Depository Services Program (DSP) has concerning this change in the management of government documents collections is that the change may result in a shift of responsibility for the collection from a dedicated government documents librarian to a number of subject specialist librarians who may or may not be fully aware of the responsibilities that a Full Depository library has for the material received from the Depository Services Program. There are at least two areas of concern.

One is the requirement to catalogue all material received from the DSP. In some libraries, this requirement may be at odds with cataloguing policies and procedures for general collections with the result that publications judged to be ephemera such as brochures and pamphlets, for example, may not be catalogued at all. This inevitably diminishes public access and long term preservation to and for these publications which together are the primary intent of the partnership between the DSP and Full Depository Libraries (FDL). While I have been told that some Technical Services policies do not consider brochures and pamphlets worthy of being catalogued or even retained, in our view, these types of publications often contain important information for the public in a condensed form and as I have had occasion to observe, libraries that retain collections of these types of publications often have thereby, a very useful capsule history of government programs, services or activities for subject area treated by them. In any case, under the existing agreement with the DSP, FDL's are required to retain these publications and catalogue them (although "catalogue" is not the word used in the guideline).

A second concern is that with responsibility for DSP material distributed to any number of authorities within the library, instead of centralized under the authority of a government documents specialist, DSP Retention Guidelines may not be adhered to. Essentially, FDL's are required to retain all DSP material received unless an item is replaced by a newer edition or an alternate format.

My question to FDL's that have embarked on the integration of their government documents collections would be: "With DSP publications integrated into general collections, how do your bibliographic control systems ensure that DSP material will be catalogued and not be de-accessioned in a manner that would violate the terms and conditions entered into with the DSP"?

Responses

Our intention, if we go ahead with the integration, is to continue to have dedicated government publications librarians. We will have to give up a measure of control, for example, in cataloguing where we will no longer directly supervise the work. However, we do catalogue all materials received, including pamphlets - any plan we come with would have to include these - and that won't change. Our collection as a whole isn't weeded though some material may be sent to offsite storage.

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In response to your question, we do indicate in our catalogue records that an item was received via the DSP. As well, we use a stamp labelled "DSP" on the items, whether they are paper, microform, diskette, etc. to indicate that the item came to us via the DSP. The stamp usually appears on the outside of the item. We decided to do this so that if there were ever any weeding projects done by the subject librarians that they would know to leave the DSP items alone. I would then need to be consulted on whether or not an item could be removed and, of course, would use the DSP retention guidelines to make any decisions. If I recall correctly, we have not weeded any DSP items from the collection unless they have been replaced by another format, eg. microform. Even then, we tend to keep everything.

We still have a librarian responsible for Government Publications (myself) and I also have overall responsibility for the depository collection despite the integration of the collection and the mainstreaming of the technical processes, like acquisitions and cataloguing. Pamphlets and brochures are catalogued, classified and shelved.

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A liaison librarian will continue to be responsible for Canadian government documents and this includes sorting the material for the LC or CODOC collection [only monographs will go into our LC collection]. Pamphlets and brochures are still coded as they do not meet the guidelines for circulation from the LC collection.

The library also continues to have a full time government documents library assistant responsible for receiving government publications, checkin for serials/series and ordering of additional copies.

All government publications have a fixed field assignment and with the introduction of the library's new Endeca catalogue, a search, limited to government publications will provide both the CODOC and Library of Congress items.

A major special project this summer is to integrate the historical government publications and the main CODOC collection into one
sequence. Government publications is a valuable high use collection and the library's goal is to ensure ease of access.