Interview with Amy Entze
Amy Entze is a Library Technician Lead in Monographic Services, Database Management at the University of Washington. We met on May 6th to discuss the project to catalog the government documents collection, about overall treatment of government documents from a cataloger's perspective, and the best methods for searching for these documents. Amy has been working on the project to catalog the government documents collection since 2002. This has been a massive undertaking and is ongoing. The A-FS SuDocs are fully cataloged. Homeland Security, Department of State, and the War Department are also complete. They are currently working on the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the Department of the Navy, and Committee hearings.
As part of the project, the cataloging staff are to put SuDoc numbers back into the records as they are able , and to create original catalog records when none exist in OCLC. The staff use OCLC connexion with Millennium as their cataloging tools. They check if an OCLC record contains an 086 MARC field, and compare that number with what is on the document. For those they are unsure of they use the online MoCat, or send the document back to the GovPubs department for clarification. The majority of their cataloging project is on pre-1976 items. For original cataloging they often do not put subject headings in the records, but are trying to ensure the SuDoc numbers are entered when they can be. Since the project began, circulation records for the GovPubs collection has skyrocketed and Amy said that she understands the importance of the collection and creating access to it for users. However, the process is time consuming and expensive. She is the only full time cataloger assigned to the project. She works with a rotating staff of students, usually one or two for a short term period of time, so the progress is slow. Much of their work is in enhancing the OCLC records when they catalog items for the UW collection, as many OCLC records (especially for older items) are minimalist or incomplete.
I asked Amy if they check the CGP or have a process of communicating to GPO about items that aren’t listed in the CGP. She said that the focus is not on GPO and the CGP. The focus is on creating access to the UW collections. Checking CGP is another step they have not considered because of resources, and it is up to the staff in GovPubs to work with GPO and notify them of any updates to the CGP. I asked what GPO could do to assist in creating an easy channel of communication to provide incentive for catalogers to work with them in sharing records and checking for ‘fugitives’ while doing their work. She said collaboration is great, but there is a balance between manpower and time and what is most useful to users. She said she understand the importance of providing access to these collections, and among government documents librarians the value is known, but further out of the circle of the people who work with them the value may not be seen. She did stress that within UW Libraries, and Monographic Services Division management, as well as Government Publications staff and management at UW have "deemed the project of enough importance to advocate for it and to keep it moving forward despite challenging budgetary issues. It is a project that is constantly weighed and evaluated against those budgetary restrictions, and rightfully so, but so far the project has been deemed useful and relevant, and so support has continued to be forthcoming from the decision makers."
I explained to Amy the processes I've undertaken to figure out the best practices for approaching massive government documents collections with the intention of evaluating them for fugitive documents. She said that there is not a 'best' way to go about it. The collections are so vast and spread out, with non-standard cataloging methods and access points, that any approach taken could be considered the 'best' way to go about it. A person could focus on just one section of the collection, one department, one SuDoc stem and still spend hours going piece by piece inventorying the collection to find what they are looking for. The processes I've discovered through my research are just some of the ways to go about it. Each cataloger, librarian, anyone working with the documents has a particular view of the picture. They are focused on their part, sometimes without seeing the whole picture. As you place the views together side by side, the whole picture begins to form, but there will always be gaps. She led me to conclude that any way a person decides to start a search for these 'fugitives' is a good way, because any start will lead them through diverse collections of materials and will eventually find results.
As part of the project, the cataloging staff are to put SuDoc numbers back into the records as they are able , and to create original catalog records when none exist in OCLC. The staff use OCLC connexion with Millennium as their cataloging tools. They check if an OCLC record contains an 086 MARC field, and compare that number with what is on the document. For those they are unsure of they use the online MoCat, or send the document back to the GovPubs department for clarification. The majority of their cataloging project is on pre-1976 items. For original cataloging they often do not put subject headings in the records, but are trying to ensure the SuDoc numbers are entered when they can be. Since the project began, circulation records for the GovPubs collection has skyrocketed and Amy said that she understands the importance of the collection and creating access to it for users. However, the process is time consuming and expensive. She is the only full time cataloger assigned to the project. She works with a rotating staff of students, usually one or two for a short term period of time, so the progress is slow. Much of their work is in enhancing the OCLC records when they catalog items for the UW collection, as many OCLC records (especially for older items) are minimalist or incomplete.
I asked Amy if they check the CGP or have a process of communicating to GPO about items that aren’t listed in the CGP. She said that the focus is not on GPO and the CGP. The focus is on creating access to the UW collections. Checking CGP is another step they have not considered because of resources, and it is up to the staff in GovPubs to work with GPO and notify them of any updates to the CGP. I asked what GPO could do to assist in creating an easy channel of communication to provide incentive for catalogers to work with them in sharing records and checking for ‘fugitives’ while doing their work. She said collaboration is great, but there is a balance between manpower and time and what is most useful to users. She said she understand the importance of providing access to these collections, and among government documents librarians the value is known, but further out of the circle of the people who work with them the value may not be seen. She did stress that within UW Libraries, and Monographic Services Division management, as well as Government Publications staff and management at UW have "deemed the project of enough importance to advocate for it and to keep it moving forward despite challenging budgetary issues. It is a project that is constantly weighed and evaluated against those budgetary restrictions, and rightfully so, but so far the project has been deemed useful and relevant, and so support has continued to be forthcoming from the decision makers."
I explained to Amy the processes I've undertaken to figure out the best practices for approaching massive government documents collections with the intention of evaluating them for fugitive documents. She said that there is not a 'best' way to go about it. The collections are so vast and spread out, with non-standard cataloging methods and access points, that any approach taken could be considered the 'best' way to go about it. A person could focus on just one section of the collection, one department, one SuDoc stem and still spend hours going piece by piece inventorying the collection to find what they are looking for. The processes I've discovered through my research are just some of the ways to go about it. Each cataloger, librarian, anyone working with the documents has a particular view of the picture. They are focused on their part, sometimes without seeing the whole picture. As you place the views together side by side, the whole picture begins to form, but there will always be gaps. She led me to conclude that any way a person decides to start a search for these 'fugitives' is a good way, because any start will lead them through diverse collections of materials and will eventually find results.