Report for Week 1 - March 28 to April 1
To: Robin Haun-mohamed
From: Cathy Zegelin
CC: Ingrid Reyes-Arias
Date: 4/1/2011
Re: Weekly Progress Report
I’ve focused my first week of my directed fieldwork project on setting up meetings with local government documents librarians, tours of local collections, and researching the history of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) to understand the scope of the project and plan my process for the next ten weeks.
On March 18th I had a conference call with Kathryn Bayer, Mark Ames, and Kristina Bobe at the Government Printing Office (GPO) to learn about the relationship between administrators of the FDLP and the coordinators at Federal Depository Libraries (FDLs). I learned that the administration of the FDLP at the FDLs varies greatly across the system of 1,220 FDLs. In order to create a process that would be applicable to depository programs across the country I need to create an easily administered process that will require the least amount of effort to implement and requires minimal staff and minimal hours to search for ‘fugitive documents’. The nature of the FDLP program, cost of cultivating collections, and distribution channels of government materials makes cultivating collections of federal documents within organizations outside of the designation as an FDL unlikely, so my focus will be limited to libraries that are currently, or were previously designated as FDLs. As the primary focus of document search is materials dated before 1976, I will narrow the focus to FDLs that were part of the program prior to 1976.
The University of Washington (UW) has been a ‘selective’ depository for over 100 years and will be the case model for creating the process of evaluating a collection in search of ‘fugitive’ documents. I met with Cass Hartnett on March 29th to tour the UW government documents collection, discuss the scope, and to learn about the management of the FDL documents in the UW libraries. Cass has agreed to meet with me a few times over the quarter to answer questions about the UW collection and provide guidance on the project for UW collection related questions. Cass pointed me to some areas of the collection in which I can start my search. The UW owns the entire RedEx Non-Depository Collection printed in microprint format. We used the printed 1955 MoCat to find a document marked as published by GPO but not distributed through the FDLP (no black dot and item number, a process that began in the printed MoCat in 1943), and found the item in the collection of RedEx cards. We used a Universal Microprint reader to check the card for the item we found so that I could understand the process of searching through the MoCat, finding the material in the stacks, and viewing it on the equipment. The Microprint machine is not the best tool to use for viewing these materials. The Microfiche readers in the Newspaper department are capable of reading these cards, although viewing is difficult because the size of the tray is not designed for the size of the cards. However, these machines are newer, are capable of digital scanning, and will provide a better display for examining the cards in this collection than the analog microprint viewer.
Cass also explained the call numbering system for items that arrived without a designated SuDoc number (a classification scheme developed by Adelaide Hasse from 1985-1903). These documents were given a SuDoc number by the librarians, based on the SuDoc system, and the call number ends with an X after the SuDoc stem. We walked through the stacks to find a section of these documents as an example and discovered an entire shelf in ES 3.6/18 with call numbers ending in X. I plan to do a shelf walk through the stacks to conduct a visual search for these materials. I can use the guide to US Publications (2011) available in the reference section to cross reference the SuDoc stem with the corresponding agency to gain an understanding the agency referenced and create a list of agencies that produced documents the library collected that may not be in the FDLP program.
There are many federal agencies with regional offices in the Puget Sound region. I began compiling a list of these agencies to check the document collection in the stacks and cross reference these agencies in the FDLP catalogs to see if there are regionally produced documents that were collected by the library, but not distributed through the FDLP.
I have set up meetings with Peggy Jarrett in the Gallager Law Library to tour the FDLP collection and speak to her about the selections and collection management process for these documents in her library. We will meet on April 20th at 10am. I have also set up a meeting with Blynne Oliviary in Special Collections to talk about the older government documents housed in the UW collection, and the process of cataloging and providing access to the older collections of government documents. We will meet on May 11th at 2pm.
Next week I plan to focus on learning to use the online MoCat, the Catalog of Government Publications, and searching OCLC for records. I will start my shelf walk through the stacks looking for the call numbers, and try to develop a way for searching the online UW catalog for these call numbers. I will continue to conduct research into the early management of the FDLP program and will work on setting up an interview and tour of the Washington State Library collection to incorporate elements of the process that would apply to evaluating a regional collection.
From: Cathy Zegelin
CC: Ingrid Reyes-Arias
Date: 4/1/2011
Re: Weekly Progress Report
I’ve focused my first week of my directed fieldwork project on setting up meetings with local government documents librarians, tours of local collections, and researching the history of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) to understand the scope of the project and plan my process for the next ten weeks.
On March 18th I had a conference call with Kathryn Bayer, Mark Ames, and Kristina Bobe at the Government Printing Office (GPO) to learn about the relationship between administrators of the FDLP and the coordinators at Federal Depository Libraries (FDLs). I learned that the administration of the FDLP at the FDLs varies greatly across the system of 1,220 FDLs. In order to create a process that would be applicable to depository programs across the country I need to create an easily administered process that will require the least amount of effort to implement and requires minimal staff and minimal hours to search for ‘fugitive documents’. The nature of the FDLP program, cost of cultivating collections, and distribution channels of government materials makes cultivating collections of federal documents within organizations outside of the designation as an FDL unlikely, so my focus will be limited to libraries that are currently, or were previously designated as FDLs. As the primary focus of document search is materials dated before 1976, I will narrow the focus to FDLs that were part of the program prior to 1976.
The University of Washington (UW) has been a ‘selective’ depository for over 100 years and will be the case model for creating the process of evaluating a collection in search of ‘fugitive’ documents. I met with Cass Hartnett on March 29th to tour the UW government documents collection, discuss the scope, and to learn about the management of the FDL documents in the UW libraries. Cass has agreed to meet with me a few times over the quarter to answer questions about the UW collection and provide guidance on the project for UW collection related questions. Cass pointed me to some areas of the collection in which I can start my search. The UW owns the entire RedEx Non-Depository Collection printed in microprint format. We used the printed 1955 MoCat to find a document marked as published by GPO but not distributed through the FDLP (no black dot and item number, a process that began in the printed MoCat in 1943), and found the item in the collection of RedEx cards. We used a Universal Microprint reader to check the card for the item we found so that I could understand the process of searching through the MoCat, finding the material in the stacks, and viewing it on the equipment. The Microprint machine is not the best tool to use for viewing these materials. The Microfiche readers in the Newspaper department are capable of reading these cards, although viewing is difficult because the size of the tray is not designed for the size of the cards. However, these machines are newer, are capable of digital scanning, and will provide a better display for examining the cards in this collection than the analog microprint viewer.
Cass also explained the call numbering system for items that arrived without a designated SuDoc number (a classification scheme developed by Adelaide Hasse from 1985-1903). These documents were given a SuDoc number by the librarians, based on the SuDoc system, and the call number ends with an X after the SuDoc stem. We walked through the stacks to find a section of these documents as an example and discovered an entire shelf in ES 3.6/18 with call numbers ending in X. I plan to do a shelf walk through the stacks to conduct a visual search for these materials. I can use the guide to US Publications (2011) available in the reference section to cross reference the SuDoc stem with the corresponding agency to gain an understanding the agency referenced and create a list of agencies that produced documents the library collected that may not be in the FDLP program.
There are many federal agencies with regional offices in the Puget Sound region. I began compiling a list of these agencies to check the document collection in the stacks and cross reference these agencies in the FDLP catalogs to see if there are regionally produced documents that were collected by the library, but not distributed through the FDLP.
I have set up meetings with Peggy Jarrett in the Gallager Law Library to tour the FDLP collection and speak to her about the selections and collection management process for these documents in her library. We will meet on April 20th at 10am. I have also set up a meeting with Blynne Oliviary in Special Collections to talk about the older government documents housed in the UW collection, and the process of cataloging and providing access to the older collections of government documents. We will meet on May 11th at 2pm.
Next week I plan to focus on learning to use the online MoCat, the Catalog of Government Publications, and searching OCLC for records. I will start my shelf walk through the stacks looking for the call numbers, and try to develop a way for searching the online UW catalog for these call numbers. I will continue to conduct research into the early management of the FDLP program and will work on setting up an interview and tour of the Washington State Library collection to incorporate elements of the process that would apply to evaluating a regional collection.