Report for Week 4 - April 18 to 22
To: Robin Haun-Mohamed
From: Cathy Zegelin
CC: Ingrid Reyes-Arias
Date: 4/27/2011
Re: Status Update Week 4
Hours worked:
4/20 – 2.5; Meeting with Peggy Jarrett, compose notes and research 10:00 – 12:30
4/20 – 2.5; Work on draft of final documents, pull all research together to find gaps 2:30 - 5pm
4/22 – 5; work on draft documents; 10:00am – 12:30pm, 2:30pm-5pm
Week 4: 10 hours
Total: 49 hours
This week I began drafting the final documents for the project; the overview of the University of Washington Government Documents collection, and the process instructions for how to evaluate a collection based on my research at the UW. I also met with Peggy Jarrett, the documents librarian at Gallagher Law Library on the UW campus to talk about the collection and treatment of government documents within that library.
The Gallagher Law library is administratively separate from the UW Libraries system. As a requirement of accreditation, law schools must maintain a law library. Predominantly law libraries within universities will be administrated by the law school, separate from the other libraries on campus. In situations where the law library is not administratively separate, the director of the library will generally report to the dean of the law school as well as the dean of the libraries. Gallagher law library has a designation as a selective federal depository library, under the law library program which freed up the congressional designation for another library in the area to become an FDL. Gallagher selects about 9% of documents distributed through the FDL program. Because the library is located in such close proximity to Suzzallo and the general government documents collection, Gallagher has the opportunity to be discerning in collection development and selection, since so many resources are close at hand to students. Many of the databases accessible in Gallagher are administered by the law library, but they do share some of the cost to gain access to campus wide databases such as Lexis Academic and the ReadEx congressional set online.
Since I am focused on documents dated pre-1976 I asked about historical sections of the collection. Gallagher is fortunate to have such a large space that they have the ability to keep everything, and they do. The majority of this collection I would not think is ‘fugitive’ to the FDLP because they were received from the FDL program or are purchased from commercial vendors (such as annotated sets of the US Code). The commercial products are not produced by government agencies, so they would not be included in the CGP, and the items distributed through the FDL program should be known to GPO. While I do not think I will discover many documents that would be fugitive in the legacy collection, Peggy provided some insight into how born digital items are collected, and the treatment of documents in the Gallagher collection.
The entire collection in Gallagher is open to the public. Anyone with an ID can get a barcode to use the computers or use the collection. Everything in the library is classified using LC, however the bibliographic records include a note in the metadata marking it as a document from the FDLP or as a government document. If ever requested the librarians can cull a list from their database to show all of the documents in the collection that came from the FDLP. While the SuDoc number or designation may not be seen in the public display of the record, it is assumed users are not concerned with the classification. They want access to the information, in whatever format, and only need to find it on the shelf, however the library chooses to provide access to it. The fact that the librarians in the law library note the Marc record would make searching the collection to know what is there much easier than searching other UW collections where SuDoc and FDL designation is stripped from the record in most cataloging processes.
Peggy also spoke about the handling of born digital documents. She said that if she finds something online to add to the collection, she does not mark it as a government document or check the CGP to see if it has been cataloged because she would not consider is as part of the FDLP. It didn’t come from GPO, and checking the CGP is another step that isn’t always taken. She uses online aggregators such as www.bespacific.com to discover resources. If there are items that would be of interest in the collection she sends the document to the UW copy center to have a paper copy created. The bibliographic record will then contain a call number for the print item with a PURL to the online resource. The site bespacific contains a lot of great resources, and Peggy did not know where the site manager gets the information, but it might be worth checking into if the information is of interest to the FDLP and may be contained in many FDLs but not listed in the CGP.
Gallagher law library does not subscribe to MARCIVE because of the cost of subscribing. The library director wants to be discerning about how records are entered into the catalog and prefers to have the technical services librarians on staff manage the record input, but funding is a large part of the decision to not subscribe. Peggy mentioned that without access to that it is hard to know how to check what they receive from outside sources against the distribution from the FDLP without going through the process of remembering to check the CGP.
I am going to spend the next week or two working on the drafts and continuing researching the collection. I am setting up a time to sit with Cass to work out search queries in the ILS to see if there is an easier way to research the Suzzallo collection. I should have the drafts just about ready by the week of May 11th. I am meeting with Blynne Oliviery in special collections to talk about the legacy collection of government documents. I will finish up the draft after this meeting and send it to you for review the following week.
From: Cathy Zegelin
CC: Ingrid Reyes-Arias
Date: 4/27/2011
Re: Status Update Week 4
Hours worked:
4/20 – 2.5; Meeting with Peggy Jarrett, compose notes and research 10:00 – 12:30
4/20 – 2.5; Work on draft of final documents, pull all research together to find gaps 2:30 - 5pm
4/22 – 5; work on draft documents; 10:00am – 12:30pm, 2:30pm-5pm
Week 4: 10 hours
Total: 49 hours
This week I began drafting the final documents for the project; the overview of the University of Washington Government Documents collection, and the process instructions for how to evaluate a collection based on my research at the UW. I also met with Peggy Jarrett, the documents librarian at Gallagher Law Library on the UW campus to talk about the collection and treatment of government documents within that library.
The Gallagher Law library is administratively separate from the UW Libraries system. As a requirement of accreditation, law schools must maintain a law library. Predominantly law libraries within universities will be administrated by the law school, separate from the other libraries on campus. In situations where the law library is not administratively separate, the director of the library will generally report to the dean of the law school as well as the dean of the libraries. Gallagher law library has a designation as a selective federal depository library, under the law library program which freed up the congressional designation for another library in the area to become an FDL. Gallagher selects about 9% of documents distributed through the FDL program. Because the library is located in such close proximity to Suzzallo and the general government documents collection, Gallagher has the opportunity to be discerning in collection development and selection, since so many resources are close at hand to students. Many of the databases accessible in Gallagher are administered by the law library, but they do share some of the cost to gain access to campus wide databases such as Lexis Academic and the ReadEx congressional set online.
Since I am focused on documents dated pre-1976 I asked about historical sections of the collection. Gallagher is fortunate to have such a large space that they have the ability to keep everything, and they do. The majority of this collection I would not think is ‘fugitive’ to the FDLP because they were received from the FDL program or are purchased from commercial vendors (such as annotated sets of the US Code). The commercial products are not produced by government agencies, so they would not be included in the CGP, and the items distributed through the FDL program should be known to GPO. While I do not think I will discover many documents that would be fugitive in the legacy collection, Peggy provided some insight into how born digital items are collected, and the treatment of documents in the Gallagher collection.
The entire collection in Gallagher is open to the public. Anyone with an ID can get a barcode to use the computers or use the collection. Everything in the library is classified using LC, however the bibliographic records include a note in the metadata marking it as a document from the FDLP or as a government document. If ever requested the librarians can cull a list from their database to show all of the documents in the collection that came from the FDLP. While the SuDoc number or designation may not be seen in the public display of the record, it is assumed users are not concerned with the classification. They want access to the information, in whatever format, and only need to find it on the shelf, however the library chooses to provide access to it. The fact that the librarians in the law library note the Marc record would make searching the collection to know what is there much easier than searching other UW collections where SuDoc and FDL designation is stripped from the record in most cataloging processes.
Peggy also spoke about the handling of born digital documents. She said that if she finds something online to add to the collection, she does not mark it as a government document or check the CGP to see if it has been cataloged because she would not consider is as part of the FDLP. It didn’t come from GPO, and checking the CGP is another step that isn’t always taken. She uses online aggregators such as www.bespacific.com to discover resources. If there are items that would be of interest in the collection she sends the document to the UW copy center to have a paper copy created. The bibliographic record will then contain a call number for the print item with a PURL to the online resource. The site bespacific contains a lot of great resources, and Peggy did not know where the site manager gets the information, but it might be worth checking into if the information is of interest to the FDLP and may be contained in many FDLs but not listed in the CGP.
Gallagher law library does not subscribe to MARCIVE because of the cost of subscribing. The library director wants to be discerning about how records are entered into the catalog and prefers to have the technical services librarians on staff manage the record input, but funding is a large part of the decision to not subscribe. Peggy mentioned that without access to that it is hard to know how to check what they receive from outside sources against the distribution from the FDLP without going through the process of remembering to check the CGP.
I am going to spend the next week or two working on the drafts and continuing researching the collection. I am setting up a time to sit with Cass to work out search queries in the ILS to see if there is an easier way to research the Suzzallo collection. I should have the drafts just about ready by the week of May 11th. I am meeting with Blynne Oliviery in special collections to talk about the legacy collection of government documents. I will finish up the draft after this meeting and send it to you for review the following week.