College and Research Libraries University Libraries and Government Publications: A Survey By G E O R G E CALDWELL HO W S H O U L D A U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R Y treat its government publications? Some argue for a separate collection.1 Others insist that documents should be placed in the library's general collection cataloged like other publications.2 A third group concludes either system will work and that there are no grounds for preferring one arrangement to another.3 At the University of Kansas Library, a survey was made of other university libraries' methods of handling docu- ments. Probably the thing that surprised us most was the clear majority which contended that a separate collection of government publications produces a su- perior quality of bibliographical service. More division of opinion had been ex- pected, in view of the past controversy on the matter. Our question was worded as follows: "Do you feel that a separate collection of government publications, in comparison with a collection in which they are integrated into the regular col- lection, tends to result in: (a) Higher quality of bibliographical service by the library, (b) Inferior quality of biblio- graphical service by the library, (c) No great difference in quality of bibliograph- ical service, (d) Don't know." T h e pros and cons were voted as follows: higher 15; lower, 1. Four indicated that there was no great difference, and three, that 1 Mahala Saville, "Government Publications—What Shall W e Do with T h e m ? " Library Journal, L X V ( 1 9 4 0 ) , 681-84. 2 Andrew D. Osborn, Serial Publications; Their Place and Treatment in Libraries (Chicago: A L A , 1 9 5 5 ) , pp. 27-28, 186. 3 Mary Brown Humphrey, "Obstacles and Opportun- ities in Specialized Treatment of Federal Depository Documents," CRL, X I I ( 1 9 5 1 ) , 4 5 ; Violet Abbott Cabeen and C. Donald Cook, "Organization of Serials and Documents," Library Trends. I I ( 1 9 5 3 ) , 202. 30 Mr. Caldwell is Documents Librarian, University of Kansas. they did not know. Thus, 65 per cent of the respondents indicated that a separate collection produced a higher quality of bibliographical service, whereas only 4 per cent thought it produced a lower quality. In practice, a separate documents col- lection usually means many documents are not cataloged, for economic and other reasons. Therefore, the following question was asked (the number of re- sponses to each part of the question is given in parentheses): If government publications are in a separate collection and are not entered in the main public catalog, do you feel this is: (3) A positive advantage. (15) Has disadvantages, but these are compensated for by the advan- tages of a separate collection. (2) Not a serious omission. (3) Serious omission for undergradu- ates. (5) Serious omission for graduate stu- dents, faculty, and researchers. (5) Serious omission for library staff. T h e raw numbers above can be some- what misleading, since several librarians checked more than one statement. In terms of the actual number of librarians, 18 checked one of the first three state- ments, while only five checked the last three. Thus on this question more than three-fourths of the respondents tended C O L L E G E A N D R E S E A R C H L I B R A R I E S to favor the separate collection, com- pared with less than one-fourth who had serious misgivings. T h e librarians were asked how satis- fied they were with their own system for handling government publications and whether they wished for any changes. In reply, most of the librarians appeared satisfied with what they had, although many qualified their satisfaction by not- ing improvements which could be made or by explaining that their existing situa- tion limited the changes which could be made. T h e fact that people can be satis- fied with various systems, of course, does not mean that one system is superior to another. N A T U R E O F T H E S U R V E Y What kind of survey was this? On what sort of sample was it based? T h e survey developed as part of a gen- eral reappraisal of the organization of government publications at the Univer- sity of Kansas, which in turn was based on the problem of future building plans. Other library surveys on the documents problem had been made with helpful results, notably those by Eastin4 and Jackson.® But they did not deal with some of the questions in which we were especially interested. Questionnaires were sent to 31 mem- bers of the Association of Research Li- braries in April 1958, addressing them to the Documents Librarian at each school. Twenty-three libraries (75 per cent) re- turned the questionnaire.6 Admittedly, the sample is small. This does not necessarily mean, however, that * R. B. Eastin, " L e t ' s U s e Public D o c u m e n t s ! " Library Journal, L X X I I I ( 1 9 4 8 ) , 1SS4-S8. 1 Isabel H. Jackson, "Advantages and Disadvantages of a Subject System of Classification as Key to a Depository Collection," CRL, X I I ( 1 9 5 1 ) , 42-45. • The libraries in our sample were from the following universities: California, Chicago, Cincinnati, Colorado. Cornell, Indiana, Iowa, Iowa State, Joint University Libraries, Kentucky, Louisiana State. Minnesota, Mis- souri, Nprth Carolina, Ohio State, Rutgers, Stanford, Texas, U C L A , Virginia, Washington, Washington of St. Louis, and Wisconsin. ( W e also queried Oklahoma State, since they have one of the strong documents collections in this area, but their reply is not tabulated in these returns). it is insignificant. T h e membership roster of the A R L represents a group of prom- inent libraries which were especially in- terested in organizing materials for re- search. Since we were concerned with libraries problems similar to those at Kansas, we omitted in general the very largest and the most specialized libraries. Within these limitations, however, we tried to înclude most of the libraries on the list, to balance the sample. This gave us a group of thirty-one libraries, twenty- three of which returned our question- naire. Most of the libraries in our sample have collections of 750,000 to 1,000,000 volumes, with a handful of both larger and smaller ones. Most of them also serve from one thousand to three thousand graduate students, with a few either larger or smaller. It may be objected that the sample is biased because most of the question- naires were answered by documents or reference librarians, who may tend to have a particular point of view about documents, resulting from the nature of their work. This objection is valid up to a point, and their opinions should obvi- ously be supplemented by those of other groups affected by documents. However, the opinions of documents librarians also deserve a certain special weight, since as specialists, they are the staff members most likely to have first-hand familiarity with the actual problems encountered in trying to do research in government publications. Moreover, the survey opin- ions were confirmed to a considerable degree by other investigations conducted on the Kansas campus. Faculty members in the departments which use documents most heavily and regularly—Political Sci- ence, History, and Economics—tended to favor a separate collection. T h e questionnaires indicated that eight libraries had completely separate collections of government publications, four had predominantly separate collec- tions, six handled most governments publications like any other publications, J A N U A R Y 1 9 6 1 31 and five libraries had quite mixed sys- tems. Hence about three-fourths of these libraries give some sort of separate or special treatment to documents, and only about one-fourth treat documents com- pletely like other publications. These figures correspond roughly to those in the Eastin and Jackson surveys, which indicates that our sample is probably representative. Our figures also hint strongly that in spite of the oft-expressed desire to treat government publications like any other publications and the de- sire for single catalogs and unified collec- tions, there are likely strong practical reasons which cause so many of these research libraries to give their documents special treatment. In trying to evaluate the factors for and against each type of documents or- ganization, it seems especially pertinent to consider the views of two libraries that had had experience with both main types of documents organization. In both cases, the librarians answering the question- naire volunteered that after experience with documents under both controls, they preferred the separate collection. These conclusions are confirmed by oth- ers7 who have known both main types of documents organization and among fac- ulty on the Kansas campus. N O N - F E D E R A L D O C U M E N T S A N D S E P A R A T E C O L L E C T I O N S T h e arguments in the literature for separate collections apply most strongly to federal documents, where a mass of complicated and unwieldy material can be handled efficiently by a system of printed catalogs and classification. But for all the other types of government publications—especially state, local and foreign—we had doubts about whether separate uncataloged collections were as necessary or worked as well. This prob- 7 William F . B a r r , "Advantages and Disadvantages of the Superintendent of Documents Classification as a K e y to a Depository Collection," CRL, X I I ( 1 9 5 1 ) , 4 2 ; Edmon Low, Government Documents at Okla- homa A . & M . , " Serial Slants, V I I ( 1 9 5 6 ) , 17. lem has not been discussed in any detail in the literature, where most attention has centered primarily on federal and United Nations documents. So in the second half of our questionnaire, we asked about the handling of separate collections for non-federal documents. This part of our questionnaire was an- swered by almost all the librarians who had separate or partially separate collec- tions—16 of the 17. T h e opinion ran as follows: Favor state and local documents in separate collection: Yes, 12. No, 4. Favor foreign documents in separate collection: Yes, 12. No, 4. Favor United Nations documents in separate collection: Yes, 15. No, 1. Thus, the librarians with separate col- lections for federal documents tended strongly to that other types of documents should also be separate from the library's general collection. Further, most of them stated the non-federal documents should not only be separate from the general collection, but also together with the federal documents. A R R A N G E M E N T O F N O N - F E D E R A L D O C U M E N T S T h e next problem on our minds was how to arrange the non-federal docu- ments if we established a separate collec- tion. Although the numbering system for U. S. and U. N. publications could be definite, this was not so for foreign, state and local documents. So we asked the librarians presiding over separate collec- tions how they proceeded. T h e most common single pattern in these separate collections was to arrange non-federal documents alphabetically lay area, agency, and title. However, the ap- proach varied according to how distinct the documents collection was and which type of document was being shelved. Over half of the libraries used an al- phabetical arrangement, either in whole or in part, for state documents. Only two 32 C O L L E G E A N D R E S E A R C H L I B R A R I E S libraries were using the Swank system for state documents, although two others were switching to it. With foreign docu- ments, the picture was fairly evenly di- vided between alphabetical vs. LC or Dewey. With UN documents, the leading arrangement was the UN classification scheme. There were not enough specific references to local documents to make it clear how many of the libraries actually had significant collections of them. How satisfied were the librarians sep- arate collections with their systems for non-federal documents? Because of the variety of organization used and the size of our sample, our data were too scat- tered and limited for precise conclusions. About the only group large enough to show anything were the eight libraries which were using or had used the al- phabetical area-agency-title arrangement. Five libraries had found it satisfactory, but three had not. One librarian consid- ered this arrangement as too confusing and time-consuming for shelving, one was converting to the Swank schedules, and another was converting the docu- ments of its own state to the LC system. C A T A L O G I N G O F N O N - F E D E R A L D O C U M E N T S We also wanted to know how these separate collections managed the catalog- ing of non-federal documents. So we in- quired, "Are your non-federal documents given full cataloging (subject, title, au- thor) in either a special card catalog or in the library's main card catalog? Is your system satisfactory?" T h e great bulk of the separate collec- tions responding to this particular ques- tion, 8 out of 12, said they did not fully catalog non-federal documents. Of these, two were satisfied. Another was dissatis- fied, and one said, quite significantly, that if they had more staff and funds, a card catalog of state and foreign docu- ments would be useful because of the uneven coverage in printed indexes. Another thing that bothered us about separate uncataloged collections of gov- ernment publications was a mental im- age of students and faculty having to wade through dozens of different cata- logs to cover the field and find what they wanted. So we asked the librarians of sep- arate collections about this, as follows: " I f you do not fully catalog your non- federal documents, do your patrons have to learn to use several printed catalogs— Monthly Catalog of U. S. Government Publications, Monthly Checklist of State Publications, U. N. Documents Index, etc.—in order to gain access to the pub- lications? Is this satisfactory?" T o our surprise, this seemed hardly a serious problem at all in the experience of these librarians; 12 of them thought this arrangement worked out satisfacto- rily, only one equivocated with a "not entirely." T h e consensus was that many of their patrons were faculty, research personnel, and graduate students, who learned quickly from instruction. C O N C L U S I O N After studying the available literature, conducting this survey, visiting other li- braries, canvassing local faculty and stu- dent opinion, and discussing the problem among ourselves, we have decided to work toward a separate centralized col- lection of government publications at the University of Kansas Library, when building additions permit. Our plan is to arrange most new U. S. government pub- lications in the documents section by the Superintendent of Documents classifica- tion. Most U. S. documents in the main library already classified by Dewey will probably be moved into the documents section and kept under Dewey until time permits the documents staff to convert them to the Superintendent of Docu- ments classification. However, because of a strong divisional branch library system, most scientific documents will probably continue to go to the science libraries and be cataloged in the main catalog and the science libraries' catalogs. Our col- lection of printed UN documents will J A N U A R Y 1 9 6 1 33 remain in the documents section, un- cataloged for the most part, arranged by UN documents symbols and sales num- bers. Because of the incomplete coverage in printed indexes, our library catalogers will continue to catalog and classify Kan- sas and foreign government publications, but most of these will probably be housed in the documents section. We hope, by taking the foregoing steps, to make the complex mass of government publications easier for faculty and stu- dents to get at, especially on the graduate and serious research level where these difficult materials are needed in quantity. We also believe this move will enable the library to service and control documents more efficiently and economically. T A U B E R TO A U S T R A L I A ON P R O J E C T Dr. Maurice F. Tauber, Melvil Dewey professor of library service at Columbia University and editor of CRL, will spend March through August in Australia on a Fulbright assignment to assist in a study of the resources of the research libraries of the country. His address will be the Commonwealth National Library, Canberra, Australia. On his way to Australia during February he will visit libraries in Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore. He will return in September by way of Europe. Dur- ing his absence please address any inquiries regarding articles or other matters re- lating to CRL to his office at Columbia University and they will be directed to the individuals who will carry on the editing of the magazine while he is away. Manuals for Reference Departments (Continued from page 20) Checking in Aids: List of Foreign Publishing Terms List of the Months in French, Ger- man, Italian, Portugese and Span- ish Roman Numerals Listing Missing Periodicals Preparing Periodicals for Binding Preparing Periodicals for Cardboard Covers Making New Periodical Subscription Records Receiving Bound Periodicals from Cata- loging Circulating Periodicals Reference Techniques Records: Attendance Record Loan Records: T o Faculty and Staff T o other Departments in the Library T o other Colleges and Universities (Interlibrary Loan) T o the Bindery 34 T o Carrells and Studies Recalling Periodicals or Books Loaned to the University Staff J . S P E C I A L P R O C E D U R E S Mississippi Agricultural Experiment Sta- tion and Mississippi Agricultural Exten- sion Service Card Catalog Bibliography of State Experiment Station Publications K . M I S C E L L A N E O U S Elevator Booklift Telephone Supplies L . I N T E R L I B R A R Y L O A N S General Interlibrary Loan Code, 1952 M . S P E C I A L D I V I S I O N S Government Documents Vertical Files Mississippi and Rare Books Room includ- ing the Cage Manuscript Collection A P P E N D I X A . " G U I D E T O T H E F A C I L I T I E S O F M I T C H E L L M E M O R I A L L I B R A R Y . " I N D E X C O L L E G E A N D R E S E A R C H L I B R A R I E S