College and Research Libraries KEVIN L. COOK Varying Levels of Support Given to Government Documents Departments in Academic Libraries Documents departments in eighty-eight academic libraries belonging to the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) were surveyed. Data collected on de- partmental staffing and budget were compared to ARL data for the entire library. Other data collected concerned equipment and the types of publica- tions housed in the department. Bivariate correlation analysis showed no sig- nificant correlation between the resources available to the documents depart- ment and those of the library as a whole. Suggestions for increasing the visibility of the department are given. INTRODUCTION In these times of retrenchment, libraries must find methods to utilize available re- sources more effectively. For almost 700 aca- demic libraries, one method is to participate in the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) depository system. The congressio- nally designated libraries in the GPO system can elect to receive any of more than 5,300 categories of publications free of charge. This system, created by Congress in 1895, 1 allows a library to receive as many as 40,000 publications each year from all departments and branches of the U.S. government. These publications cover such diverse topics as gar- dening information from the Department of Agriculture, technical reports from the Nu- clear Regulatory Commission, and results of investigations into current problems written for congressional committees. Most publica- tions found in an academic library's govern- ment publications collection are received Kevin L. Cook is documents librarian at the Dean B. Ellis Library , Arkansas State University , State University , Arkansas. Research was funded by a grant from the University Research Coun- cil-Norman Campus , in connection with thesis work at the University of Oklahoma, and the au- thor acknowledges the comments made by thesis committee member Dr. Charles R. McClure and others. through the GPO system. However, other nations, many intergovernmental organiza- tions, and several state governments have similar depository systems to distribute pub- lications that they produce. In return for receiving these publications, depository libraries are required to provide resources, such as staff and space, needed to make the information accessible. However, not all libraries provide resources at an ade- quate level. An advisory committee to the U.S. Congress Joint Committee on Printing, which oversees the GPO depository pro- gram, mentions this variation in support. For example, the Detroit Public Library expends $325 ,000 annually to maintain its depository col- lection. This disparity in financial support for the depository program has created variations in the quantity and quality of service available to citizens because the quality of service is dependent upon lo- cal funding levels. 2 This article examines varying levels of sup- port given to government publications de- partments in major academic libraries. The survey attempts (1) to determine which re- sources are alloc~ted to documents depart- ments,. (2) to compare the relationships among available resources, and (3) to com- pare resources allocated to the documents department in relation to those allocated to the entire library. I 459 460 I College & Research Libraries • November 1982 The hypothesis is that there is no signifi- cant relationship between the resources available to a library and the resources avail- able to that library's government publica- tions department. Librarianship has produced relatively lit- tle quantitative research , but there has been so little research in documents librarianship that the lack of it was recognized as a serious problem in a National Commission on Li- braries and Information Science (NCLIS) re- port. Moreover , much of the research that has been done has addressed specific proce- dural issues, rather than policy issues of con- cern to all libraries. 3 Even a basic issue , such as whether to physically integrate or separate government collections from the remainder of the library collection, has been discussed for many years without substantial investigation. Waldo concludes that the "functional problem is the lack of scientific evidence to substantiate the claims of the various approaches" to organiz- ing documents. The debate over organiza- tion has been based upon opinion, not upon interpretation of scientific evidence. 4 DEFINITIONS AND AsSUMPTIONS Academic GPO depository libraries be- longing to the Association of Research Li- braries (ARL) are examined in this study be- cause many leading academic libraries belong to ARL, and because these major li- braries have important collections of govern- ment publications. The study defines the government documents collection or docu- ments department as that system in the li- brary that makes government documents ac- cessible to the public. In some institutions, this could include parts of the acquisitions, cataloging, and serials units-which some- times process documents-as well as the unit that uses government publications in refer- ence work. Government publications, gov- ernment documents, or more simply, docu- ments , are defined as those materials integrated into the government publications collection of the library. This broad defini- tion helps allow for varying practices among documents departments. The study assumes that support for a de- partment can be measured in terms of indi- cators, such as materials budget or number of librarians working in the department. For example, a patron using a documents depart- ment employing three librarians, one of whom specializes in international docu- ments, may have a different chance of find- ing a given European Communities publica- tion than would a patron in a department where one librarian is responsible for all gov- ernment publications. A second assumption is that documents are worthy of receiving resources from the li- brary. Fry refers to government publications as a "major source of information in practi- cally every field of endeavor. "5 Government publications are inexpensive to obtain with depository status and are frequently accessi- ble through indexes, thus reducing some cat- aloging expenses. Government publications are often more current than any other infor- mation available and are frequently the only sources for obtaining some types of informa- tion. In congressional hearings, for example, one may examine testimony of expert wit- nesses that could be found in no other sources. Government-sponsored research re- ports, at the forefront of research in many fields, are . often available only in govern- ment publications. Also, this article assumes a documents de- partment in which at least some government publications are housed in, and serviced from , a separate documents collection. Al- though some libraries have physically inte- grated documents collections-in which documents are cataloged, classified , and shelved with other library materials-the separate collection is more common and is of- ten recognized as a superior arrangement. 6 LITERATURE REVIEW A substantial amount of literature exists that details budgetary problems of libraries. However , little of it discusses the effective utilization of free depository distribution sys- tems as a means of supplementing low mate- rials budgets. Because so few accurate, rele- vant comments on documents are in the mainstream of general library literature, the problem of ignorance of documents gener- ates more ignorance of documents. General literature concerning government documents indicates that documents are "discriminated against" and little used. 7' 8 This claim is largely unsubstantiated but is widely accepted. One possible cause of this could be Nakata's needed "image changes," to reflect documents as sources of current in- formation, rather than being archival in na- ture.9 A survey was used in this study because survey research can give a general profile of a large number of libraries. Surveys use quan- titative techniques, thus enabling readers to compare their individual circumstances more concretely, as well as constructing a firmer foundation for subsequent research. Many previous surveys, unlike this survey, have not attempted to test hypotheses, or to validate conclusions by testing statistical sig- nificance. Two surveys related to the problem ques- tioned here are those of Julien and Shearer. Shearer sampled two academic GPO deposi- tories in each state, neither of which were re- gional depositories nor law or medical li- braries. His purpose was to "identify the real state of the art of federal depository collec- tion administration. " 10 Shearer's question- naire, sent to documents departments, con- sisted of fourteen questions. Of these, eight were yes or no questions, and six were multiple-choice questions. Shearer examined staffing, processing of documents, and de- partmental relations with the director of the library. Julien's purpose was "to study existing methods of organizing and administering de- pository collections. " 11 She selected thirty- five academic depositories on the basis of size, location, and the length of time the li- brary had been used as a depository. Two open-ended questions were asked, and the remaining thirty-eight were chiefly multiple choice. Staffing, equipment, and procedures were emphasized. METHODOLOGY This study differs from the previous two in that it utilized the data gathered to test a hy- pothesis. Because the population of this study-ARL member academic libraries-is relatively small, the entire population can be examined, eliminating problems of inference and estimates from a sample to a population. This study also differs from previous stud- ies in that interval data, rather than nominal data, are used. More powerful statistical pro- cedures can be used with data at this level of measurement than with nominal-level data. Varying Levels of Support I 461 The data gathered by the survey question- naire prqvided information from documents departments; figures from ARL Statistics12 provided comparable data for the library as a whole. Data were analyzed using three proce- dures in the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). 13 The Frequencies proce- dure was used to obtain a frequency distribu- tion and statistics for twenty-four of the thirty-one variables. The remaining seven variables were measured by data taken from ARL Statistics. To obtain Pearson product-moment corre- lation coefficients for two-variable combina- tions of the thirty interval-level variables, the Pearson Corr procedure was used. The Crosstabs procedure analyzed the single nominal-level variable, GPO depository sta- tus, and paired it with the other variables. The questionnaire was divided into sec- tions labeled Resources, Equipment, and Physical Allocation of Materials (see appen- dix 1). These sections were sent to the docu- ments librarians at the ARL libraries in- cluded in the study. A pretest sent to four libraries revealed no major weaknesses in the questionnaire. Minor changes were made and the first mailing to the eighty-four re- maining libraries followed in early May 1980. Three weeks were allowed for re- sponses; then a follow-up request, contain- ing another copy of the questionnaire, was sent to those persons who had not responded to the first mailing. A higher response rate would have been desirable, but some libraries may have lacked ready access to some of the necessary information, such as the percentage of docu- ments housed in the documents department, and so declined to respond. Also, several in- complete questionnaires were returned, yet they provided some usable data. These were included in the analysis to obtain maximum benefit from the data, and they account for the varying numbers of responses in theta- bles. RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY OF DATA While the questionnaire response rate was lower than expected, an acceptable degree of reliability and validity is likely. Most of the questions in the study were objective and 462 I College & Research Libraries • November 1982 concrete (such as the number of student hours assigned to the documents department or the number of volumes in the library). Similar questions, such as asking the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) professional, nonprofessional, and student staff, were used to obtain multiple measures of some variables. While there are doubtless other measures of resources that were not used in this study, several measures were taken. The nature of the questions made the responses easy to code, and this coding was checked at various points before the data were ana- lyzed. Validity of the data is based largely on face validity. Questions were direct and the re- sponses were objective. Knowledgeable peo- ple examined the questionnaire and found the questions reasonable. FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTIONS Questions concerning staffing show the number of student hours assigned weekly to documents departments varied from 0 at one library to 300 in another, as shown in table 1. All responding libraries had at least one FTE nonprofessional staff member working in the documents department. The maximum value reported was ten nonprofessionals at one library. These data are presented in table 2. However, there were fewer professionalli- brarians than nonprofessional staff found in documents departments. Two respondents had no professional staff, and two other de- partments had less than one FTE. At the other end of the range, two libraries reported Hours 0-19 20-49 50-79 80-99 TABLE 1 FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION FOR WEEKLY STUDENT HouRS AssiGNED TO THE DocuMENTS DEPARTMENT Absolute Frequency Adjusted Frequency 10 22 17 ( %) 100-300 8 10 14.9 32.8 25.4 11.9 14.9 N Missing 67 21 x = 60 .19 Me = 49.80 M 0 = 40.00 60.00 s = 50.00 range = 300.00 99.9 23.9 that they had seven professional staff. Table 3 presents the frequency distribution for re- sponses to this question. These frequency distributions indicate that there are large variations in the re- sources alloc_ated to documents departments. Table 4 illustrates the materials budget allo- TABLE 2 FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION FOR FTE NoNPROFESSIONAL STAFF IN DocuMENTS DEPARTMENT Adjusted Absolute Frequency Staff Frequency ( %) 0-2.00 34 50.7 3-5.99 28 41.8 6-10.00 5 7.5 N 67 100.0 Missing 21 23.9 x = 2.96 Me= 2.55 M0 = 2.00 s = 1.86 range = 9.00 TABLE 3 FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION FOR FTE PROFESSIONAL STAFF IN DocuMENTS DEPARTMENT Absolute Adjusted Frequency Staff Frequency ( %) 0-1.99 29 43.3 2-3.99 29 43.3 4-7.00 9 13.4 N 67 100.0 Missing 21 23.9 x = 2.15 Me = 1.99 M0 = 1.00 s = 1.46 range = 7.00 TABLE 4 FREQUENCY DisTRIBUTION FOR DocuMENTS DEPARTMENT MATERIALS BuDGET Budget($) 0-4,999 5,000-19,999 20,000-178,536 N Missing Absolute Frequency 13 16 19 48 40 x = 25,851.06 Me = 12,050.00 M0 = 5,000.00 s = 4,895.61 range = 178,536.00 Adjusted Frequency ( %) 27.1 33.3 39.6 100.0 45.5 cated to documents collections. Three li- braries had no funds sp~cifically marked for documents collections, while another library had over $175,000 allocated to its documents department. Next highest were three depart- ments having budgets of $85,000. There was also wide variation in the amount of space occupied by documents departments. The maximum was 23,000 square feet. These data are summarized in table 5. Table 6 shows data for six different types of micro- forms equipment located in the documents department. Other equipment in the depart- ment is reported in the frequency distribu- tion labeled table 7. TABLE 5 FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION FOR SQUARE FEET IN DocuMENTS DEPARTMENT Square Feet 0-6,999 7,000-13,999 14,000-23,000 N Missing Absolute Frequency 18 18 11 47 41 x = 9,482.06 Me = 9,992.75 M0 = 5,600.00 10,000.00 13,000.00 15,000.00 s = 5,787.24 range = 22,630.00 Adjusted Frequency ( % ) 38.3 38.3 23.4 100.0 46.6 Data related to the proportion of publica- tions housed in the documents department are presented in table 8. One department re- ported housing no U.S. GPO depository pub- lications, while eleven had 100 percent of the library's depository publications. Seven de- partments had none of the library's non- GPO depository publications, while twelve reported holding 100 percent. The data are quite different for publica- tions from governmental units smaller than states, such as county or local publications. Forty libraries had none of these substate publications in their documents depart- ments, and only one library reported having all substate publications housed in the docu- ments collection. Similarly, twenty-one de- partments housed no state publications, · while one held all of the library's state docu- ments. Foreign national publications were not housed in thirty-five of the departments Varying Levels of Support I 463 ~hat responded, but two departments housed 100 percent of the library's publications fall- ing into this category. Fourteen documents departments contained no publications of in- ternational intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), such as the United Nations, but six departments held all of their library's IGO publications. These frequency distributions demon- strate again the many different ways in which government publications are handled by libraries. In general, U.S. federal publica- tions are housed in documents departments more often than other types of publications. The year in which the survey libraries were designated GPO depositories is shown in table 9. Dates ranged from 1859 to 1969. In fact, eleven of the ARL libraries did not become GPO depositories until1960 or later. Sixteen of the libraries are regional GPO de- positories (18.2 percent) while the remaining seventy-two (81.8 percent) had selective sta- tus. BIVARIATE CoRRELATION ANALYSIS Regional and Selective Status Neither departmental resources, library resources, nor the types of publications re- ceived were correlated with the depository status of the library. In other words, a re- gional GPO depository, with responsibilities beyond those of a selective depository, ap- parently had no effect on the resources of the library as a whole (including staffing), on the distribution of publications in the library, or on indicators of the resources available to the documents department. Perhaps patterns of handling federal publications were well es- tablished by 1962, when the depository law was changed to allow the establishment of regional depositories. Another explanation could be that ARL libraries select a high per- centage of documents, making them compa- rable to regionals in some respects. Never- theless, regionals have responsibilities, in- cluding permanent retention ofall publica- tions distributed through the system, interli- brary loan service, and advising other depositories in the area, which place differ- ent demands upon those libraries serving as regional depositories. It seems unlikely that regionals could meet these demands if they were supported at the same levels as selective depositories. TABLE 6 FREQUENCY DisTRIBUTION FOR MICROFORMS EQUIPMENT IN DocuMENTs DEPARTMENT Microfiche Microfilm Mi~:Je~;ue Microfiche Microfilm Microopaque Readers Readers Reader-Printers Reader-Printers Reader-Printers Adjst. Adjst. Adjst. Adjst . Adjst . Adjst . No . of Absol. Freq. Absol. Freq. Absol. Freq . Absol. Freq . Absol. Freq . Absol. Freq . Units Freq . (%) Freq. (%) Freq. (%) Freq. (%) Freq. (%) Freq. (%) 0 7 13.0 28 53.8 27 51.9 44 84.6 47 90.4 47 90.4 1 18 33.3 15 28.8 16 30.8 7 13.5 5 9.6 5 9.6 2 12 22.2 7 13.5 6 11.5 1 1.9 0 0.0 0 0.0 3 6 11.1 2 3.8 2 3.8 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 4 2 3.7 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 5 3 5.6 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 6 5 9.3 0 0.0 1 1.9 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 7 1 1.9 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 N 54 100.1 52 99.9 52 99.9 52 100.0 52 100.0 52 100.0 Missing 34 38.6 36 40.9 36 40.9 36 40.9 36 40.9 36 40.9 x = 2.22 x = 0.67 x = 0.77 x = 0.17 x = 0.10 x = 0.10 Me = 1.67 Me = 0.43 Me= 0.46 Me = 0.09 Me = 0.05 Me = 0.05 M 0 = 1.00 M0 = 0.00 M0 = 0.00 M0 = 0.00 M0 = 0.00 M0 = 0.00 s = 1.89 s = 0.86 s = 1.11 s = 0.43 s = 0.30 s = 0.30 range = 7.00 range = 3.00 range = 6.00 range = 2.00 range = 1.00 range = 1.00 TABLE 7 FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION FOR EQUIPMENT IN DocuMENTS DEPARTMENT Cathode Ray Printing Bibliographic Photocopier Computer Terminal Computer Terminal etwork Terminal Absol. Adjst. Adjst. Adjst. Adjst . o. of Freq . Absol. Freq . Absol. Freq . Absol. Freq. Units Freq . (%) Freq. (%) Freq . (%) Freq. (%) 0 45 88.2 47 88.7 48 92.3 46 88.5 1 5 9.8 4 7.5 3 5.8 5 9.6 2 1 2.0 1 1.9 1 1.9 1 1.9 3 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 4 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 5 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 6 0 0.0 1 1.9 0 0.0 0 0.0 N 51 100.0 53 100.0 52 100.0 52 100.0 Missing 37 42.0 35 39.8 36 40.9 36 40.9 x = 0.14 x = 0 .23 x = 0. 10 x = 0.14 Me = 0.07 Me = 0 .06 Me = 0.04 Me = 0.06 _M0 = 0.00 M0 = 0.00 M0 = 0.00 M0 = 0.00 s = 0.40 s = 0.89 s = 0.36 s = 0.40 range = 2.00 range = 6.00 range = 2.00 range = 2.00 ~~ ~t:-:1:-:CC:~ ,~ ~ Oc<:l""""OOlt) CT.l c<:l 01 ]§~~- ""0'1 """"0'1 CT.l"" ._8 ~ ~~ ~~§·a E~ ~ ~ .5 ~0 ~~ oo~""""""""tn o:> o:> ..0'"' """""""" """""""" lJ:) 0'1 <"'-' E-< z ti~ ~~~~~,~ ~ ~ ::a ~~~ "" t- "" c;o o:> o:> 00 ~ t- o:>C'I &~ .. ~~ 0 "'-'Z "' ~~ E-< c;o lJ:) 0'1 "" c;o ""lJ') z ..0'"' ~ c;o 0'1 ~ <"'-' ::a 8 0 0 ~ ~~ ~~CC:~t:-: ,~ '-"': ~ ~"'""""""""o:> 0 0 ~~~ lt)"""" """""""" 0"" 2:: """" ., ~ ~ "' rJ) ::> 0 "§go ::r:: c<:lOO""""t-0'1 """" t- ..0'"' "" """" c:o 0'1 ~ <"'-' ;;l !!:! ~ 00 2:: ti~ ~~CC:~ -~ ,~ ~ w ~~~ o:>~""""~CT.l 0 o:> "' c;o """" 0 0'1 ~ E-< .,01 """" ~ z < ~ ~3 E-< ::a 8 ~] 0 "§go 0 """""""""'0'1 0'1 c;o ..0'"' ~ """" c;o 0'1 "" <"'-' 0 z 0 ~ ~~~~cc:,~ ~ ~ .~~ C'lc<:l""l.nl.n 0 00 0 -~~~ 0'1 """"l.n 0 0'1 II< """" ~ rJ) II< ;:i 2 :0 £ z 0 0 ~& ~C'IC'!Olt) ""lJ:) E=: ~f """" """""" c;o 0'1 ::> <"'-' ~ ~ "' a i~ 1:-:~t:-:~t-:,~ ~ 13 t- c;o t- 0 t- 0 c;o ~~~ ""~ 0 0'1 z """" ~ ot:' ::> ~2 l o·v; ~~ ::>o o& l.n~lnO"""" lJ:)"" .,., ..o ... 0'1"" c;o 0'1 <"'-' "'l:;f'' t- 0 ("") 0 C'Ir.>O .:D.:Doocio ........ ""8 II II II II II I>< ":E."' ":E.O"' ~ ~ 0000<>'10 t-'< ":E."' ":E.O"' ~ ~ C")t-000 ........ C00lr.)0 ;;;~o~§ II II II II II I>< ":E."' ":E."'"' ~ ~ .... 000<00 COC'IOC"')O v.ioo.:Do C'l ""8 II II II II II 1:>< ":E."' ":E."'"' ~ ~ < ':E."' ':E."' "' ~ ~ !::!88:::!8 .:Dv.iov.io t-CO~c-:1~ II II II II II 1:>< ":E." ":E."'"' f Varying Levels of Support I 465 TABLE 9 FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION FOR YEAR LIBRARY wAS DESIGNATED A GPO DEPOSITORY Year Before 1900 1900-1929 1930-Present N Missing Absolute Frequency 30 34 23 87 1 .X = 1911.10 Me = 1907.00 M0 = 1907.00 s = 29.25 range = 110.00 Documents Department Resources Adjusted Frequency ( %) 34 .5 39.1 26.4 100.0 1.1 When comparing the fifteen indicators of documents department resources with each other, sixteen pairs yjelded a Pearson's r 2 value greater than .20. Eight of those sixteen with a coefficient of . 30 or greater are re- ported in table 10, which summarizes corre- lations between the various indicators of re- sources in documents departments. The number of student hours was moderately correlated to nonprofessional staff and pro- fessional staff in the department, and to the number of cathode-ray terminals in the de- partment. Professional staff was correlated with student hours and with nonprofessional staff. Correlations between various kinds of equipment were low, and the practices in different libraries were varied enough to pre- vent drawing conclusions based on availa~il­ ity of equipment. Library Resources It would be reasonable to expect that the more resources a library has, the more re- sources the library's documents department would have. Table 11, however, shows that this is not true. Only twelve comparisons of resources yielded r2 values greater than . 20. Of these, five were moderate r2 values greater than .30. The strongest correlation was between library-materials budgets and the number of professional documents staff. Professional documents staff was also weakly correlated to current serials expenditures. There were two comparisons in which a given resource in the documents department was correlated with that same resource in the library. The Indicators Student Hours Non-Prof. Staff Prof. Staff Materials Budget Microfiche Readers Microfilm Readers Microfiche Rdr.-Prntrs. Cathode-Ray Terminals Bib. Net. Terminals Printing Terminals Student Hours Non-Prof. Staff .32 p<.OOl N = 66 TABLElO CoMPARISONS AMONG DocuMENTS DEPARTMENT REsouRcES UsiNG r 2 Prof. Staff .38 p<.OOl N = 66 .31 p<.OOl N = 67 Materials Budget Indicators Microfiche Microfilm Readers Readers .32 p<.OOl N = 39 Microfiche Rdr .-Prntrs. Cathode-Ray Terminals .36 p<.OOl N =52 .30 p<.OOl N =53 .38 p<.OOl N =52 Bib. Net Terminals .36 p<.OOl N =52 Indicators Documents Student Hours Documents Prof. Staff Documents Non-Prof. Staff Documents Materials Budget Documents Dept. Space Photocopiers Cathode-Ray Terminals Volumes in Library TABLE 11 CoRRELATION BETWEEN DocuMENTS DEPARTMENT AND LmRARY REsouRcES UsiNG r 2 Current Serials (Number) Library Materials Budget .40 p<.001 N = 66 .33 p< .001 N = 66 .31 p<.001 N = 47 Library Indicators Current Serials (Expend.) .31 p<.001 N = 66 Library Prof. Staff Library Non-Prof. Staff Library Student Hours .32 p<.001 N = 67 468 I College & Research Libraries • November 1982 documents materials budget was correlated to the library-materials budget (r2 = .32, p <.001), and the number of student hours as- signed to the department was correlated to the student hours in the library (r2 = .32, p <.001). The number of professionals and nonprofessionals working in the library has no apparent correlation to the number of staff in the documents department. From this, one could conclude that the staffing in the documents department is quite independent of staffing in other areas of the library, and that factors outside the scope of this study have greater influence on staffing. For example, this study was not able to take into account various means used by individual libraries to process and service documents. Some libraries may use methods less demanding of staff time. Another vari- able not measured in this study is the staffing of other library departments. Some depart- ments may employ staff members at the ex- pense of other library departments. Implicit in this statement is the concept that some de- partments may possess greater power than other departments. This possibility was not addressed in this study. A higher correlation exists between staff- ing in other parts of the library and the mate- rials budgets. There were r2 values from .24 to .40 between the number of the three types of documents department staff and the li- brary materials budget. While it appears that there is some relationship between ma- terials budgets and library staffing outside the documents department, there are factors other than the resources available to the li- brary as a whole that determine what re- sources are available in the documents col- lection. Materials budgets allocated to other departments may have an effect on the budget of the documents department. Distri- bution of power in the library could affect re- source allocation. Library staffing, with the exception of stu- dent hours, was not related to staffing in the documents department. Similarly, the mate- rials budget allocated to the department was not related to the materials budget of the li- brary. However, the library's materials budget was related to staffing in the docu- ments department. Possibly the materials budget of the library is a better indicator of the library's support than the number of staff. The library's materials budget is sub- ject to greater variations over time than is the number of staff. During a financially lean year, a library might cut its materials budget as an alternative to dismissing staff mem- bers. This may make the library's materials budget a better predictor of the fiscal health of the library, rather than the level at which the library is staffed. It seems unlikely that the lack of relationship between library staff- ing and documents department staffing is be- cause documents departments are so well staffed. An understaffed documents depart- ment cannot function properly. It is possible that such a cycle exists in some documents de- partments. Patrons may not get satisfactory service because the staff is too busy process- ing incoming materials; or there may be stacks of unprocessed material because the staff is too busy helping patrons. Documents departments may contain ma- terial from different sources requiring differ- ent types of processing, such as state publica- tions and GPO publications. If there are not enough staff members to assign an area of re- sponsibility to each person, or if a few staff members must spread their duties over a large area, there may be no one with exper- tise in any of the areas. The staff would not have time to obtain in-depth knowledge about any single variety of their publica- tions. While general knowledge is desirable, some degree of specific knowledge about cer- tain materials is often required of the staff. Types of Publications Housed The percentage of the library's documents that were housed in the documents depart- ment was not correlated to staffing. This would seem to indicate that either servicing a large collection is less demanding than serv- icing a smaller collection, or that some docu- ments departments operate more efficiently with fewer staff. Individual library practices could account for some of this discrepancy. For example, documents staff may process and catalog documents that are housed else- where in the library. Conversely, the li- brary's acquisitions and cataloging depart- ments may process publications that are housed in, and serviced from, the documents department. Decentralization of libraries and the existence of branch libraries or of de- partmental libraries could possibly affect the proportion of publications which are housed in the documents department. While it would seem that the size of a collection would be related to its staff, this was not shown to be the case. More needs to be known about processing procedures in such situations. There was a lack of correlation between publications in the department and the en- tire library's statistics. This corroborates the earlier finding that the percentage of docu- ments housed in the department is not re- lated to resources, such as staffing, of either the department or the library. There were, · however, some correlations indicating that certain types of publications were more likely to be found together in the documents department. The strongest of these correlations (r2 = . 71) was between state, substate, and local documents. A mod- erate correlation (r2 = .46) was found be- tween U.S. depository and nondepository publications. It appears, then, that state and substate publications tend to be found in the same locations. Types of publications do not appear to be related to other resources of the collection. Similarly, Richardson et al. found little rela- tionship between staffing of a documents de- partment and the level of bibliographic con- trol of U.S. publications in depository libraries as a whole. Richardson found that "increasing professional staff did not in- crease the total number or the likelihood of specific access points, except for series ac- cess. " 14 Richardson concluded that the total number of descriptive access points provided for federal publications in all depository li- braries was unrelated to staff size. This sug- gests that staffing is related to neither publi- cations housed in the department, nor to the bibliographic organization of the publica- tions. Richardson did not examine the amount of use a department receives. This could be an important factor because high use might increase the· visibility of the de- partment, which in turn could affect the re- sources made available to the department. Thus it appears that the hypothesis, that there is not a significant relationship be- tween the resources available to a library and the resources available to that library's gov- ernment publica~ions department, must be rejected. PossiBLE SoLUTIONS Major decisions made years ago by incum- Varying Levels of Support I 469 bents with certain attitudes may develop into organizational habits not easily changed. One method of overcoming these habits and obtaining additional visibility and improv- ing relations with many librarians would be to participate in a staff exchange program with other departments in the library. Many libraries already require various library per- sonnel to work a few hours per week at a gen- eral reference desk or similar service point. Perhaps librarians outside of the documents department would be interested in exchang- ing some duties with the documents staff. This type of training would offer two major advantages to the documents department. First, other librarians would become more familiar with the department, its operations, and its needs (the department would be building support in other areas of the li- brary). Second, the documents staff would become more aware of patron needs, and may gain useful information about which types of publications to select. Unless the documents staff member were working at a general public-service point alone, other general reference staff could be learning about documents without coming near the collection. General reference staff could observe the circumstances under which a patron might be referred to the documents department, and thus become more aware of the informa- tion contained in government publications. This type of program could help reduce the fear of government publications, which li- brarians often have. While public-service ex- changes are discussed here, if a similar ar- rangement exists with the technical services areas, the documents department should be included in those also. For many libraries this would not involve creating a new pro- gram, but merely taking advantage of an ex- isting one in order to improve service to pa- trons and increase awareness of the documents department. Similarly, a documents librarian could improve contact with other librarians by spending an hour or so each week informally instructing nondocuments librarians in some aspect of government publications. For ex- ample, this could be a detailed program or a simple discussion concerning census statis- tics. At one library, two documents staff members prepared a shelf of materials for general reference librarians to examine in 470 I College & Research Libraries • November 1982 such a session. The librarians became so in- terested that the sessions became regularly scheduled. This led to an exchange program as discussed above. Some librarians are inse- cure about their knowledge of government publications, but are willing to learn about them. Some depositories need to inform their di- rector about the activities of the documents department. One ARL library director de- clined to respond to a questionnaire, saying that his library was not a GPO depository. AREAs FOR FuRTHER REsEARCH Since no definitive conclusion can be drawn as to what factors determine the level of resource support a documents department receives, this is an important area for further research. This study has suggested that major factors are not the availability of resources in the library as a whole, or the manner in which documents were housed in the library. Thence the question: What factors contrib- ute toward resource support of the docu- ments department? Research on the budget- ing process or on the distribution of power within the library would be relevant to this question. · A related question concerns the effects of staff exchange programs within libraries on support for documents departments. Other means of increasing awareness of the docu- ments departments within libraries should also be investigated and evaluated. Longitudinal studies might be able to re- late changes in levels of support to changes in the environment of the documents collec- tion. Staff changes, additions to facilities, as well as the indicators used in this study should be examined. It would also be possi- ble to compare the support of a documents department at the beginning and at the end of directors' tenures. Further research should be done to elabo- rate upon the conclusions of the study, in re- lation to the level of support given to GPO re- gional depositories, as opposed to selective depositories. If there actually is little addi- tional support given to a regional library, does this have an effect on the service the public can obtain from that depository? More needs to be known about the process of resource allocation to documents depart- ments in academic libraries. This informa- tion might also be generalized to other li- brary departments, further increasing its usefulness. This study raises questions about the level of support given to GPO regional depositories. It appears that in ARL li- braries, regional depositories are not sup- ported differently from selective deposito- ries. Perhaps most importantly, the output of the documents department and its services to patrons need to be examined. This could result in greater access to government infor- mation and more effective operation of gov- ernment publications departments. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESULTS Frequency distributions show that among ARL libraries, a relatively homogenous pop- ulation, there is a vast disparity in the amount of resources allocated to documents departments. Perhaps by establishing this fact, this study may help justify the receipt of greater resource support. The resources given to the documents department did not appear to be correlated to the resources that were available to the entire library. While the library-materials budget was correlated to documents staff, there was only a moder- ate correlation between the library- materials budget and the budget in the docu- ments department. Another finding was that regional GPO depositories in academic li- braries seem to be supported at the same level as selective GPO depositories. This study may have raised more questions than it answered, yet it serves as a starting point for future research related to resources allocation and the development of a concep- tual framework to examine factors that af- fect resource allocation for government doc- uments departments. REFERENCES 1. U.S. Congress , Joint Committee on Printing, Government Depository Libraries (Washing- ton, D.C . : Govt. Print. Off., 1979) , p.5. 2. U.S. Congress, Ad Hoc Advisory Committee on Revision of Title 44, Federal Government Printing and Publishing: Policy Issues, Report of the Ad Hoc Advisory Committee on Revi- sion of Title 44 to the ]oint Committee on Printing (Washington, D.C.: Govt. Print. Off. , 1979), p.45. 3. U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, Government Publica- tions: Their Role in the National Program for Library and Information Services (Washing- ton, D.C.: Govt. Print. Off. , 1978), p.vii. 4. Michael Waldo, "An Historical Look at the Debate Over How to Organize Federal Gov- ernment Documents in Depository Libraries," Government Publications Review 4:328 (1977). 5 .. NCLIS, Government Publications, p.l. 6. John E. Pemberton, "Guest Editorial: Biblio- graphic Control of Official Publications," Government Publications Review 4:209-14 (1977). 7 . Kathy Schneider, "Document Discrimina- tion," Wisconsin Library Bulletin 73:189 Quly-Aug. 1977). 8. Christine Britten, "What Do You Do with Them? Put Your Documents Where the Ser- vice Is," Wisconsin Library Bulletin 73:32-33 Qan.-Feb. 1977). 9. Yuri Nakata, "Toward a New Image: A Look Varying Levels of Support I 4 71 at Federal Depository Libraries," Wilson Li- brary Bulletin 48:568-71 (March 1974). 10. Benjamin Shearer, "Federal Depository Li- braries on the Campus: Practices and Pros- pects," Government Publications Review 4:209 (1977). 11. Jane A. Julien, "The Organization and Ad- ministration of U.S. Government Publications in Selected University Depository Libraries: A Survey" (Educational specialist research pa- per, Northern Arizona Univ., 1974), p.4. 12. Carol A. Mandel and Mary P. Johnson, comps., ARL Statistics 1978-79, (Washing- ton, D.C.: Association of Research Libraries, 1979). 13. Norman H. Nie, SPSS: Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (2d ed.; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975). 14. John V. Richardson and others, "Biblio- graphic Organization of U.S. Federal Deposi- tory Collections," Government Publications Review 7A:475 (1980). APPENDIX 1: LIBRARY REsouRCES QuESTIONNAIRE Please include any clarification or comments on the reverse side of the questionnaire. I. RESOURCES Please complete items 1 through 5 using the same definitions of terms you would use in completing an Association of Research Libraries statistical report. 1. How many student hours per week were allocated to the documents department in 1978-79? ____ Average Student Hours Per Week. 2. How many non-student, non-professional staff were working predominantly in the documents department in 1978-79? Full-Time Equivalent Non-Professional Staff. 3. How many professional librarians worked predominantly with documents in 1978-79? ___ _ Full-Time Equivalent Professional Librarians. 4. What was the total materials budget available to the documents department for purchase of docu- ments and related materials excluding equipment and supplies in 1978-79? Materials Budget in Dollars . 5 . How many square feet are dedicated to storage, reference, and work areas for government docu- ments? Estimated Total Square Feet. II. EQUIPMENT How many pieces of the following types of equipment have been purchased at the request of the docu- ments department for its use? Microfiche Reader(s) Microfilm Reader(s) Micro-opaque Reader(s) _ Photocopier(s) Cathode-Ray Computer Terminal(s) III. PHYSICAL ALLOCATION OF MATERIALS _ Microfiche Reader-Printer(s) _ Microfilm Reader-Printer(s) _ Micro-opaque Reader-Printer(s) _ OCLC (or similar bibliographic network) Terminal(s) _ Printing Computer Terminal(s) What percent of each of the following types of documents collected by your library are housed in the documents department? (EXAMPLE: If all your libraris government documents from all of the fol- lowing categories are in the documents department, each category would have the answer 100 per- cent.) 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