University Times

“We’re basically standing amongst the history of our country,” said Mark C. Scott amid the stacks on the ground floor of Hillman Library.

Want to read the 2009 federal budget? Find census data? Review the federal government’s report on Hurricane Katrina or the Columbia space shuttle disaster?

Would you like a peek at the Clinton impeachment hearings or reports from the 9-11 Commission, the Warren Commission, the Lewis and Clark expeditions?

Scott, coordinator of government publications for the University Library System, can point you in the right direction.

Few Hillman Library patrons probably notice the small stylized eagle on the door as they enter, but the icon designates the library as one of nearly 1,250 federal depository libraries through which the government provides public access to its publications. (Others nearby include Pitt’s Barco Law Library and the Oakland branch of the Carnegie Library.)

Along with well-known documents, the collection also houses some more obscure government publications. Are you interested in wool statistics and related data, 1930-1969? Fluctuations in crops and weather, 1866-1948? A listing of the names, ranks and serial numbers of 1970s Air Force members? A government report on lunchmeat? The information is waiting in Pitt’s library stacks.

Pitt is marking its 100th year as part of the federal depository library program (FDLP). A 1936 report documenting the University library’s early history cites a 1910 letter from the U.S. Superintendent of Documents that stated the initial annual shipment of federal depository materials would “amount to from 900 to 1,000 publications, which will, in bulk, occupy at least 50 feet of shelf space.”

Much has changed in the century since then. The boxfuls of print materials that used to flow into the depository collection largely have given way to electronic formats since 1993 when President Clinton mandated online access to many government documents and the creation of a directory for electronic government information.

Today, the collection includes thousands of books, maps, microprint and electronic government publications and access to government document databases such as LexisNexis Congressional and the U.S. Congressional serial set through Readex.

Despite its size, the collection covers only a portion of what the government publishes each year. “We get about 62 percent of what they produce,” said Scott, adding that ULS selects the categories of publications it receives.

While federal depository library collections are open to the public, Pitt’s is shaped to meet the needs of the library’s main clientele of Pitt faculty and students.

The University’s collection is strong in congressional publications, census documents, presidential papers, military strategy and history, as well as in items from the departments of commerce, education, health and human services, interior, labor and state. Maps in the collection include U.S. Geological Survey topographic maps of the entire country.

“It’s a valuable resource,” Scott says, maintaining that with the exception of questions about literature, it may well be possible to find the answer to any request within the contents of the FDLP collection.

Given the volume of information produced by the federal government, locating those answers can be a challenge, says Scott, who teaches a School of Information Sciences graduate course on searching for government information.

The Government Printing Office only began cataloging its materials according to Library of Congress standards in 1976. Older information can be found using the printed monthly catalog of U.S. public documents — if the seeker knows the date and title of the document sought. New material can be found through database searches. Librarians across the country are working collectively to create a full set of digitized federal documents, but there is no systematic process for accomplishing the monumental task.

Even browsing the shelves of the FDLP collection is different. Pitt’s depository is kept separate from other materials and therefore is classified using the federal Superintendent of Documents, or SuDoc, system, which differs from Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress formats. In SuDoc, items are grouped by classification numbers beginning with a letter to designate the issuing agency: A for agriculture, D for defense, E for energy, I for interior.

Tom Twiss, a ULS government information librarian, said the FDLP collection is among the most interesting places in the library. He works mostly with a similar collection of United Nations documents as well as with the maps contained in the FDLP collection.

He is captivated by the documents outlining Depression-era initiatives on the arts, Indian reservation schooling reports and even old census records that include questions about slaves, noting that they reveal more than just data. “The history of America is captured in this collection,” he agreed.

The broad range of subject matter, combined with the puzzle of helping patrons find their desired information within the collection, makes the work interesting, he said. “It’s always challenging for us.”

More information on the collection is available at www.library.pitt.edu/libraries/govdocs/govdocs.html.

—Kimberly K. Barlow