Back
General Policies & Procedures.
TOC
Next
Discipline & sub-discipline
policies
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS POLICIES
|
The University Archives collects both print and nonprint materials in five
areas: Northeast Texas history,
Texas A&M University –Commerce, printing arts, Texas literature
and poetry, and place names.
The collection development emphasis is on purchasing current material for undergraduate education curricula. The subject holdings include Dewey Decimal ranges relevant to the various certification areas. Primary subject holdings for the reference section of the collection include ranges of Library of Congress PNs and Z1037-Z7401 (titles which support children’s literature).
English is the primary language of the collection. However, Spanish is also collected in the Juvenile and Youth collection.
Collection emphasis is on the United States but also includes international materials to reflect the emphasis on multiculturalism in education.
The collection contains state-adopted textbooks acquired from Education Service Centers, resource materials, children’s literature (Juvenile and Youth collection), and reference works that are considered resource materials for subject areas or for children’s literature.
The Juvenile and Youth collection contains fiction and non-fiction titles. It focuses on award winning titles but represents literature of all cultures and includes titles on controversial issues.
For the following awards, one copy of each title in each category will be purchased:
Mildred L. Batchelder Award, Pura Belpre Award, Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, Coretta Scott King Award, Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent, Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children, Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature, Robert F. Sibert International Book Award, Texas Bluebonnet Award, Charlotte Zolotow Award, and Lone Star Award.
For the following awards, one copy of each title will be purchased:
Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, Sydney Taylor Book Awards, William Allen White Children’s Book Award, Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal.
For the following awards, five copies of each medal winner and two copies of each honor book will be purchased:
Caldecott Award, John Newbery Award. Other award winners may be added in the future.
The James G. Gee Library is located in the Fourth Congressional District of the State of Texas. The Library has been a federal depository since 1937. The Government Documents Department selects a majority of items available (between 55 and 65 percent in recent years) and makes accessible materials reflecting the information needs of most patrons, both University and community. The Library also serves as a full depository of Texas State Government Documents.
The James G. Gee Library’s Mission Statement states that the Library will ‘provide quality library services to Texas A&M University - Commerce constituencies. This includes provision of access to print and electronic information resources, both directly and indirectly through partnerships with other libraries, instructional support on the use of library collections, owned and accessed; and collaborative collection development activities that support faculty and students in curricular areas and associated research areas’. This Statement serves as the Mission Statement of the Government Documents Department. Government Documents is committed to providing free and unimpeded public access to government information provided through the federal and state depository programs.
The Government Documents Department administers and develops the collection according to the requirements of Title 44, Chapter 19, of the United States Code and the guidelines in "Instructions to Depository Libraries," "Guidelines for the Depository Library System," and "Federal Depository Library Manual (plus supplements)," all issued by the Library Programs Service, Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office.
Selection Responsibility
The Government Documents Librarian, with the advice of the Department staff and other librarians, has the responsibility to select classes of government publications that will meet the needs of the general public and the Texas A&M University - Commerce community. Faculty of the institution may be contacted on specialty publications (especially those that are in an electronic format). The written Government Documents Collection Development Policy is re-examined annually by the Government Documents Librarian during the annual review of the List of Item Selections. The Policy will be posted on the Gee Library’s Government Documents web page, and an e-mail message will be sent annually to all librarians asking them to review and comment on the Policy.
Subject Areas & Collection Arrangement
The federal documents collection is arranged by the Superintendent of Documents classification system. Selected series in law and taxation have been reclassified into the Library of Congress system. Law materials are arranged as a separate collection within the Government Documents Department. Selected tax materials have been pulled and placed within the Reference Department. The State of Texas government documents are shelved in a separate collection in the Government Documents Department.
Some documents are housed in other Library departments, especially Reference and Archives. Most of these publications contain statistical or directory information. Depository monographic publications are occasionally catalogued for the general collection. These titles are pulled on a case by case basis and are exceptions to normal practice.
Many depository serials have been incorporated into the Library’s serial holdings. Current issues of these titles are housed alphabetically in Current Periodicals and retrospective volumes are shelved in the Bound Periodicals collection. This arrangement holds true for titles in both paper and microform formats.
Formats
Depository materials are collected in various formats: paper, microform, and machine-readable. All publications are selected in the appropriate/available format considering content, usage, service, and storage. The Department receives monographs, periodicals and other serials, maps, and pamphlets in any format. Paper copy is preferable since it is more easily used by the general public and the student body; but due to limited space, microfiche is selected when feasible and when recommended by the Library Programs Service.
Machine-readable format will be selected regardless of the Library’s ability to run the disks or provide software. Because CD’s circulate, patrons who have more advanced or specialized needs are still able to use these materials. Efforts are made to select machine-readable publications that are quick and easy to use in terms of searching and search logic, viewing, printing, and downloading. Consideration is also given to ease of use by patrons and the financial and computer resources needed to run the product.
The following types of documents are generally not selected because of currency, space, liability, or accuracy:
Agency issued rules, regulations, instructions, laws, navigational charts, telephone directories.
Selection Tools, Non-Depository Items, Retrospective Sources
Approximately 60% of the materials distributed through the Federal Depository Library Program are selected for inclusion in the Gee Library’s documents collection. This percentage will have minor fluctuations due to the addition of new item numbers and changes made to reflect the changing informational needs of the community. Retrospective collection development relies on obtaining materials from discard lists of depository libraries. Selections from discard lists are driven by needs of the existing collection; either to replace non-received or missing publications or retrospective development of areas where an available item number had not been selected.
Item number selections are primarily based on the following considerations:
- Current or potential community informational needs;
- Support for the University’s academic programs;
- Fulfillment of responsibility to keep citizens informed;
- Compatibility with the Library’s total collection;
- Uniqueness from the Library’s total collection;
- Degree of technicality;
- Potential frequency of use;
- Amount of shelf space that will be required to house the material.
The following publications are utilized in the selection process:
- List of Classes of U.S. Government Publications
- Union List of Item Selections
- Federal Depository Library Manual
-Appendix A: Suggested Core Collection Annotated for Medium Public & Academic Libraries & for all Law Libraries
-Appendix C: Basic Collection
-Appendix B: Maps Available for Selection- SIGCAT CD-ROM Compendium
- Monthly Catalog of United States Publications
- Publications Reference File (PRF)
- GPO Subject Bibliographies
- U.S. Government Subscriptions
- Monthly Product Announcements
Non-Depository:
- GOVDOC-L
- MAPS-L
- TXDXN-L
- DTTP: Documents to the People
- University/commercial publishers catalogs
- Local/National newspapers/television programs
- Patrons
- LION (TAMU-C online public access catalog)
The Government Documents Department does not maintain any deposit accounts for replacing/purchasing publications and has not purchased any commercially available retrospective or current supplementary collections.
Resource Sharing
The Government Documents Department works with neighboring depositories and libraries to facilitate use of the resources of the documents collections, federal and state. Since the Texas A&M University-Commerce Library is a member of the Phoenix Group, TexShare, and NORDOC (North Texas Documents Group), our cooperation with other federal depositories has been greatly facilitated. These cooperative efforts are enhanced by a daily courier service within the TexShare libraries, by the presence of telefacsimile machines (including ARIEL), microfiche/microfilm printers, e-mail and telephone access. The Government Documents Department maintains a subscription with Marcive for loading ongoing records for its government documents collection into the Library’s online public access catalog, LION.
Collection Evaluation
Using the annual arrival of the List of Item Selections as a catalyst, the Government Documents Librarian uses a copy of the March List of Classes for an annual collection review. Government Documents Department staff is consulted for any profile changes.
Item selections are reviewed throughout the year as appropriate. New survey selections are made as appropriate. Shipping lists with notes identifying new item numbers, classes, titles are passed to the Government Documents Librarian for reviewing.
Concentration will be given to the following states for item numbers that use geographical breakdowns: Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas. Secondary consideration will be given for the state of New Mexico.
Weeding & Maintenance
The collection is maintained in accordance with the guidelines set out in the "Instructions to Depository Libraries." An accurate shelf list of all depository publications is maintained to the piece level. All depository publications are clearly marked with the depository property stamp and the SuDocs number.
Superseded documents are withdrawn according to the Superseded List and its updates in Administrative Notes. Other depository publications may be reviewed for retention after five years. Emphasis will be placed on retaining publications that are regionally based. Those publications no longer needed will be offered to other libraries or discarded with the permission of the regional depository.
Badly damaged, brittle, or worn depository publications are evaluated for weeding or replacement if these publications cannot be preserved after examination by the Government Documents and Serials Department staff. Examination of the collection for weeding and maintenance is an ongoing process. The collection is continuously monitored for expansion or shifting to allow for growth and prevent overcrowding on shelves. Map cases are purchased to accommodate proper housing of sheet maps.
Access
The Department is committed to the principal of the federal depository program. Government Documents in the Gee Library are located on the south west wing , second floor in front of the Current Periodicals Area. Government Documents, maps, paper, and microfiche collections are housed together. The depository documents are available for in-house use to all.
Circulation privileges extend to Texas A&M University - Commerce faculty, administrators, currently enrolled students, and staff, as well as TexShare card holders. Members of the general public who present a photo id, and that are at least nineteen years of age, out of high school, and live within a 50 mile radius of the campus, or ex-students, may get a library courtesy card with which they can borrow depository publications.
Government Documents lends documents to other institutions though Interlibrary Loan. Should the Department be unable to readily obtain/provide a document not received in the program, patrons will be given the best possible bibliographic information and referred to an appropriate source. This may include referring the patron to his/her affiliated library for Interlibrary Loan Services.
The Government Documents Department selects the publications listed as the "Basic Collection" from the Guidelines for the Depository Library System in the Federal Depository Library Manual. It also receives the majority of the publications identified in the "Suggested Core Collection" list appropriate for academic libraries. Publications that because of their heavy demand have been placed on reserve at the Circulation desk are available to all.
The Library provides equipment for reading of and printing from microform, change and card machines for photocopiers, and photocopiers. The Library also provides facilities for reading, printing or downloading from CD-ROMs and floppy diskettes received through the depository program. If the necessary software or equipment is not available onsite, the Government Documents Department will arrange to loan the disks/diskettes.
The Texas A&M University - Commerce Gee Library’s commitment to access to federal documents is demonstrated by:
- Posting of the federal depository library logo at the library entrance and on the glass partition within the library leading to the documents collections;
- Inclusion of government documents in the Library bibliographic instruction program
- Open stack access to the depository collection
- Purchase of three stand alone computer workstations for accessing depository CD-ROMs and government related sites on the internet.
- Presence of the GPO bibliographic records in the library’s online public access catalog (LION) is supplied by Marcive. (fall 1997)
- The availability of current indexing reference materials, to Government Documents are:
- the Monthly Catalog
- Auto-Graphics Government Documents Catalog Service on CD-ROM
- CIS Index (hearings and legislative history)
- Monthly Catalog database through OCLC’s First-Search Service
- American Statistics Index
- The provision of additional access to federal government information to supplemental materials received via the depository program including the following:
- CQ Weekly Report and CQ Almanac
- Congressional Digest
- United States Code Annotated
- Congressional and Administrative News
- The arrangement of documents by SUDOC classification number in a separate easily identifiable collection, except for a few titles (primarily reference and serials) that are more useful in the Reference or General collections
- The provision of reference assistance for federal documents by all reference desk personnel in addition to documents staff
- Participation in Govdoc-L and TXDXN-L for resource and information sharing of govt docs
- Participation in library displays
- Participation in the IRS BPOL forms program
The Metroplex collection is governed by the Core Collection Development Policy and appropriate academic department policies, with emphasis on supporting the classes taught at the Metroplex Commuter Facility. Materials are selected for the Metroplex library by the Library Coordinator using instructor input, book reviews from current professional journals, student needs, and academic department requests. Faculty may order materials for the Metroplex directly through the Metroplex librarian or through subject librarians at Gee Library.
The reference collection contains non-circulating materials designed to support the curriculum, student and faculty research, and ancillary programs of the University community. Reference materials of all types (including electronic products) and in many languages are selected in accordance with the criteria established for the selection of library materials.
|
|
TOC |
|
| This page designed
& maintained by Ashish M
Pandya |