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Government Documents Collection Development Policy


INTRODUCTION

The primary mission of the Wheat Law Library is to support the study, teaching and research needs of the Law School community. While it is also open to the University and general public, the Library provides assistance to anyone who has the need of using law-related material, including all levels of Kansas government and the legal community. To assist in achieving these missions, the Documents Department acquires federal and state documents pertaining to the Law School curriculum, mainly through the Government Printing Office Depository Program and the Kansas State Depository Program, and makes available a functional collection. Currently our documents collection includes statutory law, administrative law, case law, and publications providing background information. It is the purpose of this collection development policy to provide guidelines by which the Library selects, retains, and evaluates its documents collection to meet the needs of all patrons, as well as to enable the Library to derive maximum benefit from both the federal and the state documents depository programs.

GENERAL FACTORS AND CONSTRAINTS AFFECTING DOCUMENTS SELECTION

Three factors affect the selection of federal documents: the limitation of shelf space, the proximity to the Regional Depository, and the procedures of selection. Because of limited space for shelving, the Library has not been able to include many secondary documents, duplication, and material with only historical value. Fortunately our regional depository is on campus and we can rely on them to meet our need for items we are not able to select and house.

The selection procedures were set up by the GPO. The selective depository libraries select preferred items from the periodic split of item numbers or creation of new ones. Items may be dropped at any time during the year, but items may be added only during the Annual Selection Update Cycle in summer each year. Often the new items turn out to be unsatisfactory for our collection and will be dropped from our profile. The documents selected may not be what the library expects, but the documents must be retained for at least five years. Once deleted, whether accidentally or intentionally, an item number can't be added until the Update Cycle comes around again. Lastly, sometimes item numbers include desirable documents as well as inadequate titles but the entire selection under the item number must be acquired and retained in order to acquire the desired ones. These factors must be taken into consideration in order to effectively develop the document collection.

SELECTION AIDS AND TOOLS

The Library relies on many tools for information that leads to decision making including:

  1. Instructions to Depository Libraries
  2. Guidelines for the Depository Library System
  3. Federal Depository Library Manual
  4. Monthly Catalog
  5. List of Classes
  6. GPO Subject Bibliographies
  7. Agencies' bibliographies

In addition, Law School faculty members also make requests for specific documents. Their interests in various subject fields should be considered during selection.

PRIMARY SOURCE ACQUISITIONS

The Library generally selects the following types of material:

  1. All congressional publications except selected GAO publications and selected Library of Congress publications
  2. All federal statutory material
  3. U.S. presidential documents, including weekly compilations and final papers
  4. Federal agency regulations
  5. Federal agency decisions
  6. Federal agency annual reports
  7. Major agency publications, especially those by Department of Justice, FBI, Department of Agriculture, Department of Labor, Department of State, OSHA, etc.
  8. Administrative Office of the Courts and the Federal Judicial Center publications
  9. Judicial Branch publications and other records of decisional law
  10. Federal Reserve Board publications

DESELECTION

Although a selective depository library is required to retain federal documents for five years, the Law Library usually tries to retain them for a longer period of time. We retain significant items (measured by the usefulness to the faculty and other library patrons) for as long as we see fit, about ten to fifteen years when space is available. Items like the U.S. Reports are retained indefinitely until the material deteriorates beyond repair. Consideration given to the weeding process of our regular collection is also applied to the document collection.