Federal government publications: "'Government publication' as used in this chapter, means informational matter which is published as an individual document at Government expense, or as required by law." (Source: 44 USC 1901)
Federal government publications in the Govt Doc, Govt Folio, Govt Micro, and Govt Reference collections use a special call number system specifically created for federal documents, called the Superintendent of Documents (SuDocs) classification system.
A SuDocs call number assigned to a document is based on the government agency which released the document. For example, a publication from the Department of Agriculture begins with an "A," such as A 1.114:92 and a publication from the Department of Education begins with the letters "ED," such as ED 1.209:Sp1. (See currently used SuDocs letter prefixes in the List of Classes.)
Agencies or bureaus under departments have the letter or letters for that department (the "parent agency") and are also assigned a number unique to the sub-agency or bureau. For example, "A 13" is the Forest Service and "A 93" is the Economic Research Service, both of which are agencies under the Department of Agriculture. The next part of the call number identifies the series or type of publication. The remaining parts of the call number identify the individual publication.
The call numbers file alphabetically by letter and then in numerical order by the first group of numbers, then the next group, etc. All numbers are whole numbers. Unlike the Library of Congress call number system used in most of the rest of the library, there are no decimals.
Federal | Maine | |
---|---|---|
Publisher or printer | Government Publishing Office (formerly Government Printing Office) or another federal government agency | Maine government agency |
URL | .gov, .mil, etc. | .me.us, maine.gov, etc. |
Call number | Federal publications at H-L are usually classed Superintendent of Documents (SuDocs), but some are classed Library of Congress (LC). | State publications at H-L are usually classed using the Maine state documents classification. Some are classed Library of Congress (LC). |
Location |
Federal documents are usually located in one of the following locations. (Non-documents may also be located in these locations. Federal documents may be integrated into other collections in the library as well.)
|
Most Maine documents are held in the Govt Doc collection in the basement of H-L and have a call number beginning with "Maine". |
Stamp |
The stamp used since at least 1995 includes the word "Depository". A bookplate used in the 1940s may read: "Bowdoin College Library; The Gift of the United States". |
The stamp currently being used does not include the word "Depository". |