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One Librarian’s LostDocs Experience: 10% Cataloging Rate
Vicki Tate is an active contributor to the Lost Docs Blog. She also independently tracks her own fugitive documents submissions to GPO. She recently sent me her summary and supporting spreadsheet for her 2009 reports. Vicki gave FGI permission to publish her disappointing results:
I finished my summary of Lost Docs for 2009 and checked their status. There are two sheets--monographs and serials. The summary information for monographs is: 78 Monograph/individual titles submitted 8 Titles with records in CGP 5 Titles with PURLs 32 Titles with NO cataloging in OCLC Serial titles fared even worse.
I have attached her spreadsheet to this blog post. Feel free to look it over and come to your own decisions. Although 8/78 titles is only a 10.2% cataloging rate for reported items, it is important to remember that this is one librarian's experience. Other librarians may have had better luck. Without full data from GPO, it's hard to say. We are trying to fill in the gaps with the lost docs blog, but our data is only as complete as you make it. Plus we're never sure of what proportion of documents reported to GPO we're made aware of. If you are treating your reports to GPO with the same level of tracking and supporting documentation, we'd like to hear from you. Please leave a comment or e-mail lostdocs@freegovinfo.info. We at FGI salute Vicki Tate and other librarians like her trying their best to ensure a complete record of government publications. Continue reading
March 2010 Lost Docs Report and Appeal
REPORT In February 2010, we posted 25 "lost docs" e-mail receipts sent by GPO to the librarians who reported these missing documents. These civic minded librarians in turn e-mailed us their receipts. How many reports did GPO receive? Only they know, but the more people who send their fugitive docs e-mail receipts to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info, the more accurate our count will be. This month's count is particularly underreported. Owing to my attendance and blogging at the 2010 Public Library Association Conference and participating in an excellent distance delivered Museum Registration class, I was unable to post many lost documents receipts I got. They will be posted in April. My apologies to the librarians who sent me reports but failed to see them posted. Of the 25 reported items that were posted to the blog in March, three items have been cataloged by GPO since the initial report. You can view this list by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/found/ and looking at the postings with March 2010 dates. We are appreciative of these new records. In our view, three of the items reported to GPO and posted to the blog in January were either out of scope for the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) or were already in the catalog. You can view these items by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/false/ and looking for items with March 2010 dates. In two of these "false positive" cases, it looks like GPO had received the tangible item near the published date of the item and cataloged an electronic equivalent, but did not distribute the tangible item to the Federal Depository Library Program. This may or may not be in accordance with GPO SOD 301 which states that budget permitting, tangible documents will be offered when both tangible and online formats are available. With the available information in these two CGP records, it is unclear whether GPO made a conscious, budget related decision to not offer these publication or just forgot to send them out. We encourage GPO to begin putting notes explaining why a given item was not distributed to the FDLP into the item's bibliographic record. If you are interested in viewing this category of publication, visit http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/explain/ and look for items with March 2010 dates. We strongly encourage people with instances of CGP cataloged but non-distributed federal documents to use GPO Help and not GPO's Lost Docs form. APPEAL If you like the concept of a public listing of fugitive documents reported to GPO, there are a number of easy ways to help us:
- If you report a fugitive document to GPO, send your e-mailed receipt to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info. We welcome any item reported to GPO in the past month. It is best if you can send us the receipt the same day you get it from GPO. Some e-mail programs will support auto-forwarding. If so, please consider autoforwarding items where the subject contains "lostdocs submission."
- Visit the blog at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info and comment on the listed items. Comments can include -- Did your library receive the item? Did you find it in the CGP? Do you think the item is out of scope for the CGP? Did you report the item as well and so on.
- Post the blog link to your website or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
- Subscribe to the blog feed at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/feed/ or better yet incorporate the feed into your website or blog.
Three Spendid Govdocs
In the process of searching the March batch of publications reported to the Lost Docs Blog against the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP), I came across the amusing factoid that there appear to be three and only three federal government documents with the word "splendid" in their title, at least according to the CGP:
- Splendid vision, unswerving purpose : developing air power for the United States Air Force during the first century of powered flight. D 301.82/7:C 33
- Tearing up the ground with splendid results : historic mining on the Coronado National Forest / 1995 Farrell, Mary M. A 13.101/2:15
- The most splendid carpet / 1978 Anderson, Susan H. I 29.2:C 22
Statistical Atlas of the 9th US Census (1870) now online in lots of places
The folks over at radicalcartography.net have just made available the Statistical Atlas of the 9th US Census (1870) as a bulk download. It's great that this amazing government publication is finding interest by the public -- and that the radical cartographers are doing lots of cool projects like Census Demographics. However, it should be noted that it's been available online for a while from both the Library of Congress and the Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research (FRASER). And of course it's also available in paper from Federal Depository Libraries across the US. I'd recommend that all you radical cartographers, cartographer wanna be's, history buffs, data geeks etc get thee to your local Federal Depository Library to see what the Federal govt has published over the last 200+ years and also check out what your libraries are digitizing and putting online. You'll be glad you did.
Presented here are all of the maps and charts from the first statistical atlas of the US Census, widely praised in its time and still a wonderful example of sophisticated graphics, the out-of-date racial/psychological nomenclature notwithstanding. The atlas is available page-by-page from the Library of Congress, but you can download it in bulk here.[Thanks BoingBoing!] Continue reading
February 2010 Lost Docs Report and Appeal
February 2010 marked the first month where the only documents posted to the Lost Docs Blog were receipts submitted during that month or during the last week of the preceeding month. We also established a new blog category that we hope we will not need to use very much. That category is "Explanation Needed" and if you need an explanation, see my blog entry about it. Now on to the February 2010 Lost Docs Report and Appeal REPORT In February 2010, we posted 27 "lost docs" e-mail receipts sent by GPO to the librarians who reported these missing documents. These civic minded librarians in turn e-mailed us their receipts. How many reports did GPO receive? Only they know, but the more people who send their fugitive docs e-mail receipts to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info, the more accurate our count will be. Of these 27 reported items, two items have been cataloged by GPO since the initial report. You can view this list by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/found/ and looking at the postings with February 2010 dates. We are appreciative of these new records. In our view, six of the items reported to GPO and posted to the blog in January were either out of scope for the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) or were already in the catalog. You can view these items by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/false/ and looking for items with February 2010 dates. In three of these "false positive" cases, it looks like GPO had received the tangible item near the published date of the item and cataloged an electronic equivalent, but did not distribute the tangible item to the Federal Depository Library Program. This may or may not be in accordance with GPO SOD 301 which states that budget permitting, tangible documents will be offered when both tangible and online formats are available. With the available information in these three item CGP records, it is unclear whether GPO made a conscious, budget related decision to not offer these publication or just forgot to send them out. We encourage GPO to begin putting notes explaining why a given item was not distributed to the FDLP into the item's bibliographic record. If you are interested in viewing this new category of publication, visit http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/explain/ and look for items with February 2010 dates. As I stated in the post introducing the "Explanation Needed" category of the Lost Docs blog, we strongly encourage people with instances of CGP cataloged but non-distributed federal documents to use GPO Help and not GPO's Lost Docs form. APPEAL If you like the concept of a public listing of fugitive documents reported to GPO, there are a number of easy ways to help us:
- If you report a fugitive document to GPO, send your e-mailed receipt to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info. We welcome any item reported to GPO in the past month. It is best if you can send us the receipt the same day you get it from GPO. Some e-mail programs will support auto-forwarding. If so, please consider autoforwarding items where the subject contains "lostdocs submission."
- Visit the blog at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info and comment on the listed items. Comments can include -- Did your library receive the item? Did you find it in the CGP? Do you think the item is out of scope for the CGP? Did you report the item as well and so on.
- Post the blog link to your website or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
- Subscribe to the blog feed at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/feed/ or better yet incorporate the feed into your website or blog.
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