GUIDE TO U.S. GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS
GovInfo Home | How to Locate Government Documents | How to Read a SuDoc Number | How to Borrow Government Documents
Langsdale Library's government documents collection focuses on materials that support the University of Baltimore curriculum. Agencies that are well represented include the Departments of Commerce, Housing & Urban Development, Justice, Labor, State, and the Treasury. In addition, we procure many Federal Reserve Bank and Government Accounting Office (GAO) documents.
Many documents are available for free online; for an annotated list of Web sites, please go to the Government Documents - Online Resources page.
How
to Locate Government Documents
Many of the documents held at Langsdale appear as part of our Catalog
USMAI catalog. If you have the title or author of a particular document
in mind, look on Catalog USMAI first to find its location information.
(You may also happen to retrieve documents as part of your search results
when you do a keyword search.)
In Langsdale Library, the government documents are located on the second floor, across from Reference.
How
to Read a SuDoc Number
The call number you see will differ from that used for our regular books
and magazines. Documents are shelved by the Superintendent of Documents
system, abbreviated as SuDoc. Unlike our regular collection (which is
organized by topic), government documents are organized by agency.
SuDoc numbers always begin with a letter or letters combined with a number, then a period, then a number, then a colon -- this is the key identifier, or stem. The colon is followed by more numbers and/or letters.
| The letters at the beginning of the SuDoc number represent a specific agency, such as: | |
| C = Department of Commerce | PrEx or PREX = Executive Office of the President |
| HE = Department of Health and Human Services | S = Department of State |
| HS = Department of Homeland Security | T = Department of the Treasury |
| J = Department of Justice | Y = Congress |
Subagencies are assigned a number. For instance, the Census Bureau, an agency within the Dpeartment of Commerce, is given the number 3; that means all the Census Bureau publications have SuDoc numbers that start with C 3. Within a subagency, each series is also assigned a number. For example, the Census Bureau's U.S. Imports of Merchandise series is given the number C 3.278/2:. Each individual publication in a series is then assigned a unique number or alphabetical symbol based on year, volume, series number, or title. This unique publication number follows the colon. Thus, C 3.278/2:2004/7 is the SuDocs number for the July 2004 issue of U.S. Imports of Merchandise.
So, the first half of the number (up to the colon) identifies the agency and series, and the last half identifies the specific publication. Publications are filed alphabetically by letter and then numerically, first grouped by subagency, then by series, and finally, arranged alphabetically or numerically within each series.
NOTE: This is NOT a decimal system; the number after the period is a whole number.
| Decimal Order | SuDocs Order |
| C 1.1 | C 1.1 |
| C 1.11 | C 1.2 |
| C 1.2 | C 1.11 |
| C 1.234 | C 1.36 |
| C 1.36 | C 1.75 |
| C 1.75 | C 1.234 |
When
looking for these documents on the shelf, you will find it easiest to
concentrate on finding items with the same stem up to the colon; then,
look for the document which matches the rest of your number. If the
call number is the same to a certain point, then varies, the order is:
Years, Letters, Numbers.
(This section adapted from Ohio University Libraries'
SuDoc
Call Numbers page; accessed 2/25/05.)
How
to Borrow Government Documents
Langsdale's
government documents are available for public use in the library. However,
borrowing is limited to faculty, staff, and students in the University
System of Maryland.
Nearly all of the documents found in the Government Documents area may be checked out at the Circulation Desk on the first floor. First, though, bring the documents you would like to borrow to the Reference Desk in the center of the room on the second floor. (Note: This step is needed only for documents which do not have a circulation stamp indicating previous borrowing.)
The reference librarian at that desk will look at your selections to judge if any should be kept in-house as a reference item. CD-ROM and DVD-ROM titles from the government documents collection may also circulate, subject to the discretion of the reference librarian.
Borrowing periods for these CD-Roms and our other government documents are the same as for our regular book collection. For more information on borrowing, please see the Access to Materials page.
For help with government documents, please stop by the Reference Desk or call 410-837-4274. You can also e-mail us at langref@ubalt.edu.
How-to_GovDocs: 08/06 TFS