"Often the most challenging part of an interaction with a reader is identifying his or her actual research question--which is reassuring on some level, since it is one of the few aspects of librarianship that seems to have remained constant during my entire career. You can't answer it until you know what she's asking for. It's also the hardest thing to train support staff to do--not to answer the obvious question, but instead to find out what the reader really needs." Jane Cramer, Government Publications & Microforms Librarian
"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself." Andy Warhol
Brooklyn College has the largest Federal depository in the borough of Brooklyn--much larger than the public library's. Thus, government publication issues are very important to us. The long anticipated transition to an electronic depository got a massive push this year when the Government Printing Office (GPO) appropriations bill cut funding drastically and specifically mandated the phasing out print editions for many titles. (As evidence of GPO's move to the electronic, in its 2001 Biennial Report to Congress on the Status of GPO Access http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/biennial/index.html the agency reported that it had recorded more than 355 million document retrievals in fiscal year 2001, an increase of 25% over the total number of retrievals for FY 2000.) Certain specific titles deemed "essential" will still be available in print, but the list of essential titles is still being hotly debated, as are the virtually non-existent provisions for archival versions of materials that will no longer exist in hard copy.
While the Documents community is coming to grips with the impact of the GPO budget cuts and the uncertain future of the depository program, it is also busy erecting new signposts on the information superhighway. Despite the move to the electronic, Brooklyn College added several thousand individual pieces to the collection this year, in microfiche, paper, and CD-ROM. This year saw less than a 25% reduction in print materials received, and the paperless depository has not yet arrived at Brooklyn College.
The tax season was largely online. Staff handed out approximated 3,500 IRS forms, down from more than 10,000 some ten years ago. The IRS and NYS tax sites worked well and easily supplied the obscure forms the Library no longer carries. In addition large numbers of users filed electronically and required no forms.
"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries." A. A. Milne
An unanticipated benefit of the 2001 shelfreading project was the discovery of a group of heretofore unknown Z SuDoc volumes. Initially librarian Jane Cramer thought they were old bibliographies that had somehow strayed from the general collection, but then she opened one and read "published by order of the Secretary of State, 1815." According to the Catalog of U.S. Public Documents 1789-1909, our "find" is a quite rare reprint of primary source materials from the colonial and revolutionary governments. These volumes had been lost in the dark heart of the core stacks for years but are now safely shelved in the documents workroom. Records have been added to CUNY+ so that they are available to users once again.
Revising the Government Publications Web pages is especially urgent as more and more materials migrate to the Web. Librarian Jane Cramer will soon offer subject sections as well as agency links.
Government Publications and Microforms Librarian Jane Cramer created a special Web page of statistical resources to assist those writing institutional grants. The page was recently updated with more information about the IPEDS database and a bibliography of NY State materials from our collection dealing with higher education statistics.