Federal Government Documents Tutorial
Federal Documents Shelflist
Until 1999 records contained in a card file were the only mechanism
we had to determine which documents our collection contained. Now our
document holdings, from 1986 (and for some specific titles earlier than that),
have been added to The Libraries on-line
catalog. You'll find these more recent documents in the catalog by
searching titles, keywords, and LC subjects as you would use to search for
books. But for older documents you still need the information contained
in the "shelflist."
The federal document shelflist is located on the second floor, in
the documents collection adjacent to the I 1.'s, in the southwest corner of
the second floor bookstacks. The documents shelflist was "frozen" in
1999: we ceased to add receipt information to the shelflist at that
time.
The cards in the shelflist contain a single reference to each
federal document in our collection, either on a separate card, or on some sort
of numbered/dated check-in card. The cards are arranged by SuDoc
number. The card file is called a shelflist because the cards are in the
same order as the documents are on the shelves.
To make use of the shelflist most effectively, you need to know a
document's SuDoc number, and - most commonly - that is the piece of
information you lack when searching for a publication, or a subject, in a
library. The paper or electronic Monthly Catalog, described
below, is the best place to begin your search for federal government
documents. Once you have in hand the SuDoc numbers for titles of
interest, the shelflist will show you whether a specific document is in the
library, whether it's in paper in the document stack areas on the second
floor, in microfiche in the Microforms Room on the second floor, East Wing, or
in CD-Rom cabinets by the Reference Desk.
You need not use the shelflist if you've found call numbers for
documents using The Libraries on-line catalog.
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