Mission Statement
The Documents Department of the
Main Library of
the University
of Illinois at Chicago is located in the 7th Congressional
District in the heart of Chicago. This Library was designated a
federal depository library in the Fall of 1957 and assigned
Depository Number 150. Its primary clientele is the faculty,
staff, and students of this university. Because of our location
just west of the Loop area, we are a major resource for corporate
users in the greater Chicago area, students and faculty from
other colleges and universities in Northeastern Illinois, high
school students, public libraries, and members of the general
public. UIC is the largest public university in this part of the
state, a comprehensive major research university offering degree
programs in many subject areas, and is looked upon as an
important resource for the other institutions of higher education
in this area. The Library is open to the public as well as the
university community.
Selection responsibility
The Documents Librarians make decisions as to what should be
selected as new items are offered. The Map Librarian decides
what cartographic materials should be added or withdrawn. The
staff also recommends non-depository and commercial products to
the University Library Bibliographers in the Collection
Development Department who determine availability of funds
especially for expensive items.
Annual updates of the item selections is handled by the
federal documents librarian by looking at all the "no's" to see
if we should reconsider and add some of them or if the item
sheets are incorrect. During the year considerations are made to
both add and delete items selected so additions can be done at
this annual update time. Deletions may be done at any time.
Subject areas and collection arrangement
UIC collects about 88% of the items selected. We collect
everything issued by Congress, the Census Bureau, Criminal
Justice materials, Energy Department (since we became the DOE
Regional Reading Room), State Department, the President and his
executive offices, Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Park
Service.
We collect all the census materials available for all
states, regions, parts of the country. Statistical publications
comprise an important part of the collection and are selected
when they are offered as are annual reports of all the agencies.
In cases where agencies permit choice by area and we don't
feel we need all the states, such as Soil Surveys, we select the
contiguous states to Illinois plus Michigan and Minnesota since
there are economic and general interests in these states as well.
We select directories unless they are very specific to one office
in another part of the country, such as IRS in Utah.
Categories of materials we are cautious about or don't
select are:
Posters unless they are from GPO, National Park Service,
or they seem to be good for displaying here in the
Library
Forms are generally considered on a case by case basis
except from IRS, Census Bureau, Bureau of Economic
Analysis, Bureau of Labor Statistics where we do select
them all
Specifications and standards because the Science Library
subscribes to a commercial service which includes many of
these. The depository sets are voluminous and incomplete
and require much maintenance.
Army Regulations because the University's ROTC department
acquires them and will permit patrons to consult them.
Army technical manuals were cancelled when we determined
that they now deal with trucks and other equipment
seldom requested. They also take a lot of space.
Environmental impact statements were great consumers of
space and generally dealt with other parts of the
country. If they are for this area, we try to acquire
them or if they will be of general interest such as the
Alaskan pipeline of some years back.
We arrange our collections by the Superintendent of
Documents Classification system for the most part. We do have a
separate Documents periodical collection where the periodicals
are arranged by title. We also have a special census area, in
which the publications are arranged by type of census and year.
The Population and Housing, and Economic censuses along with the
County Business Patterns and Annual Survey of Manufactures are
shelved there except for Chicago, Illinois, and United States
summaries which are kept behind our documents reference area for
preservation and heavy use.
Our documents from 1976 to the present are now included in
UICCAT, our online catalog for the whole library. Our call
numbers direct patrons to the Documents Department. Some of the
above special locations are being added to the entries as needed.
Microfiche locations are already included for the most part. We
purchased the Marcive tapeload service for those items we select.
Part of our collection is in storage in the basement of this
building due to lack of space in our department. Items requested
are paged on a regular basis and held for patrons. The Serial
Set along with the recent House and Senate reports and documents
are located in storage for their protection.
Formats
Paper is generally the first choice if we have an option.
We do select the House and Senate Appropriations Committees
hearings on microfiche because of their size and our space
problems. We depend on CIS to serve as the index to them. We
select the Federal Register in paper and later purchase the
microfilm version from a commercial publisher for space and
preservation considerations since it is printed on newsprint. We
also select the paper Congressional Record but since the bound
set is no longer issued to selective depositories, we must select
fiche for the permanent set.
We select the electronic versions of materials offered most
of the time. If we must choose one over the other, we consider
price of the electronic product over price of the paper version,
usability of the electronic and decide accordingly. Such as when
the U. S. Code was offered in paper, our use of it warrants paper
selection. We can and did purchase the CD-ROM later. These have
to be decided on a case by case basis. We also selected GPO
Access. And we will select other such products as they become
available.
We now have three public CD-ROM players so the CD's can be
installed as needed in addition to the ones already installed.
These can also be used for the floppy disks we have received.
We have several microform reader-printers in our microforms
unit of the department which will provide photocopies for a fee.
We also have a microfiche reader adjacent to the reference desk
for easy access to the PRF and other reference tools on fiche.
We have video players in the Art and Architecture Library which
can be used if needed. The A&A Library is in another building
located fairly close to Main Library.
Selection tools, non-depository items, and retrospective sources.
Subscriptions include the American Statistics Index (ASI)
along with the microfiche set of non-depository items since late
1979, ERIC microfiche sets, and the National Criminal Justice
Retrieval System's microfiche collection up through 1995. This
is updated as funds become available from our bibliographers. We
cancelled the GPO ERIC documents offered on deposit as they
duplicated our subscription documents, but were not nearly as
extensive. (For some reason they are included in our UICCAT
catalog and patrons have another access point to some of the ERIC
collection.)
We subscribe to the Documents Expediting Project (Doc. Ex.)
and are able to fill some gaps and replace missing issues through
them. We also receive shipments from them on a regular basis.
As we discover items on PRF that we need, we purchase them
through our deposit account with GPO. We also endeavor to secure
items listed on shipping lists which were not sent to us for some
reason, such as supply exhausted, no copies left for claiming,
etc.
We have newly established a deposit account with the Census
Bureau to purchase items not available through GPO.
We have an account with NTIS and purchase reports on request
from faculty, students, and staff. We do not purchase for
outsiders but provide ordering information so they may purchase
their own copies.
We have filled in important gaps in the collection by
utilizing exchange lists from other libraries, second hand book
dealers, gifts from others, etc. We purchase additional copies
from GPO through our deposit account, often calling the Chicago
GPO Bookstore which usually mails out the materials the next day
if they are in stock. We watch the daily press, GOVDOC-L, and
other sources and order titles we want and need.
Resource sharing
We belong to Northern Illinois Documents Librarians (NIDL)
and circulate materials to some of the universities which have
reciprical borrowing agreements with UIC. We arranged to have
other NIDL libraries select other states' TQM maps since we were
allowed to select only one state. We wanted to have contiguous
states available in the area. Some of the other libraries depend
on us for the energy fiche since we have the DOE Reading Room.
The Regional Library is about 200 miles from here, so isn't
readily accessable. We are also open seven days a week when
school is in session and have evening hours until 10 P.M. four
days a week, so are available to outsiders. We are in phone and
e-mail contact with other libraries also.
Access
Since UIC is a state university, the Library is open to the
public. Documents Department is housed in a very visible part of
the Library, the center of the 3rd floor, with both elevator
and stairway access. The microforms section in also on this same
floor. The department is open whenever the building is open with
student assistants in the evenings and on Sundays.
Much of the collection is in storage and is paged on a
regular schedule during the week. It is not open to the public,
but is located in the basement of the Main Library Building.
Weeding and Maintenance
If a publication states that it supersedes an earlier
edition, we usually pull the older one. However, we keep all the
older foreign country publications, such as Background Notes,
Country Studies, Overseas Business Reports, etc. because patrons
often wish to compare data from different time periods. We
consult the GPO superseded list but do not follow it slavishly
because it is not always correct. It lists some titles that are
not truly replaced by the new versions. If we replace a title
with a microform version, we will weed the paper version such as
the Code of Federal Regulations, the Federal Register, etc.
We bind periodicals and other publications, such as the
Census volumes, annual reports, and other important publications.
We bound many Congressional hearings and committee prints but
have run into problems since they are now in the UICCAT. We may
have to bind them separately instead of together by committee as
we did in the past.
We order new copies of materials that wear out, are lost, or
are mutilated if we can obtain them. We watch exchange lists as
well. And we also try to secure them from Doc. Ex. if available.
We will order photocopies of missing pages from other libraries
through InterLibrary Loan and have them tipped in by our Mending
and Repair Unit.
