This summer, the library is moving our government documents back to Milne in preparation for building renovations in Fraser. The loss of the space in Fraser gave us opportunity to work with faculty across several disciplines in a re-evaluation of this collection. “We know that there just isn’t enough space to bring everything back to Milne. However, most of the material in this collection is available online. In fact, over 95% of materials currently published by the Government Printing Office are freely available in full-text online,” said Justina Elmore, Coordinator of the Government Documents Collection. “We spent last semester working with faculty to determine what and how much of this collection we could, and have room to, retain.”
Now that the size of the collection has been reduced to just the government documents that our patrons actually use, the library has begun the process of moving them back to Milne. Additionally, Milne Library will continue to offer quick delivery via IDS for any deselected items that are not yet online, should the need arise. Luckily, there are two Federal Depository libraries in the area from which to draw.
Bringing these materials back to Milne will make finding and using government documents easier. Most of the material will become part of the general collection, allowing us to reduce the number of places a researcher must look in order to find materials on a particular topic.
