College and Research Libraries DAWN McCAGHY and GARY R. PURCELL Faculty Use of Government Publications The widespread differences which exist among libraries in their treat- ment of United States government publications suggest a need for ad- ditional study of the users of these materials. The findings in a survey of faculty use of government documents at Case Western Reserve University indicate ·how document users locate the materials they need, the users' familiarity with standard indexes to public docu- ments, the age of government publications most frequently consult- ed, and other patterns of use. THE ACQUISITION of U.S. government publications through the depository sys- tem places the recipient library in the favorable. position of automatically and systematically receiving a significant number of these publications without any financial outlay for their purchase. At the same time the library is con- fronted with a most critical problem which, unresolved, can obviate or at least diminish any advantage the library may have as a depository. Simply stated, this is the problem of how to organize and service government publications in order to maximize their use and useful- ness. Several approaches to organizing and servicing documents collections are cur- rently in general use by depository li- braries. There is clearly widespread dis- agreement among libraries as to th·e rel- ative merits of the. various organization- al schemes. Evidence of this was pre- Mrs. McCaghy is history reference li- brarian, Bowling Green State University Li- brary, Bowling Green, Ohio. Mr. Purcell is director, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Tennes- see, Knoxville. sented when the Documents Office con- ducted a survey of the existing deposi- tory libraries in 1947 and found that of the 471 libraries responding, only 17 4 used the Superintendent of Documents classification system, while the remain- der used a number of other approaches or, as in the case of sixty-eight libraries, no organizational system whatsoever. 1 The widespread lack of agreement among depository libraries as to the most appropriate way to treat govern- ment publications suggests that libraries base this decision on differing sets of priorities. These priorities are identified by Ellen Jackson as the arguments sup- porting one or another organizational scheme. 2 The one factor which appears to be given only minimal consideration in de- termining an appropriate organizational scheme for government publications is the way in which people actually use public documents. A search of the lit- erature from 1943 to the present reveals that no study showing use characteristics and needs related to government publi- cations has ever been reported. Most of the literature is concerned with the ac- quisition, organization, or administra- /7 . '· 8 I College & Research Libraries • January 1972 tion of documents, not with their use. The familiar questions of a separate vs. an integrated collection, complete vs. partial cataloging, and the Superinten- dent of Documents vs. some other classi- fication scheme are all debated in the absence of any definite knowledge of the characteristics and behavior of the users. It is likely that in most cases the decision by new depository libraries as to which organizational scheme to use is based on an examination of this liter- ature rather than on a study of the needs of the users of the library. The authors of this paper studied patterns of faculty use of government publications at one depository library (Freiberger Library at Case Western Re- serve University) in order to obtain data which could be considered in de- termining the future treatment of the documents collection. The study is re- ported here with the expectation that it might serve as a stimulus for other studies of the users of government pub- lications and as a reference point to which such studies can be compared. Data were gathered by means of a questionnaire designed to answer these questions: 1. What percentage of the faculty uses the documents collection? 2. How frequently is the collection used by faculty members? 3. How do users find the materials they want? 4. How satisfied are users ·with the as- sistance rendered by the library staff? The questionnaire was distributed to one-third of the faculty members in the social sciences and the humanities, a sample which was drawn systematically from the faculty directory. Faculty members in the sciences were not in- cluded because Freiberger Library is the central social science and humanities li- brary for the campus and has few hold- ings in the natural sciences. Of the 116 persons who received questionnaires, 103, or 89 percent, completed and re- turned them. THE SAMPLE Fifty-seven respondents (55 percent) were social science faculty members; thirty-nine ( 38 percent) were in the hu- manities; and seven ( 7 percent) in fine arts. The thirteen nonrespondents in- cluded four members of the law school, three from political science, two from the social sciences, and one each from education, psychology, speech, and his- tory; or, eleven social science faculty members and two from the humanities. The breakdown of the faculty rank of the respondents was as follows: thir- teen ( 13 percent) were lecturers; eight ( 8 percent) instructors; twenty-nine ( 28 percent) assistant professors; twenty- nine ( 28 percent) associate professors; and twenty-four ( 23 percent) full pro- fessors. Among the thirteen nonrespon- dents there were one lecturer, four in- structors, two assistant professors, one associate professor, and five full profes- sors. THE RESULTS Table 1 shows that only one faculty respondent ( 1 percent of the total sam- ple) uses the documents collection as often as two · or three times a month. Fourteen persons ( 14 percent) use it once or twice a semester, and twenty- four ( 23 percent) once or twice a year. While the large majority (sixty-four persons or 62 percent) never use the col- lection at all, twenty-one respondents indicated that they use government pub- lications in some other library and twen- ty-eight stated that they ~ obtain their own personal copies of government publications. The reasons for infrequent use of the documents collection are given in Table 2. [Respondents could check more than one response category, so the total will not equal 100 percent. Percentages are based on ari N of 87, the number of Faculty Use of Government Publications I 9 TABLE 1 FREQUENCY OF UsE oF DocUMENTS DEPARTMENT . 2-3 times/month 1-2 times/semester 1-2 times/year Never Total N 1 14 24 64 103 TABLE 2 % 1 14 23 62 100% REASONS FOR INFREQUENT USE OF DocuMENTS DEPARTMENT N % Unaware of its existence 12 14 Unfamiliar with its organization 21 24 Use government publications 21 24 in other libraries Obtain own copies 28 32 Do not need government 40 46 publications Other 10 12 TABLE 3 FREQUENCY OF USE OF DocuMENTS DEPT. COMPARED TO FREQUENCY oF UsE OF LmRARY IN GENERAL Frequency Documents Library 2-3 times/month 1 ( 1%) 68 (66%) 1-2 times/semester 14 (14%) 17 ( 17%) 1-2 times/year 24 (23%) 10 (10%) Never 64 (62%) 8 ( 8%) Total 103 ( 100%) 103 (101%) persons who use the documents infre- quently ( once or twice a year) or not at all.] Of the eighty-seven persons who use the collection only once or twice a year or not at all, forty ( 46 percent) stated that they do not require govern- ment publications in their work. Twen- , ty-one respondents ( 24 percent) use gov- ernment publications at other libraries, and twenty-eight ( 32 percent) obtain their own personal copies. Twelve persons ( 14 percent) are un- aware of the existence of the, govern- ment publications collection in the uni- versity library and twenty-one persons ( 24 percent) are unfamiliar with its or- ganization. These categories suggest a need for more publicity about the avail- ability and the organization of govern- ment documents in the library. Comparing faculty use of the library in general with use of the documents collection in particular yields an inter- esting pattern (see Table 3). The fre- quencies of these two variables take op- posite directions; that is, while the li- brary in general is used by the majority of the faculty sample, such is not the case with the government documents de- partment. Cross-tabulation (see Table 4) shows that while there is a weak rela- tionship between the use of the library and the use of the documents collec- tion, fully 57 percent of the frequent users of the library never use the docu- ments collection. Table 5 shows that among the thirty- nine repondents who do use the docu- ments collection, eleven persons ( 28 per- cent) . require staff assistance more than 50 percent of the time; four ( 10 per- cent) require help from 25-50 percent of the time; fourteen ( 36 percent) less than 25 percent of the time; and nine ( 23 percent) not at all. Eight of the thirty-nine users ( 21 percent) feel some reluctance, for the reasons given in Ta- ble 6, in asking library staff members for assistance. However, most faculty users of the documents collection seem satisfied with the assistance rendered by the library staff. There were forty-four favorable responses and only ten un- favorable ones to the question asking about the staff's willingness and ability to provide assistance (see Table 7). (Respondents could check more than one response category. Percentages are based on an N of 39, the number of users of the documents department.) Users who do not generally require help in using the collection locate the publications they need in a variety of ways (see Table 8). (Respondents could check more than one response category. Percentages are based on an N of 23, the number of users of the documents I . I 10 1 College & Research Libraries • January 1972 TABLE 4 FREQUENCY OF UsE OF DocUMENTS DEPT. x FREQUENCY OF UsE oF LrnRARY Documents 2- 3 / month 2- 3 tUnes/month 1 ( 2%) 1- 2 times/ semester 13 (19%) 1- 2 times/year 15 (22%) Never 39 (57%) . Total 68 (100%) TABLE 5 FREQUENCY OF DOCUMENTS USERS NEED FOR STAFF AssiSTANCE N % More than 50% of time 11 28 25-50% of tiine 4 10 Less than 25% of time 14 36 Never 9 23 No Answer 1 3 Total 39 100% TABLE 6 REASONS FOR EIGHT USERS' RELUCTANCE IN AsKING FOR AssiSTANCE N % Question too elementary 1 12* Staff too busy 4 50 Staff unable to help 1 12* Other 2 25 Total 8 100%. TABLE 7 UsERs' OPINIONS OF LIBRARY STAFF N % Willing to help 27 69 Successful in locating suitable 13 33 materials Other (favorable) 4 10 Needed materials are not in 2 5 collection Staff not very accommodating 5 13 Seldom locate suitable materials 1 3 Other (unfavorable) 4 10 No answer 1 3 collection who require assistance less than 25 percent of the time.) The most frequently cited method is through cita- tions in the literature of the users' par- ticular fields of study. The library's pub- Library 1- 2/semester 1-2/year Never 1 ( 6%) 6 (35%) 3 (30%) 10 (59%) 7 (70%) 8 (100%) 17 ( 100%) 10 (100%) 8 ( 100%) lie catalog, the Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications and other special indexes, and browsing in the collection itself are the next most frequent means of locating relevant materials. Among the thirty-nine users of the collection, nineteen persons can use the Superintendent of Documents classifi- cation system to find items on the shelves, and thirteen cannot. If it can be. assumed that the seven persons who did not answer the question about the classification system are also unfamiliar . with it, the users are almost equally di- vided between those who can (nine- teen) and those who cannot (twenty) use the classification to locate a specific document. This lack of understanding of the scheme by which the documents collection is organized, combined with the percentage of users who require as- sistance (see Table 5), points to the need for a general reference staff which is well versed in all aspects of the docu- ments collection. The faculty's knowledge of the bib- liographic tools providing access to gov- ernment publications seems somewhat limited, though 58 percent of the per- sons who answered the question pertain- ing to catalogs and indexes are familiar with the Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications, which is the major tool (Table 9). ( Respon- d ents could check more than one re- sponse category. Percentages are based on an N of 45, the number of persons who answered the question.) Nearly I I Faculty Use of Government Publications I 11 half of them also know of the Price Lists, but familiarity with the other aids listed in the question is not extensive. It is interesting to compare this infor- mation with the ways in which users say they locate government publications. For example, although twenty-six per- sons indicate their familiarity with the Mpnthly Catalog, Table 8 shows that only ten actually use it to locate the pub- lications they need. The age of the government publica- TABLE 8 How SELF-SUFFICmNT UsERS LocATE DOCUMENTS N Public card catalog 9 Monthly Catalog 10 Special indexes and catalogs 10 Citations in the literature 20 Documents check-in file 2 Browsing in collection 11 No answer 2 TABLE 9 uSERS' FAMILIARITY WITH INDEXES TO GovERNMENT PuBLICATIONS N Monthly Catalog 26 Price Lists 20 Documents Catalog 3 Tables and Index 2 Ames 3 Poore 6 Checklist 6 Government-wide Index 11 Other special bibliographies 11 None of above 8 No answer 12 TABLE 10 AGE OF GovERNMENT PuBLICATIONS MosT OFTEN CoNSULTED N Less than a year old 7 1- 5 years old 13 6-10 years old 2 11- 20 years old Over 20 years old 5 First two categories above 13 First three categories above 3 No set pattern; age varies 8 % 39 44 44 87 9 48 9 % 58 44 7 4 7 13 13 24 24 18 27 % 14 26 4 10 26 6 16 tions most often consulted suggests that most users could rather readily locate the materials they seek in the Monthly Catalog (see Table 10). (Percentages are based on anN of 51, the number of persons who answered the question. ) Thirty-three ( 65 percent) of the fifty-one persons who answered the question per- taining to the age of needed publications most frequently seek materials pub- lished within the last five years, and thirty-eight ( 75 percent) need materials from the last ten years. A basic knowl- edge of how the Monthly Catalog works should enable these users to find the items they want. SUMMARY The purpose of this study was to de- termine patterns of faculty use of U.S. government publications in a depository library whose documents are housed in a separate collection. The results are based on a small sample of respondents in one particular situation, and their representativeness can be ascertained only by replication of the study in other libraries. We present our findings in the hope that they will suggest directions which further research in this area might take. In the library studied, the following patterns are evident from the data col- lected. L Fewer than half of the faculty re- spondents use the government docu- ments collection in the university li- brary. This does not mean, however, that overall faculty use of these materi- als is insubstantial; for 32 percent of the respondents indicated that they ei- ther use government publications locat- ed in some other library or obtain their own personal copies. This raises total use, regardless of location, to 65 percent of th~ total sample. 2 . . There is little correlation between faculty use of the library in general and of the documents collection in par- ticular. Frequency of use of the docu- 12 I College & Research Libraries • January 1972 ments collection tends to be low, with the majority of users consulting materi- als there only once or twice a year. 3. Three-fourths of the. respondents most often consult government publica- tions which have appeared in the last ten years. The major approach to these publications is through citations in the literature of the faculty members' own fields of study. This method was cited twice as often as any other method of locating documents, including the use of the public card catalog. The fact that most users do not consult the card catalog raises important questions about the necessity of cataloging government publications in a depository library which maintains a separate documents department and utilizes the Superinten- dent of Documents classification system. 4. In spite of a limited familiarity with the bibliographic apparatus of government publications and the classifi- cation scheme by which they are orga- nized, a majority of the faculty sample is relatively self-sufficient in using the documents collection. Even so, over one- fourth of them usually need staff as- sistance. Those who require such help are generally satisfied with the service they receive. 5. Almost all writers in the area of government publications agree that these materials are too often neglected by those who could profit greatly from them. The single most important reason for this neglect is probably a simple lack of familiarity on the part not only of potential users but also of many li- brarians. One-fourth of the respon- dents in this study were either unaware . of the existence of a separate docu- ments department in the university li- brary or unfamiliar with its organiza- tion and administration. Indeed, most of those who suggested methods of im- proving the documents collection ad- dressed themselves to the question of in- creasing users' awareness of it. Among their specific comments were: "Get out a brief statement on what is available, especially for student re- search." "More advertising." "Let -us-teachers become -mere aware of the materia 1 available, so that we c-- pass n this informationu11 to -eu students." "This questionnaire informs me that there are such things. This may be one step in the right direction." "Provide faculty and others with more information about the collection, its location, services, facilities, etc. Make sure competent personnel are in charge." Any well-planned efforts to imple- ment the above suggestions should re- sult in making the university library's documents collection an even more effec- tive and widely used resource for the entire campus community. REFERENCES 1. R. B. Eastin, "Let's Use Public Docu- ments!" Library Journal 74:1554-58 (I Nov. 1948). A survey conducted in 1969 h)[ Sally Bradshaw and Anne Blankenship of Weber State College Li- brary in Ogden, Utah found that docu- ment depositories continue to be as di- versified in their approaches to organiz- ing documents collections as reported earlier by Eastin. The results of the Bradshaw-Blankenship survey were re- ported in a letter to depository libraries which participated in the study. 2. Ellen Jackson, A Manual for the Admin- istration of the Federal Documents Col- lection in Libraries, Chicago: ALA, 1955, p.22- 32.