LSCM Library Technical Services Information Portal

We launched this resource as a portal to provide information and news about the ongoing work of the Library Technical Services staff, our initiatives, and our projects and major developments in the cataloging/metadata field that impact access to U.S. Federal Government publications.

We ask that you please send questions and suggestions to LTS by submitting an inquiry in the Cataloging/Metadata (Policy and Records) category via askGPO.

The first webcast (Overview) of the LSCM GitHub repositories webcast series is now available in the FDLP Academy.

• Speaker: Stephen Kharfen, Supervisory Librarian, Library Technical Services, Library Services & Content Management
• Learning outcomes: LSCM uses GitHub, the web-based computer source code sharing and publishing service, to offer resources based on the bibliographic records in the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) to Federal depository libraries. In this webcast series, Library Technical Services (LTS) staff introduce the goals of our GitHub program and the MARC record sets and other files that are available in our repositories. In upcoming webcasts, LTS staff will describe the American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian (AIANNH) Subject-Based Resources Collection and the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Subject-Based Resources Collection. 
• Duration: 8 minutes

Visit FDLP Academy for access to FDLP educational and training resources. All are encouraged to share and re-post information about these free training opportunities.

Since October of 2018, the U.S. Government Publishing Office’s (GPO’s) Library Technical Services (LTS) department has been cataloging Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports. As of January 31^st, 2024, our catalogers achieved a major milestone by surpassing 10,000 records, completing cataloging for 10,230 reports. This is approximately 86% of all reports available on the CRS website. New workflows have greatly improved cataloging efficiency, including a collaboration with the CRS to generate monthly reports of new publications, and the development of an automated process to generate preliminary records and PURLs. These improvements have allowed GPO to stay current in cataloging newly published reports each month.

The records can be retrieved in the CGP by this expert mode search: wlts=CRSREP. For questions about the records, contact us via askGPO, and use the category, Cataloging/Metadata (Policy and Records). The records are available in the Congressional Research Service Reports collection of the CGP on GitHub repository. The CRS reports website can be found at crsreports.congress.gov.

We compiled preliminary data on the number of records for the publications of standing and permanent House, joint, and Senate committees and commissions. We provide the number of records per committee or commission by publication year for 2017-2023. The data includes online, print, and microfiche records.

Please note: We stopped cataloging microfiche records in 2023.The data table is available on the LTS Data tab.

LTS completed the cataloging of the Law Library of Congress Historical Reports. GPO would like to thank the Law Library of Congress for their wonderful collaboration on this project.

In April 2020, the Law Library of Congress, and the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) began a collaboration on a multi-year project to catalog thousands of digitized and born-digital historical legal reports. The Law Library of Congress digitized the reports, and LTS cataloged the reports. The total number of reports is 3,927. In the near future, we will update the Law Library of Congress Reports collection of the CGP on GitHub repository with files of the records. Also, we will post data about the record set on the LTS Data tab. To retrieve the Law Library of Congress reports in the CGP, use this expert mode search, wlts=“LCLAW?”.

The Law Library of Congress will continue to alert GPO to the publication of new reports through GPO’s Document Discovery process. These records will be included in the GitHub collection.

For feedback and questions about the records, please submit an inquiry in the “Cataloging/Metadata (Policy and Records)” category via askGPO.