LSCM Library Technical Services Information Portal: Archived News Items

In March 2022, Library Services & Content Management’s Federal Depository Support Systems (FDSS) and Library Technical Services (LTS) collaborated on the creation and launch of the CGP Data Dashboard to visualize various aspects of CGP bibliographic records and to tell stories about Federal Government information, the Federal Depository Library Program, and LSCM’s work.

LTS has refreshed the dashboard with data from the approximately 8,800 records cataloged by LTS staff members from January through June 2022:

• Chronological coverage
• Geographic coverage
• Issuing agencies
• Unreported publications (records cataloged in fiscal year 2023).

LTS will periodically add new data points and update the current ones.

Please send us your feedback and questions by submitting an inquiry in the “Cataloging/Metadata (Policy and Records)” category via askGPO. 

On October 17, 2022, Library Technical Services launched a three-month test to assign terms from the Congressional Research Service’s Congress.gov Policy Areas terms list, which CRS uses for bills and resolutions on Congress.gov, in Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) records for Congressional publications. The terms provide a high-level facet that enhances the discoverability of our records and the identification of publications. We enter the terms in MARC 650 fields with the new MARC Subject Heading and Term Source Code, cgpa, in subfield 2. The records with the terms may be retrieved by this CGP expert mode search: wlts=PUBPOLTERMS.  The fields can be seen in the MARC view of the records.

Example: CGP System No. 001203788

Women Who Worked on the Home Front World War II Memorial Act : report (to accompany H.R. 3531).

We have compiled preliminary data about the records that LTS staff members have cataloged in the first month of the test (10/17-11/28). LTS staff members have added terms to records for 299 publications. They have used 29 (90.6%) of the 32 terms in the list.

After we conclude the test period, we will analyze the results and determine our next steps. Our goal is to enhance our records with this new metadata element that reflects a key characteristic of U.S. Federal Government publications.

Please submit your feedback and questions via askGPO in the category, “Cataloging/Metadata (Policy and Records)”.

At the request of the FDLP community, LTS has recently cataloged the websites of the House and Senate committees. LTS compiled data about the websites of the committees, commissions, and other entities and reviewed the harvesting and archiving of the websites by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the Library of Congress. Based on the data, LTS formulated a plan to create bibliographic records for the websites.

LTS staff members completed the records for the 57 current committees and other entities on June 24, 2022. They cataloged 49 new records and adapted eight OCLC records. Most of the records contain a PURL to the live site and a PURL to NARA’s landing page of harvests conducted at the end of the 109th Congress (2006) through the 116th Congress (2020).

In the expert search mode of the CGP, you can use a local field search to retrieve all of the records: wlts= COMMSWEB. 

We ask that you please send your questions and suggestions to us by submitting inquiries in the “Cataloging/Metadata (Policy and Records)” category via askGPO. 

Donna Kraemer, Library Technical Services Supervisory Librarian, presents a webcast on basic GPO cataloging. Viewers are introduced to basic cataloging and classification principles, with references to instructional guidance used during GPO’s cataloging of federal government publications. The webcast also covers GPO’s best practices including determining if a document is “in scope” of the Federal Depository Library Program. In parts two and three, the viewers have an opportunity to watch a demonstration of online monograph titles being cataloged in the OCLC Connexion bibliographic utility, the final bibliographic record(s) being exported to the GPO ILS and displayed in the Catalog U.S. Government Publications (CGP).

Link: Exploring Cataloging of Federal Government Documents at GPO

LTS staff members have surpassed the 3,000-record milestone in the Law Library of Congress Digital Reports Project. As of March 31, 2023, they have cataloged 3,103 records, which represents 75% of the approximate total of 4,000 reports.

The Library Technical Services department recently established that the following types of material shall receive serial treatment:

• Bureau of Land Management maps and brochures
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau informational ephemera (calendars, conference materials, newsletters, posters, and recipes)
• Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) informational ephemera (calendars, conference materials, newsletters, posters, and recipes)
• Health and Human Services (HHS) informational ephemera (calendars, conference materials, newsletters, posters, and recipes)
• National Park Service maps and brochures
• U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service maps and brochures

In the past, these publications had often been cataloged repeatedly as monographs, only to later be cataloged as ‘frequently-revised-monograph’ serials (aka ‘serials-of-convenience). Since the pattern in publication was clear, and had been observed for many years, we decided to establish the following guidelines:

• All of the above material must be cataloged as ‘serials of convenience’.
• They may be cataloged as a serial with only one or two issues having been published, and regardless of publication frequency (i.e. greater than 5 years between issues is acceptable …).
• When cataloging this material as a ‘serial-of-convenience’, the record should be authenticated as a CONSER record.
• Catalogers are encouraged to consult with their supervisors should further guidance be needed.

We will be updating the Cataloging Guidelines with this new information as soon as possible.

In June 2022, Library Services & Content Management launched the LSCM Library Technical Services (LTS) Information Portal LibGuide. We have just completed our first major review and finished a number of revisions to the content and organization of the tabs. On the Cataloging/Metadata Initiatives tab, we added brief items on several LTS projects, Congressional Research Reports, FRASER (Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research), and the Historic Shelflist. On the Cataloging Resources tab, we included several new links to resources, such as BIBFRAME, and re-arranged the links in alphabetical order to facilitate their use. We will periodically conduct such reviews and make changes as we continue to develop and enhance the LibGuide.

We ask that you please submit your comments and suggestions via askGPO in the “Cataloging/Metadata (Policy and Records)” category.

In 2017, LSCM launched the CGP on GitHub repository to post monthly files of new and changed bibliographic records of the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) for downloading free of charge. Please see the “Obtaining Files” section of the Sources of GPO Cataloging Records page on FDLP.gov for information on the steps to download records.

In December 2022, LTS undertook a thorough review of its GitHub repositories and collections and completed a series of actions for this refresh:

• Linked each repository to the others to facilitate navigation of our GitHub resources
• Updated the descriptions of the repositories and collections
• Re-processed the records for each collection of the CGP on GitHub repository except for the CGP Records with Updated PURLs and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) collections
• Added record display pages to most CGP on GitHub collections to provide direct access to the publications with online versions

We will continue to make additional enhancements and improvements to the repositories and collections and periodically conduct complete reviews.

Please send us your feedback and questions about the repositories and collections by submitting an inquiry in the “Cataloging/Metadata (Policy and Records)” category via askGPO.