LSCM Metadata and Collection Services Information Portal

Since October of 2018, the U.S. Government Publishing Office’s (GPO’s) Metadata and Collection Services (MCS) 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 MCS 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 MCS 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 MCS 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.

We have launched a six-month beta period to test a new process to generate MARC records for House and Senate bills and resolutions from the metadata of the GovInfo Congressional Bills Collection. LTS wishes to thank all staff members who have worked on this initiative and Programs, Strategy, and Technology and the Congressional Research Service for their great collaboration.

The records are in the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) and are available for downloading free of charge in MARC and MARC XML from the Congressional Bills and Resolutions Collection of the CGP Maintenance Files repository.

Please note: The records do not have OCLC numbers. In the near future, the OCLC numbers will be added in MARC 035 System Control Number Fields to the records, and the files will be re-posted on GitHub.

Our main goals are to provide access to these publications that LTS does not currently catalog and to develop a new product for the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) community. The first set of records are for the 256 measures published in August in GovInfo. The records may be retrieved by the CGP expert mode search: wlts=BILLSRESOLUTIONS. The records do not have Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) item numbers. The records include all types of House and Senate legislation:

• Bills
• Concurrent resolutions
• Joint resolutions
• Simple resolutions.

The publications are cataloged as integrating resources based on the introduced versions of the bills and resolutions. The intention of this treatment is to make the records a starting point for information about the versions that are published and the actions that occur during the legislative process. Therefore, the records are linked to the great resources on GovInfo (PURLs to the related documents page) and Congress.gov (URLs to the summary page) for each measure.

As part of the beta period, LTS is testing several procedures. The records contain fields that we have not used before, such as:

• MARC 500 Fields
  • Branch of U.S. federal government: Legislative branch.
  • Referred committee(s)
• MARC 650 Fields
  • Based on the jurisdictions of the referred committees, one or two Library of Congress Subject Headings and Congress.gov Policy Areas terms are added to the records.
  • When no referred committee is available in GovInfo at the time the records are processed, no 650 fields are added.

LTS estimates that we will produce approximately 10,000-15,000 records per Congress based on the number of bills and resolutions in the GovInfo collection, 103rd Congress (1993-1994)-118th Congress (2023-2024).  During the beta period, we will post monthly files of new records and cumulative files of previously posted records. After the beta period, our plan is to post quarterly files of new records and the cumulative files. We will post files of MARC and MARC XML records.

Sample records:

• Title: To Provide for the Conservation of the Chesapeake Bay, and for Other Purposes (H.R. 5133)
• Item Number: None
• SuDoc Class Number: Y 1.4/6:118-1/5133/
• CGP System Number: 1248829
• PURL to the EL version

• Title: To Direct Restoration and Protection Efforts of the 5-State Connecticut River Watershed Region, and for Other Purposes (H.R. 5216)
• Item Number: None
• SuDoc Class Number: Y 1.4/6:118-1/5216/
• CGP System Number: 1248955
• PURL to the EL version

• Title: Expressing Support for the Designation of July 2023 As American Grown Flower and Foliage Month (H. Res. 638)
• Item Number: None
• SuDoc Class Number: Y 1.4/7:118-1/638/
• CGP System Number: 1248828
• PURL to the EL version

As the beta period proceeds, we will periodically issue news alerts with updates about the initiative and will report data about the records and the process in this guide. We posted preliminary data on the first set of records in the LTS Data tab.

LTS would like to emphasize that this is the first iteration of the process. LTS will evaluate each group of records and will work to enhance the metadata. LTS is aware of several issues, such as the capitalization of title words and the broad application of the Library of Congress subject headings and Congress.gov Policy Areas terms. LTS welcomes recommendations and comments via askGPO inquiries in the “Cataloging/Metadata (Policies and Records)” category.

In October 2022, LTS began a test to assign Congress.gov Policy Areas terms in CGP records to provide access to the public policy content of Congressional publications. The Congressional Research Service uses the terms to categorize bills and resolutions on Congress.gov. We enter the terms in MARC 650 subject fields with the Subject Heading and Term Source Code “cgpa” in subfield 2.

We used all terms at least once except for Social Sciences and History and Sports and Recreation. We added at least one term in 1,672 records. We added two terms in 37 records. We used a total of 1,709 terms. The top five terms are:

• Government Operations and Politics (326)
• Public Lands and Natural Resources (152)
• Health (135)
• Crime and Law Enforcement (110)
• Economics and Public Finance (100)

CGP records with the Congress.gov Policy Areas terms may be retrieved by this expert mode search: WLTS=PUBPOLTERMS

For the full metrics, please visit the LTS Data tab.

News alert: Congress.gov Policy Areas Terms: Test Update.

Federal Government agencies are required by statutory mandate to provide Federal publications to the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) and Cataloging & Indexing Program (44 U.S.C. §§ 1710, 1902-1903). Document Discovery is one of the methods to notify GPO of new publications that agencies have produced. For more information, please visit the Dissemination Program page on GPO.gov.

We have compiled preliminary data about the CGP records for Document Discovery publications and posted the tables on the LTS Data tab. The data covers the period of May 2019 through June 2023. In that four-year span, we cataloged more than 3,100 Document Discovery publications. That number represents 4.3% of the approximately 73,000 records that we added to the CGP in the same time period.

A new group of United States Congressional Serial Set Serial Set Project MARC records is now available in the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP), and files of the records are available on GitHub. The record set includes 16,498 records (16,402 monographs and 96 serials) in various Congressional publication series, including House and Senate documents and reports. All records have Superintendent of Documents classification numbers for the Congressional publication and the Serial Set series and OCLC numbers. The records do not contain item numbers.

As of July 1, 2023, LTS has completed 30,209 records for the U.S. Congressional Serial Set Project. The records are available in the CGP and can be retrieved by the expert mode search: WLTS=SERIALSET? The records are available for downloading from LTS GitHub repositories in MARC UTF-8 and in MARC XML UTF-8. For more information about the project, please visit the Digitizing the United States Congressional Serial Set page on FDLP.gov.

We have posted several data tables about the records on the LTS Data tab. The data are provisional, and we will periodically refresh and update the data.

• General data
• Publication types
• Publication dates
• Congress numbers
• Presidential administrations

The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) posted a new set of all Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) MARC bibliographic records (1,051,805 as of April 2023) on GitHub. Brief bibliographic records, also known as brief bibs, are included in the files. The records are available in UTF-8 in the cataloging-records-all-cgp-utf8 repository and in MARC XML in the cataloging-records-all-cgp-marcxml repository.

For more details, please see the FDLP News Alert, LSCM GitHub Repositories Updates.

LTS staff completed their work to support the Cataloging and Metadata Contributor Partnership with the University of Minnesota (UMN) on June 6, 2023. We added 924 records to the CGP for historic, unreported publications held by UMN Libraries. For more details, please see the FDLP News Alert, University of Minnesota Libraries Cataloging and Metadata Contributor Partnership with GPO Adds 924 Records to CGP.

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:

• USDA Forest Service maps and Recreation/Visitors Guides
• 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.

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. 

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 the bibliographic records for Federal Government information products in the CGP. In December 2022, LTS refreshed the dashboard with data from the approximately 8,800 records cataloged by LTS staff members from January through June 2022. LTS will periodically add new data points and update the current ones.

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)”.

Library Technical Services staff members surpassed the 2,000th record milestone for GPO’s collaboration with the Law Library of Congress to catalog digitized and born-digital historical legal reports. The number of reports cataloged is 2,198 as of August 22, 2022, which is 55% of the approximately 4,000 reports to be included in the partnership. The collaboration began in April 2020. In July, the Law Library of Congress celebrated the milestone of releasing over 3,000 digitized and born-digital reports in the Legal Reports (Publications of the Law Library of Congress) collection.

We compiled several statistics about the geographical, topical, and chronological coverage of the reports. These data points are based on the 2,167 records cataloged as of Monday, August 8th.

You Might Also Be Interested In:

Law Library of Congress, In Custodia Legis Blog post, Celebrating over 3,000 Historical and Contemporary Legal Reports Now Online.

See more publications of the Law Library of Congress in the CGP by this expert mode search, gvd=“LC 42?”

Unreported publications are public information products that are not discoverable through the Government Publishing Office’s Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP). LSCM compiles monthly statistics of the number of unreported publications submissions received through askGPO and other methods and the number of CGP records for those submissions. LSCM also provides selected data about those publications, such as the issuing agency and publication date.

To view the monthly data and the cumulated data for April 2021 through May 2022, please see the Reporting Publications page on FDLP.gov.

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

Check out LTS news since 2022, including on unreported publications, cataloged digitized and born-digital historical legal reports from the Law Library of Congress, CGP files on GitHub, and more.