Sare, Laura

DttP Documents to the People

Texas A&M University

DttP: Documents to the People     Spring  2009 37
FEATURE
Library weeding involves selecting materials to be with-drawn so that a high-quality collection is maintained 
while providing space for new materials. Weeding is especially 
important for depository libraries now that so many docu-
ments are available online; often tangible copies in print or 
microfiche have been replaced by online revised editions. The 
superseded copies need to be withdrawn so that the documents 
collection remains current. Weeding also frees shelf space for 
new items, and can save money by not housing or preserving 
outdated materials. 
I have worked at two federal depository libraries. Both 
were selective depositories, meaning that the libraries chose 
specific item numbers that represented groupings of materials 
the libraries wanted to make available in their collections. By 
contrast, regional libraries must accept all items distributed  
by GPO.
West Texas A&M University
The first library I worked at, Cornette Library at West Texas 
A&M University, became a depository in 1928. It selected 50 
to 60 percent of all the items available through the depository 
program. In 2001, the FDLP inspected Cornette Library and 
suggested that the print collection be weeded. Up to that time, 
only revised titles listed in the Superseded List (purl.access.gpo.
gov/GPO/LPS22813) had been weeded on a limited basis. 
I was familiar with the federal depository print collection 
because I had recently helped shift many sections of it after 
we installed additional shelving. Seeing areas with revised and 
obsolete documents while shifting made me wonder if they 
were still of value. 
Before weeding could begin, parameters needed to be 
developed. One decision was to keep any publication with 
statistics, because those are used for historical purposes. Also, 
specialty areas determined by the Government Documents 
Department’s collection development policy were not weeded. 
For example, items about Texas, or those supporting the uni-
versity curriculum in agriculture and education were kept. 
Primary resources were also not weeded. The needs of public 
users were also considered—most of their questions were for 
legal or tax information. In some cases, items that were easier 
to use in print than in other formats were kept on the shelves. 
All of these considerations were in addition to the weeding 
guidelines outlined in the FDLP Handbook requiring that only 
items older than five years could be withdrawn from the col-
lection, and items not superseded had to be offered to other 
depository libraries before withdrawing (purl.access.gpo.gov/
GPO/LPS89341, Chapter 5.14).
After establishing what not to weed, criteria for items 
for removal were created. Because the collection for the most 
part had never been weeded, many revised editions had never 
been withdrawn. Most of them were annual informational 
pamphlets sent out by agencies to describe their services to 
the public. In most cases, only the most recent pamphlet was 
retained. 
Other items involved a change in SuDoc numbers. 
Sometimes a revised edition is given a new SuDoc number, 
making it necessary to find and weed the old edition with the 
earlier SuDoc number. The best example of this is the Medical 
Supply Catalog. It has been under four different SuDoc stems: 
HE 1.64, HE 20.302:M 46, HE 20.5002:M 46, and HE 
20.9002:M 46. I identified these titles when I was working 
on a government documents serials project updating holdings 
after the library’s ILS migration. Sometimes the MARC records 
in the catalog or in WorldCat would show the earlier stems for 
serials, but often the information was not complete, so it was 
labor-intensive to follow the changes in SuDoc numbers and 
then to update the catalog records. 
Time-sensitive or ephemeral materials, such as calendars, 
telephone directories more than five years old, or forms with 
expiration dates, were immediately pulled. Also targeted for 
withdrawal were manuals for internal agency use that were 
twenty years old or more. I chose the twenty-year threshold 
A Tale of Two Depositories
Weeding Federal Depository Collections
Laura Sare
38 DttP: Documents to the People     Spring  2009
Sare
because these manuals showed no usage statistics and they 
often discussed computer hardware and software technologies 
that were no longer in use. 
Another criterion used was check-out status. From the 
mid-1980s, government documents that were checked out of 
Cornette Library were added to the online catalog. Starting in 
1995, all government documents received were cataloged into 
the OPAC. A pre-1995 document that had not been checked 
out by 2001 was a likely candidate for weeding unless it had 
historical or statistical information. Following these criteria 
meant looking at each document, one shelf at a time. It was a 
slow process that only freed up an inch or two of space on each 
shelf, but it did give the collection some breathing room. On 
a positive note, this exercise was an excellent way to become 
acquainted with the historical print collection. 
One issue developed with titles published in the 1980s 
and 1990s that had switched formats from paper to microfiche. 
This involved verifying if certain old print documents had a 
microfiche version. If the title had switched to a microfiche 
format, it was necessary to see if the latest edition was still in 
microfiche or was now online. This is a good project for stu-
dent workers, who searched for the titles online for me, and it 
was a good training exercise for them as well. Out-of-date print 
editions continued on microfiche were withdrawn and current 
microfiche titles were pulled if they were available online. 
The first area I chose to evaluate were items published by 
the Health and Human Services agency—recommended by the 
nursing liaison librarian. These items were chosen because the 
West Texas A&M Nursing Department wanted only current 
materials in the library collection due to accreditation stan-
dards. Many manuals from the 1960s and 1970s with outdated 
medical practices were removed, while documents with statis-
tics were retained for their historical value. 
Also evaluated were items published by the Internal 
Revenue Service. Access to all forms and instructions is now 
online. One consideration was whether the public would prefer 
to continue to have access to some forms in a paper format. 
Some paper forms were duplicated by other publications such 
as the Reproducible Copies of Federal Tax Forms and Instructions 
(SuDoc no.: T 22.57:1132 L). Duplicates could be weeded. 
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DttP: Documents to the People     Spring  2009 39
A Tale of Two Depositories
Other forms were superseded by an online edition, but no 
one had withdrawn the last edition of the print version, which 
often dated from the mid-1990s. 
I also found other odds and ends, such as individual 
copies of executive orders of the president that were dupli-
cated in either the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 3, The 
President (SuDoc no.: AE 2.106/3:3/) or the Public Papers 
of the Presidents of the United States (SuDoc no.: AE 2.114:). 
These individual sheets were weeded because of their poor 
condition—they were printed on old acidic paper and were 
literally falling apart. This discovery led to another criterion for 
withdrawing items. If the document was disintegrating, was 
the information in it necessary for the collection? If it was, a 
copy was made on acid-free paper for retention. The original 
was then withdrawn as photocopying usually destroyed it. 
The next criterion for weeding focused on agency changes. 
For example, the Social Security Administration (SSA) used 
to be part of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and 
Welfare (HEW). Many of the HEW documents were super-
seded by SSA documents, but had never been weeded. Often 
the documents had the same internal agency assigned publi-
cation number, which made weeding easier. The same thing 
happened with the Coast Guard. It began under the Treasury 
Department, was moved to the Transportation Agency, and 
now resides under Homeland Security. The Guide to U.S. 
Government Publications was a useful tool in tracing these 
agency changes, making it possible to withdraw all of the  
previous editions not needed.1
These weeding criteria worked well and gave me a greater 
knowledge of older materials in the collection. But these meth-
ods only gained a few inches of space on each shelf. More 
growth room was required. In order to create more space, it was 
necessary to look at major print sets. One major print set evalu-
ated was from the Census Bureau. Prior to the 1980 census, 
block-level statistics of all fifty states for several decades had 
been collected by Cornette Library. This in-depth level of statis-
tics for states outside of the local five-state area was never used 
by patrons. By withdrawing the block-level items of the other 
forty-five states, several feet of free shelf space was created. The 
items were offered on the Needs & Offers (N&O) List (purl 
.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS2045). The statistical booklets were 
highly coveted on the N&O list because many depository librar-
ies needed to replace missing copies or wanted to add second 
copies of the states they collected. It was labor-intensive, but 
fortunately student workers were available to create the lists. 
Another method to gain shelf space was to purchase 
microfiche to replace some print volumes of the Congressional 
Record (SuDoc no.: X 1.1:). The library had obtained many 
volumes of the Congressional Record before it became a deposi-
tory. Even though they suffered a fire in 1914 and were dam-
aged, the books were still kept, filling about fifty linear feet 
of shelf space. The deteriorating volumes were replaced with 
microfiche as soon as funds became available. Withdrawing 
these print volumes finally provided the growth space the 
department needed. 
Texas A&M University
My current position is at the Sterling C. Evans Library at Texas 
A&M University. This federal depository had not been signifi-
cantly weeded in several years, beyond withdrawing replaced 
editions on the Superseded List. This collection is much larger 
than Cornette’s, with an 85 percent selection rate of FDLP 
materials. Yet both libraries required weeding in the areas of 
revised editions, SuDoc, and agency changes. 
Many of the same criteria developed at Cornette applied 
to Evans. For example, check-out status could be used to evalu-
ate items. Evans began cataloging government documents in 
the online catalog back in the late 1980s. By applying the same 
rule, if an item had not been used or checked out in more 
than twenty-five years and contained no historical or statistical 
information, it was withdrawn. 
There were some differences between the two collections. 
The Evans collection contained multiple copies of documents 
acquired either through multiple purchases for the various ref-
erence desks or as gifts. The new policy dictates that duplicate 
copies go on the N&O lists, because the library needs only one 
copy for historical purposes. These duplicates freed up a signifi-
cant amount of space. For example, the library had a complete 
set of ERIC microfiche from the Department of Education, 
but also received some ERIC microfiche through the deposi-
tory program. By withdrawing all of the depository fiche, an 
entire cabinet of microfiche was emptied. Another difference 
between the libraries affected the weeding of Evans. Texas 
A&M is a research institution; therefore, there are many more 
subject areas that require research-level collections to support 
the university curriculum, so these areas were weeded sparingly 
if at all. 
The biggest difference in the libraries was that Evans needed 
to free more space than Cornette Library, but weeding was dif-
ferent because the collection was still primarily paper based. The 
main weeding criterion for this library was to rely on the online 
access to government information through the GPO Access 
website (www.gpoaccess.gov). Because current titles were avail-
able online, the item selection process for Evans was drastically 
changed from print to electronic versions. Now such titles as the 
Federal Register (purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS1756), Public  
40 DttP: Documents to the People     Spring  2009
Sare
and Private Laws of the United States (purl.access.gpo 
.gov/GPO/LPS5052), and others are no longer received in 
print. This switch from print to online is sanctioned by the 
FDLP in the document Substituting Electronic for Tangible 
Versions of Depository Publications (www.fdlp.gov/collections/
collection-maintenance/141-substitution-guidelines). Since 
most major titles in GPO Access are also archived online back 
to 1994 or 1995, current plans are to weed the print or micro-
fiche back to their online start dates. Many of these documents 
are also available through vendor databases the library subscribes 
to or through other federal government sites such as the Library 
of Congress legislative website Thomas (thomas.loc.gov). 
Recommendations
To begin a weeding project, choose a few agencies as a small 
project and shelf-read those sections. Learn about the docu-
ments the agency produces and how publications change over 
the years. Then start to weed revised editions, duplicate copies, 
and outdated materials. When in doubt, keep it. Make a list 
of questionable documents and monitor their use for a speci-
fied time. After the period of time determined has passed, go 
back and decide if the documents need to go or stay, based on 
whether they were used in the trial period. 
When weeding begins, let patrons and library staff mem-
bers know what was weeded so they are aware of the changes. 
For example, they will need to know the different SuDoc 
numbers for some new editions. If there are alternative for-
mats, such as the online titles at GPO Access, a training ses-
sion, newsletter, or e-mail is helpful to library staff to know 
where to lead patrons to the new formats. Also, make sure the 
technical services staff have the time and space to work on the 
withdrawn items, especially if they will have to change holding 
and item records in the online catalog. Items may have to be 
withdrawn in stages. 
Weeding a depository collection can be intimidating. First, 
consider what types of documents and information patrons 
are using in the collection. Working a reference desk can help 
librarians get a feel for what is often needed and what is never 
requested. Also, ask other reference desk staff for their opin-
ions. Often they know of areas that can be weeded.
If the library does not have one, develop a solid collection 
development plan for government documents. It is the best 
place to state the criteria and parameters clearly, and to provide 
background information on the decisions that led to them. 
This will also be very helpful to the next documents librarian 
who will have background information about changes that 
have been made in the collection. 
Weeding is especially important now that so many revised 
documents are available in an online format. Superseded tangi-
ble copies in print or microfiche need to be withdrawn so that 
the collection is not dated. Weeding frees up space necessary 
for new items, and can save money by not housing or preserv-
ing unneeded items. This satisfies library directors’ priorities, 
and makes reference staff confident that they are providing the 
most current information to patrons. Finally, weeding is one 
factor in ensuring that the collection continues to be of the 
highest quality. 
Laura Sare, Government Information Librarian, Texas 
A&M University, lsare@tamu.edu.
References
Donna Batten, ed., 1. Guide to U.S. Government 
Publications, 2009 (Detroit: Gale, 2009).
Give to the Rozkuszka Scholarship
The W. David Rozkuszka Scholarship provides financial assistance to an individual who is currently working with govern-
ment documents in a library and is trying to complete a master’s degree in library science. This award, established in 1994, 
is named after W. David Rozkuszka, former documents librarian at Stanford University. The award winner receives $3,000.
If you would like to assist in raising the amount of money in the endowment fund, please make your check out to 
ALA/GODORT. In the memo field please note: Rozkuszka Endowment.
Send your check to GODORT treasurer: Jill Moriearty, General Reference, Marriott Library, University of Utah, 295 
South 1500 East, 1738A, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112-0860
More information about the scholarship and past recipients is at the GODORT Awards Committee website (wikis.ala 
.org/godort/index.php/Awards).


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A Tale of Two Depositories: Weeding Federal Depository Collections

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A Tale of Two Depositories: Weeding Federal Depository Collections

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