Out of sight, out of mind: The state of government document collections and the need for awareness

Parker, June D.

doi:10.1016/0277-9390(93)90037-p

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…17 The tide shifted in the early 1990s, as it became apparent that stand-alone documents collections received little use. 18 Staffing and maintaining these lightly used collections with full time experts started to attract the attention of library administrators who were grappling with library budgets that had been shrinking for the last decade or more. 19 From the mid-1980s forward, case studies began to emerge about integrating documents collections and services with other library departments and services, 20 with the majority of stand-alone documents departments merging with the general reference department as opposed to other library units.…”

Section: Claudene Sproles and Anna Marie Johnsonmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Merger of Government Documents and Reference at a Mid-Size University: A 24-Year Retrospective

Sproles,

Johnson

2024

DttP

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T he University of Louisville (UofL) Libraries consists of the main library, Ekstrom Library, along with five branches. The Libraries are a member of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and possess approximately 2.2 million items. UofL has served as a Federal FDL Program. As of 2023, the University of Louisville Libraries' Government Documents Department and the Reference Department have been merged for 24 years, beginning in 1999.Several writers argued that the key to successful documents reference is knowledgeable staff and brisk user instruction of documents collections. 1 Maggie Farrell stated that a "merged reference center must 'intellectually' integrate the documents collection into reference services, library instruction, and library promotion activities." 2 She believed that integrated reference service would lead to higher documents use. So did this intellectual integration occur with the department mergers at the University of Louisville and what was the outcome when government documents became the responsibility of every librarian in the merged department? This paper explores how the University of Louisville Libraries handled the documents merger, what changes have occurred since the merger, and the state of the library's government documents reference services today.

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Section: Claudene Sproles and Anna Marie Johnsonmentioning

confidence: 99%