Federal Documents Advisory Committee
June 2017
HathiTrust intends to build a comprehensive collection of U.S. federal publications including those issued by GPO and other federal agencies. Federal documents digitized via HathiTrust members’ mass digitization projects continue to flow into our collection. We will build upon this mass digitized collection by implementing targeted collection development approaches. This document describes an initial set of collection development priorities.
The priorities were chosen after considering a number of criteria including: recommendations of previous working groups, widely known and consulted series distributed by the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO), priority titles selected for the collection profile project, titles commonly held by HathiTrust member libraries in print, synergies with the broader HathiTrust collection, synergies with other large collaborative endeavors related to federal documents, potential for HathiTrust Research Center use, and finally (and importantly), compelling and broader general interest for both member libraries and end users.
We consider these priorities to be a working version and a starting point, and intend for them to be revised and augmented through a consultative process as needed.
Acquire comprehensive runs of essential titles:
- Congressional Serial Set
- Congressional Record [bound]
- Statistical Abstract of the United States
- Economic Report of the President
- Foreign Relations of the United States
- United States Reports
- Large statistical yearbooks, such as Agricultural Statistics, etc.
- Agency annual reports
- All hearings
Acquire key agencies:
- EPA
- NOAA
- NASA
- Central Intelligence Agency
- Bureau of Indian Affairs
Acquire agencies within:
- Department of Transportation
- Department of the Interior
- Department of Agriculture
Investigate user needs and acquire based on those needs:
- HathiTrust Research Center key sets for researchers
- Collections built in the Collection Builder tool
- HathiTrust Selective Depositories’ collections