Collection Development Policies: Government Documents

COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICY
Subject: GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS

Program Description

The Government Documents Collection is a 68% selective depository for Federal Documents and a full depository of Texas Documents. The collection also includes a law collection with both federal and Texas court cases and law. Government Documents support many programs at the university, including: Political Science, History, Engineering, Science, and Social Sciences. As the largest depository of United States government publications in the El Paso metropolitan area, the Government Documents department selects and makes available materials reflecting the information needs of the general public, particularly people residing in the Sixteenth Congressional District of Texas.

Description of Existing Collection
NCIP Code: 3a

The collection numbers over 800,000 publications. The University of Texas at El Paso was designated as a selective depository for U.S. Government publications in 1968. The collection includes excellent historical primary sources which were obtained through the depository exchange program and include an extensive Serial Set dating back to 1800 with the older issues in the 5th floor caged area. The section also maintains reference material to support the collections. We are particularly strong in the areas of geology, transportation, environmental science, law, and technology. The collection includes items from the El Paso City and County governments, demographic information from the Ysleta and El Paso Independent School Districts, and Texas state agencies which participate in the Texas State Library's depository program.

We subscribe to Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe, Congressional Universe, Government Periodicals Universe and NTIS databases as finding aids to Government Documents. We subscribe to Marcive for government documents records and our electronic documents are hyperlinked from the online catalog.

We have an extensive microfiche collection which includes Congressional hearings, declassified documents, and treaties. We have over 1200 CD-ROMs which are put in special cases and shelved with the regular depository materials. A wide variety of information from federal agencies is made available on the internet through links from our government documents web page.

Current Collecting Intensity
NCIP Code:  Adequate in the areas we select.

Other Resources

The closest Regional Depositories are in Austin and Lubbock, Texas and Albuquerque, New Mexico. We cooperate with the  El Paso Public Library and New Mexico State University in our depository selections to assure  access to a substantial amount of government information in the region.  The library’s Special Collections Department is a State Historical resource depository and receives local records of historical importance in micro and hard copy. When local resources are deselected in the documents area they are sent to Special Collections for review as possible archives.

Last updated: 12/19/05