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Survey to Identify Essential Titles for Public Use in Paper or Other Tangible Format

The reports above are organized by all respondents and by each library type, as specified in the Federal Depository Library Directory at http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/tools/ldirect.html. The recommendations of the nine law libraries in the FDLP “Special Libraries” library type are reported separately from the recommendations of the other special libraries and presented as “County Law Libraries.” County law libraries are not included in the “Special Libraries” report. Recommendations from “Academic Law,” “Federal Court”, and “State Supreme Court” are reported by library type but also have been combined with the recommendations from county law libraries into a composite report of the 4 law library types.

A total of 794 out of 1,270, or 62.5%, of Federal depository libraries responded to the survey. Respondents selected and ranked up to 10 titles from lists of 100 titles most selected by their library type as of March 2005. Only titles in tangible format in the List of Classes http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/pubs/loc/index.html were included on the lists. Lists for some library types included more than 100 titles because all titles tied for 100 th place were included. Respondents were allowed to “write in” up to 3 titles not included on the list for their library type. The original data is still available at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/essential/statistics.html. This includes 4 responses that were added after the survey closed because the libraries involved experienced technical difficulties during the survey.

The initial analysis shows only slight changes from the original data. Duplicate recommendations occurring due to variant spacing in the item or class number used in “write in” recommendations were consolidated. Also, recommendations for titles that have different items for different geographic areas were combined so that a recommendation for one geographic area was counted as a recommendation for the series as a whole. For example, the Soil Survey Reports (A 57.38/nos.:) is represented by 53 item numbers. Combining each recommendation for an individual geographic area of this series title resulted in a higher ranking for the series overall. Other series combined in this manner included the 7.5’ Series (USGS topographic maps, I 19.81:) and the Census of Agriculture (A 92.53/nos.:).

Where series merged to form a new series and items for previous series are still active to accommodate GPO’s processing and distribution of the remaining issues of the previous series, recommendations for the previous series have been combined to count as recommendations for the current series. Likewise, recommendations for titles published by the Office of the President of the United States that have separate classes for each administration were combined so that a title recommended with a class of PR 42 was counted as a recommendation for the same title with a class of PR 43. This recommendation is considered to cover future administrations as well. Recommendations for broad category classes, such as “General Publications” or “Handbooks, Manuals, Guides,” were removed as these are too broad to produce meaningful survey results. Any “write in” recommendations for existing Essential Titles have been removed from the results. Likewise, “write in” recommendations for dead titles that are no longer in the List of Classes have been removed from the results.

GPO will utilize this data to further the discussions with the depository community about the Essential Titles list. The discussion of Future Tangible Distribution to Depository Libraries during the Depository Library Council meeting in Albuquerque, NM, on April 18, 2005 ( http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/events/spring_council.html) will provide yet another opportunity for the depository community to help GPO determine how to move from the survey results to decisions on specific titles for tangible distribution to all or specific types of depository libraries.

For comparison, data from the 2003 Survey to Identify Essential Titles for Public Use in Paper or Other Tangible Format is available here.

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Last updated: April 14, 2005
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