10.3 Staffing Level Recommendations

• You should have both professional and paraprofessional staff working with your depository operations (exceptions may occur in small libraries with minimal personnel).
• Staffing MUST be at levels sufficient to meet depository responsibilities detailed in this handbook. This requirement means that your library MUST assign staff with appropriate professional and technical skills to maintain depository collections and provide programs in a timely manner, consistent with staffing of other library operations.
• Public service staffing MUST be adequate to serve your library’s primary user community as well as users from the general public.
• Comparable public service, in terms of hours of service, degree of assistance, and professional expertise of staff, should be extended to members of the general public using depository resources just as those services are made available to the library's primary users.
• The number of staff will depend on the size and scope of your library and depository collections, as well as the methods of organization of the depository collection.
• Your depository staff may be in a separate Government Documents unit or part of other library units such as Technical Services or Reference Services.

Access to staff with technical skills is of particular importance as depository collections include a growing number and variety of electronic government information resources and as more government information is digitized and made available electronically. With the reduction of tangible materials and the increase in available electronic resources, a different level of staffing and expertise is desirable.

The special skills needed for a variety of new tasks might include:

• Identifying electronic resources and integrating electronic records into the catalog;
• Integrating electronic government resources into Web pages and user education tools;
• Providing training for staff and users; and
• Providing public service in an increasingly complex electronic environment.