11.9 State Plans

The effectiveness of the FDLP depends on close cooperation between selective Federal depositories and their regional Federal depository. To assist in developing and coordinating this cooperation, LSCM encourages each state to draft a state plan.

State plans should be used to:

• Develop a comprehensive government publications collection in the state;
• Assist in cooperative collection development by providing a framework for determining what is acquired by whom;
• Facilitate interlibrary loan between depositories especially for rarely used items;
• Foster accurate referrals;
• Provide depository staff with knowledge of the resources of neighboring depositories; and
• Address the implications of substituting electronic-only versions of depository publications still available for selection in a tangible format.

Remember that an individual depository library's collection is only one part of a much larger information bank known as the FDLP. Cooperation, communication, and coordination among the custodians of government information are essential to the efficiency and effectiveness of the FDLP.

Your depository library should take into account its collection and expertise strengths and weaknesses regarding retrospective and current materials as compared to nearby depositories, and incorporate this information into its collection development policy. For an example, the collection of a public library Federal depository close to a university library that has been a depository since 1895 will be quite different from that of a single Federal depository library in an isolated small town.

Your depository is strongly encouraged to be aware of neighboring collections and to actively coordinate item number selection to provide the best coverage of government information within the Congressional district. Such cooperative arrangements should be delineated in the collection development policy. Many states have also developed a written state plan for government publications that can provide overall guidance on collection development issues. Copies of existing state plans are available from either LSCM or your regional library.

Many states have already created state plans and have made them available online. For example, in 2004 Michigan revised its state plan, and Texas created a new one. They may provide useful background on some of the issues currently being discussed by LSCM and depository libraries. Additional plans are linked from the Library of Michigan’s Regional Federal depository library Web site.

A program conducted by Stephen Henson and Paula Kaczmarek at the 7th Annual Federal Depository Library Conference, entitled “How to Draft a State Plan” will provide additional information if your depository is beginning to develop a state plan.