Government Information Quarterly

Federal funding, a complex, multi-billion dollar enterprise, comprises many activities and forms, and is ineluctably influenced by political issues and national polity. Following a history of federal funding and a typology of research and development (R&D) programs, the article examines sources of information, the role of national laboratories in nuclear weapons research, the relationship between defense grants and university standards, and problems of accountability, duplication, and trivialization of subject matter. Implicit in these examples is the thesis that no realistic analysis of federally sponsored research is possible unless examined in the larger ideological and intellectual ambience in which R&D is allocated.

The period 1972-1974 saw the establishment of the Government Documents Round Table (GODORT) and the Depository Library Council to the Public Printer. This same period also saw the development of the concept of a National Depository Agency, and the transfer to the National Archives of the Public Documents Library which would form the nucleus of the comprehensive retrospective collection of U.S. documents of that proposed agency. This article discusses the origins of the Public Documents Library within the Government Printing Office, its transfer in 1972, and the three subsequent moves of that collection. It discusses the role of GODORT in the development of the proposed National Depository Agency, and related Title 44 revision proposals during the 96th Congress. It examines the concerns of GODORT and the Depository Library Council over maintenance and servicing of the Public Documents Library collection by the National Archives, and its relation to a National Depository Agency.

Since President Reagan's April 1981 moratorium on new government publications and audiovisual products, the restrictions this administration has imposed on executive agency data collection and publishing activities have provoked considerable controversy both in Congress and in the media. This article attempts to characterize the impact on libraries of the restrictions. An examination of the Office of Management and Budget's List of Government Publications Terminated and Consolidated by Agency as compared with depository distribution patterns, agency publication policies established by the President's Task Force on Management Reform, and reductions in data collection activities directed by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs are reported. A pattern of neglect in federal information collection and dissemination is shown to increase libraries' dependence on private sector publishing of government information, and to reduce the availability and comparability of certain federal statistical documentation collected by libraries.

This article discusses the documentation of international, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), calling attention to the peculiarities of these materials and also their value for research. Acquisition, bibliographic control, and servicing of international publications are described, with particular emphasis given to the collections of the Library of Congress and other Washington based agencies. The importance of IGO documentation in microform is stressed along with the importance of education on international documentation. In connection with education of librarians, reference is made to the usefulness of professional associations and meetings and the desirability of cooperation between librarians who work with international documents and information personnel in the international organizations.

Documents Librarianship

This section presents techniques, practices, and specific strategies by which documents collections can be made more effective. It also highlights individual documents collections. The first article in this series covers the University of Guelph.

A number of papers have discussed CODOC, a computer-based system for processing government documents, which was developed at the University of Guelph. The system enables libraries with access to computer fac ilities to input and retrieve documents on-line or in batch. Against this background, this article discusses the University of Guelph and the organization of its documents collection. In effect, this article provides the context in which CODOC operates.

Government Documents at the University of Guelph
VIRGINIA GILLHAM