Policies & Procedures

Collection Development Policy


General Purpose and User Community
Georgia College was designated a selective government depository in 1950. It currently serves the 12th Congressional District and selects 30% of the available items numbers. The Government Documents collection provides open access to government information to support the information needs of the local community and the university.

Georgia College serves as Georgia's designated Public Liberal Arts University, offers over 50 undergraduate and 35 graduate degrees in arts and sciences, business, education and nursing, and has an enrollment of 5,300 students.

Subject Areas and Collection Arrangement
Subject Areas
In accordance with section 3-1 of the Federal Depository Library Manual, Supplement 2: Guidelines for the Federal Depository Library Program (1995), the Depository maintains the titles listed in the basic collection and makes them available for immediate use. Items are selected based on the current and perceived curricular support needs for the University and the general information needs of the community.

Subject area concentrations include the following:

Publications not normally selected:

Collection Arrangement
The majority of the Documents are classified using the Superintendent of Documents classification system and cataloged for inclusion in the GIL Library Catalog and the GIL Universal Catalog..

Titles better suited for reference are arranged using the Library of Congress classification system and housed in the Reference Collection.

Some titles have been cataloged and integrated into the library's main collection using the Library of Congress classification scheme. This ensured they appeared in the electronic library catalog and could circulate. However, since all documents circulate, except those in the Reference and Journal areas, and all documents are included in GIL, this practice is no longer necessary.

A selected number of government periodicals are shelved alphabetically by title along with the non-Governmental journals.

Guidelines for Format Consideration
Generally, paper is the preferred format as microform readers and computers for documents use are limited.

Exceptions:

 

Collection Access
All documents housed in open stacks are available for patron browsing during the times the University Library is open. Circulation of documents is as follows:

  1. Publications shelved in the General Documents collection circulate for three weeks. Three weeks is the regular loan period for the Library's main collection
  2. Maps circulate for three weeks
  3. CD-ROMs circulate for three weeks
  4. Publications placed in the Reference Collection do not circulate
  5. Microform materials do not circulate
  6. Journals do not circulate
  7. The library will make every effort to provide appropriate Indexes such as the Monthly Catalog for research; these will not circulate

All Documents that circulate can also be lent through Interlibrary Loan.

Documents are housed on the third floor of the library.

Collection Evaluation & Maintenance

Selection Tools
Depository Items

Non-Depository Items

Retrospective Sources

Policy Revision
This collection development policy will be reviewed at least yearly and amended as considered necessary by the documents librarian. New developments in the depository program and developments in the state of Georgia will necessitate future changes in this policy. Changes will also be made in accordance with updates of Guidelines for the Federal Depository Library Program, Federal Depository Library Manual, and Instructions for Depository Librarians.

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