It is the mission of the Sarah Lawrence College Library Documents Department to provide access to federal government publications for the college faculty, students and staff as well as for the residents of the 18th U.S. Congressional District in Westchester County, New York, particularly those residing in the city of Yonkers and in the village of Bronxville.

The Esther Raushenbush Library was designated a selective depository of United States government information in May 1969. Currently 914 items are chosen from the 6198 available, and this reflects a selection rate of over 15%. Areas of emphasis in the collection include census statistics, health, education, labor, foreign affairs and Congressional hearings.

A Government Documents Committee has been appointed to provide professional and technical support for the program. It is directed by a Documents Coordinator who is a professionally qualified librarian and who has been selected to head the program by the Library Director. At the minimum, other representation will consist of one member of the professional reference staff and a member selected from the technical services department.

The government documents collection profile is reviewed annually and the Documents Committee examines all available items on a rotating basis. Selection of materials is made by joint decision along with the Head of Collection Development. English is the primary language of the collection, but some Spanish language materials available are selected if they are considered appropriate for the surrounding community population.

Approximately 80% of the collection is housed together and arranged by the Superintendent of Documents Classification system; the remaining 20% has been integrated into the general circulating, periodical and reference collections of the library. Government documents are cataloged in the Library's online public access catalog; MPALS, and our circulating resources are shared on local, state, regional and national levels through membership in OCLC's ILL network.

Although the library prefers to collect publications in paper form, appropriate selection is made regardless of format. Readers and printers for microfiche documents are available, and hardware/software including computer workstations and printers capable of providing access to CD-ROMS, on-line databases and to the Internet are on the premises. Our government home page which is available from the main library page at www.slc.edu/library provides a gateway to many online government sources.

Access to all government collections is open to the public during all hours of library operation, although the public is encouraged to use the collection when professional staff are present. The stacks are located on the ground floor, which is accessible by stairs and elevator.

Maintenance of the collection is performed in accordance with the guidelines set forth by the Government Printing Office as described in the Federal Depository Library Manual:

• "Piece-level" records are kept for all current depository receipts and there is an active program for retrospective cataloging.
• Superseded documents are discarded at the appropriate time, however historically important documents, particularly in the areas of the census, labor and women's studies are retained permanently.
• An effort is made to replace missing documents, particularly those housed in the reference collection.
• Government issued periodicals are regularly selected for binding.

This policy was adopted by the library in spring, 2000, and will be regularly reviewed as necessary.

Contributed by Janet H. Alexander, Documents Coordinator, 1997-