Superintendent
of Documents Classification System
The
"SUDOC" classification system is an alphanumeric design based on the principle
of "provenance", or issuing agency, whereby the publications of any government
entity are grouped under like notation. It is not a subject classification scheme
like the Library of Congress or Dewey decimal system.
Because the system
is based on the current organizational status of an agency, it changes with government
reorganization, and over a period of time, publications of some issuing agencies
will be located in many places within the document collection. When doing historical
research keep in mind that some current departments grew out of others and therefore
older materials may well be shelved under a different number.
A complete
SUDOC classification notation consists of three major elements: an author symbol,
a series designation representing the type of document, and a book accession number.
The combination of author symbol and series designation, typically found before
the colon, is called the "class stem". The book number gives the publication its
unique identification and completes the notation. |
| | For
example: I 29.9/5: 139
I
= Department of the Interior (author symbol)
29
= National Park Service (secondary author symbol)
.9/5 = Handbooks (series designation)
139 = Document number (the unique id #) |
| When
you are searching for a document in the govdocs collection, there is one thing
you must remember: the Sudoc system is NOT a decimal system--the " . " is not
a decimal point--therefore the number after the " . " is a WHOLE number. For comparison: |
|
