What do census data, botanical coloring pages, tax forms, information about the new Lake Ontario Marine Sanctuary, and a video of a cat chasing a laser that was streamed from deep space have in common? They are all government information.
“Government documents and information play a large role in our lives, but we don’t always realize it. Weather reports use government data," said Catherine Carrà, Penfield Library’s cataloging and government documents librarian. "The plant hardiness maps people use to choose plants [for gardening] are created by the Department of Agriculture. We don’t just interact with federal government documents when we pay our taxes or see a news report on inflation.”
U.S. federal government data is a linchpin of research in all kinds of fields ranging from epidemiology to meteorology. No one but the U.S. government collects and provides free access to such extensive and generally unbiased information. Access to that data allows scholars to ask all kinds of questions and policymakers to make informed decisions. In addition to scholars and policymakers, many businesses and local governments rely on information provided by the federal government.
In her work as a cataloging and government documents librarian, Carrà curates and maintains the older, physical government documents in Penfield Library’s Collection as well as the library’s Government Documents and Information Research Guide. She showcases the invaluable government information available for use by the SUNY Oswego community. “The goal of these pages is to show connections between students’ majors and future careers and government agencies, especially with the increased focus on civic engagement on campus,” said Carrà.
Alanna Ossa of SUNY Oswego’s Department of Anthropology worked outside of academia before becoming a faculty member, and she emphasizes the necessity of accurate and reliable government information that people in many careers use to keep modern life running smoothly.
“I know that working professionals fixing roads, buildings or utilities rely on agencies and environmental firms who are able to do government docs background checks to avoid hitting something dangerous or unexpected during excavations,” Ossa said. “It's pretty important even for modern utilities in cities and towns to know where things were located and what to expect! So, it's required just to do day to day maintenance.”
Ossa explained that she currently uses government information for teaching classes and planning archaeological digs for SUNY Oswego’s Archaeology Field School.
“I use records such as the Sanborn fire insurance maps to help date structures and map sites,” she said. “The National Archives includes building plans and infrastructural information that is long gone from the physical record, so key to finding certain things out and knowing where to put the shovel in an archaeological dig.” She has used government documents to unearth local Oswego information including the plans for the original lighthouse built here in the early 1800s, as just one example.
Penfield Library is a gateway to that sort of government information for many users. It started consistently collecting government documents in 1966 when Penfield joined the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). This status meant that the library was part of a nationwide effort to share government information with U.S. residents.
The FDLP was founded all the way back in the early 1800s to solve the problem of how government information could be made available to the people who needed it in the time before the internet. The U.S. government would print copies of reports and other documents and send them to libraries. Libraries like Penfield would then provide free access to government documents to their communities, along with support in locating those documents.
A number of older government publications from Penfield’s years in the FDLP are still available as physical copies on the library’s second and third floors, providing historical perspectives and context. While most of the physical collection consists of congressional hearing transcriptions, there are also some more unusual documents like a set drumming guide written by a member of the Army Field Band, pamphlets on enrichment for nonhuman primates and Carrà’s personal favorite, a presenter's kit on food safety including games and a paper puppet starring BAC the bacteria with a germy personality. The games and puppet are a tie-in to the “Fight BAC!” public service announcement campaign from the 1990s, designed to teach best practices for preventing foodborne illness.
Now most government information is only made available digitally, and the primary way for SUNY Oswego users to discover what’s available and get access is by linking to it through the library’s Government Documents and Information Research Guide.
The research guide brings together the wide variety of government information available online. Highlights include:
- Links providing free full-text access to documents from all three branches of the federal government and the Constitution, annotated along with resources on how to search the sites.
- A variety of federal data sources including links to the U.S. Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Center for Education Statistics and data on addiction and mental health.
- Links to state and local agencies and data.
- An inventory of the Government Documents Collection on Penfield Library’s second floor (since these items aren’t searchable in the library catalog). Unlike the rest of the books at Penfield, this collection is shelved by SuDoc call numbers -– a system that organizes documents according to which government department created them. There are guides to SuDoc classification at the ends of the shelves, and since many of the resources are quite thin, there are dividers to make browsing by call number easier.
Recent additions to the research guide focus on resources useful to faculty and students in specific colleges and content areas. For example, the Education page provides links to federally created resources ranging from U.S. Geological Survey lesson plans, games about the CIA, primary sources from the Library of Congress and National Archives and a coloring book from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. All of these were created by the federal government to help teachers easily incorporate relevant content into their classrooms.
Penfield’s Government Documents and Information Research Guide also has pages specifically for Business; STEM; and Communications, Media, and the Arts -- providing links to some of the most relevant agencies and data sources related to those fields of study.
While Penfield has been an FDLP library meeting its federal mandate to meaningfully connect library users to government data for almost 60 years, recent changes to what government data is freely available online make that work feel particularly critical at the current moment, librarians said.
Rachel Lee of the Department of Atmospheric and Geological Sciences said she uses United States Geological Survey (USGS) data for research and for teaching classes. “I just had an issue in my GIS class last week where a USGS website was no longer available and my students couldn't get a dataset they needed,” she said. “So we had to improvise.”
Penfield’s Government Documents and Information Research Guide contains links to help researchers access datasets that may have been removed from federal websites, Carrà said. Those are located on the Federal Data and Statistics page and will be updated as new sources of archived government data come online.
“During presidential transitions, there are always significant changes to executive branch websites, but the number of sites that have been taken offline during this transition has been notable and a major topic of discussion among government documents librarians,” said Carrà. By providing alternative ways to access government data and track ongoing changes, she hopes to allow students, faculty, staff and the wider Oswego community to continue their research and their work without interruption.
“During this transition some links on the guide may be broken, but I am keeping them with the hope that they will be restored in the future,” Carrà said.
-- Submitted by Penfield Library