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Government Documents at the Peabody Library are organized under a different classification scheme from the general collection. You may have mastered the Library of Congress system, but to find government documents, you need to understand Superintendent of Documents (SuDocs) numbers. In this system documents are organized by the agency which issues them. They are assigned alphanumeric call numbers based on the agency and type of publication.
When you are looking on ACORN, you should be able to immediately recognize a goverment document, because SuDocs numbers always contain a colon. For example, the 1999 edition of the Department of Education's annual report The Condition of Education is classified under the SuDocs number ED 1.109:999.
What Are Those Letters at the Beginning?
The inital letter(s) in the SuDocs number refer to the publishing agency (not the subject, as one sees in the Library of Congress Classification system). The Peabody Library receives all publications from the Department of Education (ED) and some from the Department of Health and Human Services (HE).
How Do the Numbers Work?
In SuDocs numbers, major sections are divided by periods "." or colons ":"; between the two there can be sub-sections divided by slashes "/" or hyphens "-".
All numbers are whole numbers. Remember that periods are section dividers and that there are no decimals. Therefore, ED 1.4: comes before ED 1.318:. With these call numbers, "nothing" comes before "something:"
ED 1.2: G 53/3 is shelved before ED 1.2: G 53/3/1995
What Happens When There Are Words or Letters Following the Same Numbers?
Numbers followed by words or abbreviations are shelved in alphabetical order:
ED 1.41: 1984-1989/Chinese comes before ED 1.41: 1984-1989/Spanish
Items are also shelved alphabetically (and then numerically), when the first numbers match up and letters follow:
| ED 1.36:Au 7 | ED 1.36:C 82 | ED 1.36:G 81 | ED 1.36:N 42 z |
More Practice...
If you remember that the sections of letters are always shelved alphabetically, the numbered sections are always arranged in numerical order and that nothing always precedes something, you should be able tolocate an item most of the time.
Now try the SuDocs Self-Test to see what you've learned.
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Last updated September 20, 2004.