How does the Library of Congress handle government publications?

Question

I work in Inter-Library Loan at a university who uses the Library of Congress classification system. A large part of my job is searching the stacks for books, periodicals, and government publications to send to various other institutions. I have found that when it comes to regular books and periodicals, I have a good handle on how to find specific things that I need.

However, when it comes to searching government publications, I find it very difficult to find the specific volumes that I need. I know that it starts out alphabetically, but beyond that I tend to get confused - there are so many different permutations of letters and numbers that I am never sure quite how it works.

Can someone explain in layman's terms how to break down the call numbers to make for easier searching?

Some examples of the call numbers I see:

CA2ON UG63 72P03

CA1 XC1 89C043

US1 Y 92I7A41

Answer 1

It depends on which government's documents you mean. Waterloo seems to be using CODOC, which McMaster explains very well here: http://library.mcmaster.ca/govpubs/guides/codoc

Since you asked about Library of Congress, I'm guessing you mean US government documents. American libraries usually classify US government documents using SUDOC call numbers, which Michigan State explains here: http://www.lib.msu.edu/branches/gov/sudocs-basics.jsp

However, if we're talking about how Waterloo does it, I note that Statistical Abstract of the United States is catalogued as US1CN30 S55 in Waterloo's system. That's a CODOC number; you can tell because it begins with "US". The American system assumes it's an American publication. The SUDOC equivalent is C 3.134/7:, but it's such a common reference book that many libraries using LC elsewhere also use LC here, in which case it would be HA202 S7.