|
Federal Government Documents Tutorial Home 1. The Universe of Federal Government Information 5. The NCSU Libraries on-line catalog 7. Monthly Catalog cumulative indexes 9. CIS 10. Other Congressional Sources 14. Web sites |
Federal Government Documents Tutorial1909 ChecklistThe 1909 Checklist, or the Checklist of United States Public Documents, 1789-1909, is a wonderful example of early 20th century bibliographic scholarship. It's exhaustive in detail. Its introduction describes its purpose to "record the first systematic effort to include within the limits of one publication an approximately complete checklist of all public documents issued by the United States Government during the first century and a quarter of its history. It claims to be only a checklist, not a catalogue; but it aims to be as complete and accurate a checklist as human energy and enthusiasm could evolve for publication within the narrow confines of a single reference work, which must be in a form both usable and concise." 
Entries from 1909 Checklist Volume 1 of the 1909 Checklist, "Lists of Congressional and Departmental Publications," contains references to all the publications known to GPO through 1909. The first portion of the volume records Congressional publications, and the latter nine-tenths of the bibliography lists departmental publications in SuDoc order. There is evidence that a Volume 2 was planned; indeed, it is so stated: "An index will be issued as volume 2 of the Checklist." Unfortunately, the government never did complete an index to this monumental work. But the 1909 Checklist stands alone as a work of scholarship, and it has recently provided the private sector with a business opportunity. |
