Works Progress Administration: Home

The libraries of the University of South Carolina, the University of Kentucky, and the University of Florida participated in an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant-funded demonstration project called "Collaborative Federal Depository Program" (CFDP) under the leadership of the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL) and built upon the existing Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) administered by the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO). The University of Kentucky has recently entered into a partnership with GPO for preservation and promotion of the WPA collection. See below for details on this partnership.

This program seeks to provide workable solutions to address the increasing cost of managing, preserving, and providing access to large collections of Federal government publications through the creation of several comprehensive collections, known as "Centers of Excellence" (COE), of U.S. government information from each Federal government agency. Built upon the foundation of existing holdings at Federal Depository libraries, these collections will become more complete with assistance from both Regionals, libraries who collect government information comprehensively, and Selectives, libraries who collect government information selectively, in the ten ASERL states.

Centers of Excellence will:

• inventory holdings and ensure accurate cataloging and holdings records for the extant collection
• actively replace damaged or lost pieces,
• seek to fill holes in their collections, as necessary,
• provide active preservation for the collection,
• catalog the pieces that they own on OCLC, the worldwide union catalog for libraries, and identify them as the archival copy,&
• participate in GPO's program to set holdings on OCLC for Regionals free of charge, if eligible,
• enhance the visibility of, and accessibility to, their collection through digitization of holdings or linking to available public domain digital copies, as feasible,
• actively participate in ILL/Document Delivery agreements, and
• provide expert reference service for and promote the use of their collection.

ASERL believes creating these COEs will result in more reliable and predictable access to Federal publications for all libraries and citizens in the Southeastern states by specifying which Federal Depository libraries have the most complete holdings for each agency. ASERL appreciates the effort that all service points at their “centers” are putting into making sure their users know about the availability of these rich resources.

Contact information:
The University of Kentucky serves as a COE for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Contact: Amy Laub ;

Rebecca Crist, Coordinator, Collaborative Federal Depositories Program. Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL).

This project was supported in part by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services
Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this website do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) has announced an official partnership with the University of Kentucky Libraries designed to ensure long-term, public access to the Libraries' tangible and digital collections of historical materials from the Works Progress Administration (WPA).  Over the past five years, UK Libraries digitized more than 450 WPA publications from Kentucky and other southeastern states. These digital publications are available via ExploreUK.  As a result of this partnership with GPO, these digital publications will eventually be accessible from their online Catalog of U.S. Government Publications, making the digital collection available to an even wider audience.

U. S. Government Publishing Office

The University of Kentucky has another guide to U.S. Government documents that can be found via the link below.