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Kentucky Federal Depository Libraries: Offers List Guidelines

Contact amy.laub-carroll@uky.edu to update your listings.

Kentucky Federal Depository Offers List Guidelines (revised 12/4/2014)

 


Introduction

As the Regional Depository in Kentucky, the University of Kentucky's Federal Depository Unit in Young Library is responsible for managing the disposal of unwanted Federal Depository publications in our state. Therefore, we have created two options for the other 18 Selective Depositories to make use of as they weed their collections:

  1. the offers list (formerly called "exchange" lists) process described in the rest of this document, and
  2. a Needs List of titles that we know we are missing.

However, both options now make use of the ASERL Documents Disposition Database developed at the Univ. of Florida.

Needs List Process

UK's needs list has been entered into the ASERL Documents Disposition Database.

If any titles offered by a depository via the ASERL database appear on our needs list, UK will be notified of the match by the database. At that point, we will claim the item using the database. This claim will be sent to the Selective from the database with instructions on where to send the material. The offering library is responsible for all shipping expenses, unless other arrangements are made.

New Offers Process

A. Guidelines for Offering Discards via the ASERL Documents Disposition Database: 

1)  Submitting your monthly offers list:  Each Federal Selective Depository in Kentucky may submit up to 200 items that they wish to discard to the database over the course of a month.  This will allow us to give all depositories a chance to do some weeding on a regular basis and to turn lists around quickly.  Please submit only a single format on any given day, e.g., submit your paper items on Tuesday, your maps on Wednesday, and your CD items on Thursday.  Since your offers are processed overnight each day, these submissions will come to us as separate lists the next day, which is what we prefer.  Keep in mind that the total for all formats should not exceed 200 even though you are submitting them on different days. If you are submitting offers of posters or maps, please submit no more than 50 of these each week.  These two formats have to be searched by another department, and maps have to be checked to see if they have been re-classed into LC which is a time-consuming process.

2)  Submitting offers that UK is not collecting:  If you are offering items from the stems in the table below, you may submit as many items as you like.  These are the stems that we are not currently collecting retrospectively because someone else is the ASERL Center of Excellence for that stem.  Therefore, we will not be checking these offers against our collection.  Please submit these materials on a different day from your normal 200 offers.  This will make it easier for us to keep track of what we need to check and what we can ignore. 

PLEASE NOTE:  Since this list changes periodically, be sure to check it before deciding what to offer on your "unlimited" list. 

 

UK HAS CEASED RETROSPECTIVE COLLECTING FOR THESE STEMS, UNLESS TITLE IS RELATED TO KENTUCKY

A 3 - A 9 C 46 HS 1 T 22 Y 3.IS 7:
A 11 - A 12 C 59 HS 5.2: - HS 5.15: TD 4 Y 3.L 61:
A 18 CA HS 5.100: - HS 5.123: VA Y 3.N 21/5:
A 20 CAB HS 5.202: - HS 5.221: W 7 Y 3.N 21/8:
A 24 CZ L 13 W 25 Y 3.P 19/2:
A 25 D 101.22: 550-# L 36.100: - L 36.116: W 31 Y 3.P 96/6:
A 27 D 103 LC 19 W 33 Y 3.SP 1:
A 38 - A 42 D 113 M 110 W 47  
A 48 D 117 M 115 W 57 - W 60  
A 56 D 202 M 208 W 73  
A 80.119: D 306 M 301 W 79  
A 100 E 2 - E 4 MUS 1 W 87  
A 101 ER N 28 W 95  
A 103 FAA NAS W 108 - W 109  
A 115 FE NF 4 Y 3.AE 8:  
AA 4 FEM PAC Y 3.AI 7/4:  

AE 2.106/3:

(EXCEPT TITLES 1, 2 & 3)

FP PE 1 Y 3.AR 5/3:  
C 21 FS 2 PREX 26 Y 3.C 49:  
C 31 FS 4 S 19 Y 3.EM 3:  

 3)  Submitting an extra journals/annuals list:  Independent from the standard 200-item limit described above, and the unlimited offers for the stems we are no longer collecting retrospectively, you may also request permission to offer 400 additional items per month of only journal issues/bound volumes and/or annuals/semi-annuals from no more than 5 different SuDoc stems.  Annuals and semi-annuals being offered as an exception must have their own SuDoc stem, i.e., they may NOT come from Cuttered, general publications/handbooks SuDoc stems.  Each SuDoc number for the journal/annual item offered must reflect the complete SuDoc number for the physical piece being offered.  For example, L 2.6:v. 70 for a bound volume or L 2.6:v. 70/no. 3 for an unbound issue or SI 1.1:1920 for an annual.  

If you would like to offer an extra list of these materials, please contact the Regional Depository Librarian for permission to do so.  Permission for these additional/larger offers will be dependent on the current workload at the Regional, and you will be asked to submit them in a different week from your regular list of 200 items.  If you have submitted, or plan to submit, your regular offers in one week, please do not ask us for permission to submit your extra journals/annuals exception list during that same week. 

Once you have permission to submit an additional 400 journal/annual items in a month, you must submit them by the end of the following work day.  If submission has not occurred within this timeframe, the approval process for this exception will have to start over since our workload may have changed.  We can only approve a maximum of one of these exceptions per month per institution, and this exception only applies to journals, annuals and semi-annuals (serials published annually or more frequently), NOT numbered or Cuttered serials, biennials, quinquennials, etc.

4)  Your offers will remain in the database for 45 days, but your colleagues in Kentucky will not be able to see your offers in the database until day 6. UK can see your offers as soon as you post them, but we will wait for the database to send us a list of what you have posted the following day.

Once we receive the list from the database, we will let you know that we have been notified of your offers and will get started on your list. Please do not fill any claims from anyone else until you hear from us. We have developed a streamlined process that should allow us to respond to your offers in 6 - 10 working days, so you should not have to hold those claims from others for very long.

Also, given the need for rapid turn-around times here at UK, we may have to ask you not to submit offers to the database from mid-Dec. to mid-Jan. each year. There may be no students available to process your offers during this time period, so we will not be able to respond to offers submitted to the database when they are not here.  We will send out an e-mail in late Nov. each year, letting you know what the holiday hiatus will be for that year.

Please be sure to follow the guidelines in B. below when deciding what to offer.

B. Items Eligible for Offer:

You must retain all depository publications for five years from the date of receipt, not from the date of publication, so please do not list materials that do not meet this criteria. To make this easier at both ends, please do not list any materials received in a given year, e.g., 2008, until November of the fifth year after receipt. In the case of 2008, this would be Nov., 2013. This will ensure that all publications received in 2008 have been held for the full five years.

You should also think carefully about your Congressional district to make sure you are not discarding a title that is critical to your users, or any title that is included in the FDLP Basic Collection.

The only materials that are exceptions to the 5-year retention rule are gifts, electronic substitutions, or duplicates. If you are replacing a tangible copy with the electronic version, you only need to retain the tangible piece for one year before listing. If you are listing an item for this reason, you will need to indicate that in the database using the comment field.

You are not required to keep or list gifts or duplicates at all, but we would be happy to check for duplicates or unselected titles that you do not want so that we can fill gaps in our collection. However, if you list such material, please include a comment in your offer to reflect their non-depository status so that we will not evaluate those titles for disposal permission. (Are all publications over five years old? Are they titles we feel can be discarded without compromising access to information in your Congressional district? Is there a valid electronic equivalent? Is the title on the Basic Collection list?).

You should list superseded material since the ASERL plan requests that you do so. This is because COEs will be trying to replace superseded material that they may have discarded in the past.

Please read the ASERL plan and the Guide to ASERL Documents Disposition Database that the University of Florida has created carefully before creating your offers list. Keep in mind that implementation of the database has resulted in some changes to this process that are not reflected in this plan from April, 2011. ASERL Documents Disposition Database has the most up-to-date information on the mechanics of submitting an offer. There is also a link to this guide in the lower left corner of the ASERL database's login screen.  Keep in mind that our guidelines for offers are slightly different from those in Florida's Guide, so be sure to comply with what you read here if it differs from Florida's information.

Although the plan does not require you to offer fiche, we do need for you to use this database to offer any fiche you want to discard, especially if the fiche is being collected by an ASERL COE.

C. Creating/Submitting Offers

ASERL is asking for your cooperation in submitting your offers/lists in a uniform format that can be loaded into the database easily. The Guide mentioned above gives you very specific instructions on how to complete its title-by-title forms or an Excel CSV-formatted file for upload. Here are some highlights from that guide:

1) You must create a gmail account and register it in the database by sending email to dispositiondb@uflib.ufl.edu. This account is where all claims for your material will be sent.

We created a departmental address that everyone at UK can use and to which all notifications from the database will be sent. We highly recommend this strategy!

You may also send questions/suggestions regarding the database to the Florida email address above.

2) If you opt to create on Excel CSV-formatted file, you MUST use their offers template from the Guide. You should download an empty copy of this template to re-use for each list you create. Click on the "import items" button in the section of the screen called "My submitted items" to get to the template. Each time you save that file you MUST answer "yes" to the "replace file" question. If you don't, the file will convert to a regular Excel file, and it will NOT upload to database. (Can you tell we've had this problem ;-) . Here are a few other things we learned about the spreadsheet method:

   a) For monographs, repeat the date of publication in both date columns.

   b) When offering a serial, list each physical piece separately. If you are offering a bound volume, please indicate in the comment column/box that a volume is bound--it may affect our request.  You also need to indicate in the comment box if the bound volume is incomplete.  Listing serials piece-by-piece allows us to do all of our claiming using the ASERL Disposition Database.  See description in Section A. 3) above that explains how to request an exception for listing more journal/annual materials per month.

   c) If your lists are currently in Microsoft Word, we can send you instructions on how to convert that format to an Excel CSV-formatted document.

   d) If some items won't load, the database gives you an error report, but you have to look for it lower on the screen. This error report goes away once you leave this screen and cannot be retrieved later by you or by the Florida staff.

Once you have created an Excel file, follow the instructions in the Guide describing the upload process. Click on the "import items" button in the section of the screen called "My submitted items" to see these instructions.

3) If you opt to use the title-by-title forms, be sure to use the correct form for monographs vs. serials.  The forms are different and will make listing easier and more accurate.  Please note that we are handling serials here in Kentucky a little differently than the Florida Guide describes, so be sure to follow our instructions above in 2)b).  There are also exceptions that can be granted by Regional when listing journals/annuals--see section A. above.  

Click on the "add items" button in the section of the screen called "My submitted items" to see Florida's instructions, and to get to the form. Your offers are sent to the database immediately once you click your final "OK."

4) Regardless of whether you are creating a spreadsheet or using the title-by-title form, please use the Superintendent of Documents classification number as it appears in either GPO's online catalog or the printed Monthly Catalog of U. S. Government Publications, i.e., corrected and consistent with the time period in which it was classified. For example, HEW serials that went through several class changes should be listed with the class number that applies to the issues being offered, not the earliest or most current number. Be sure to check for incorrect SuDoc numbers in "z" subfields of the 086 field in the MARC record for each title you are offering. You should use the corrected SuDoc number that is in the "a" subfield.

5) SuDoc number MUST be complete and include a colon in order for needs matches to occur in database! 

6) Please proofread all SuDoc numbers before clicking on the "submit" button and again after submitting your offers to the database. If an error slips through, you can go back in and edit your submission in the database, and we will be notified that you edited the item.  As long as you make your correction before midnight on the day you originally submitted it, our copy of the list will come through with your corrected entry. 

7) Annotate duplicates, electronic substitutions, or gifts clearly in comments column/box.

8) Be sure to include superseded status on forms and in Excel files.

9) Be sure to include the format on forms and in Excel files.

If you have problems with any of these processes, please let us know. If we cannot help you, we will refer you to the staff at Florida.

D. How Our New Process Works at UK:

We will send you an email within one day confirming that the database has notified us that you have submitted offers or a list. We will indicate if you have offered any non-compliant titles that will need to be removed from the database. As indicated above, we will do our best to initiate claims within six working days after receipt of your offers list from the database, but it may take as many as ten.

As in the past, we will be managing several lists at the same time, so please be patient! If you have an extenuating circumstance that you would like for us to consider when checking your list, please let us know. Otherwise, the lists will be checked in the same order that the database notifies us of offers.

Please do NOT fill any other claims until you hear from us. If another institution has already claimed an item that we need, we will not be able to claim that item via the database. Any item that is claimed immediately disappears from the database. Therefore, we may have to claim some items via an email message listing those items we need that are no longer listed in the database.

Once we have submitted our claims in the database, the claim will be sent to the Selective from the database with instructions on where to send the material. These claim notices will come to the email address that you have registered in the database, so be sure to check that account daily.

You should then pull this material
and mail it to us at your expense. Please remember to write "Offers List" on the outside of the envelope/box, and be sure to include a copy of the claims list with the materials you are sending to us.

You will see that the automated claim notice that comes to your email does not provide a clearly structured mailing address. This information comes from our GPO directory listing. The ASERL database has split the various parts of the address apart, so you'll need to put them back together.

Please substitute "Federal Depository Unit" for any individual's name and use this address:

William T. Young Library
University of Kentucky
401 Hilltop Ave.
Lexington, KY 40506-0456

Be sure to use the nine-digit zip code.

We will acknowledge receipt of your shipment via email. If you have not received an acknowledgement from us within one week, please call/send an email to make sure we received your material. You will still need to hold on to all pieces until you get our final confirmation that we got what we requested.

Once we have cleared your list via email, you may fill any other claims you have received, either in-state (see next paragraph) or out-of-state. As the offering library, you will be responsible for all shipping expenses unless you make other arrangements with the requesting library which you are free to do.

You may not discard remaining material you have listed in the database for 45 days. That is how long your offers will be visible in the database. Your colleagues in the state will be able to claim your materials via the database starting on day 6 through day 45, so it is important for you to hold these items. You will receive a notification from the database when your items have expired. You may discard or recycle them at that point. The notice of expiration will come to the email account you have registered in the database.

Once all materials have been requested by other depositories or have expired in the database, please report to the Regional Depository Librarian via email the number of pieces you redistributed or recycled. Remember, you may not sell any unwanted federal depository material. Depository material remains the property of the U.S. Government and may not be sold.

To reiterate, please remember that you may not discard or re-distribute anything until we have responded to your offers and acknowledged receipt of the material we requested. We will send you an email message confirming that we received the pieces that we requested and give you permission to re-distribute the rest. You may not re-distribute anything on your list until you have received this communication from us.

E. Brief synopsis of a fictional depository's procedure for submitting offers to the database:

1) After verifying that pieces that we want to discard are all at least five years old, are not needed in our Congressional district, and are not in FDLP Basic Collection; submit offers to ASERL Documents Disposition Database per instructions from ASERL and our Regional (see above). Proofread all submissions once they appear in database. Correct any items with errors. Let the Regional know if we have not received confirmation of receipt of offers within one day. Check the email address registered with the ASERL database daily to see if we have received any claims.

2) If you have any problems or questions about submitting our offers lists to the ASERL database, please review ASERL Documents Disposition Database, created by Univ. of Florida, before contacting the Regional (see 6) below).

3) If the Regional claims items from our offers list via either the database or email, send pieces and a copy of the claims list/email to the Regional as soon as possible in a box/envelope labeled "Offers List" on the outside. Do not fill any other claims until we have heard from the Regional at UK. If we have not had an acknowledgement of receipt of items within one week, notify the Regional via email that the materials were mailed.

4) After the Regional confirms receipt of their claims, fill any other claims we have received. If the claims are received via personal email, rather than the database-generated e-mail, be sure to remove those items from the ASERL Disposition Database when claim is filled.

5) Once our offers have expired in the database (notice of this will come to the email we have registered in the database), and all materials have been requested or recycled, report the number of pieces redistributed or recycled to the Regional Depository Librarian via email (see 6 below).

6) If we have questions, please email Amy Laub, the Regional Depository Librarian, at amy.laub@uky.edu.

Federal Depository Librarian

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Amy Laub
she/her
Contact:
(859) 218-6152