Government Documents, Federal and State

Federal Documents Classification

The Federal Documents Collection in Olson Library is classified according to the Superintendent of Documents (SuDocs) classification system. This system differs greatly from both the Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal classification systems: documents are classified by issuing agency rather than by subject. Also, SuDoc numbers are not decimal numbers. For example, if you saw A 1.234, the 234 is not fractional—it is the number two hundred thirty four. Remember that it's "whole number past the decimal". See the sample below:

If you can't seem to locate what you are looking for, you are not alone. Think about the above arrangement or ask for assistance. And let's face it; SuDoc numbers also look really different. They are long, have dashes and slashes, and they always have that colon. As soon as you see that colon you know you've found a SuDoc number, and therefore you know it's in a separate collection. The chart below shows a sampling of the more popular SuDoc numbers:

For a more detailed look at these numbers, The University of Minnesota--Morris has a nice table.

Michigan State Documents Classification

The State of Michigan uses the Library of Congress system for its documents—this is the same classification system as the main collection in the Olson Library. However, like their Federal counterparts, they are kept separate from the rest of the collection. Look carefully at the bibliographic record you see in the online catalog for NMU Documents ( Michigan ) .

Back to About Government Documents.

Questions? Contact Bruce Sarjeant, Reference, Documents & Maps Librarian (227-1580).