Since 1963, the library at Texarkana College has held a special standing. It's unclear if a big announcement or fanfare were involved, but this important role is changing in the electronic age.
TC serves as the area federal depository of governmental documents, giving the community access to items printed by the U.S. Publishing Office. Many of those items are becoming available digitally, so those interested in the information don't have to go to the library.
TC librarian Dr. Tonja Mackey recently attended the Federal Depository Library Program conference in Washington, D.C., and learned more about what the school must do to maintain compliance with governmental standards.
"First, we make it open access to the public and don't restrict the public to the collection," she said. "Second, we have to do a biennial survey update on the holdings.
And third, to be a depository, your library has to have at least 10,000 books, which we do have. It can be digital, but at one time it had to be print."
The U.S. Publishing Office, formerly known as the U.S. Printing Office, produces a vast array of materials including congressional records, speeches and papers from the president and Senate record votes, among others. Mackey has created a display in the Palmer Memorial Library that has a book on the history of presidential limousines, a garden tour of the White House, a study guide on the U.S. naturalization test, brochures and maps of the national parks and children's books.
Benjamin Franklin is the mascot for the children's department of the Government Publishing Office, for which the slogan is "Keeping America Informed." The office was founded in 1861, and Franklin, who decided at age 12 that he wanted to be a printer, went on to change the literary world with the stroke of a pen, paper and press.
"He became an apprentice to his brother's print shop," Mackey said. "Once he started publishing, he had his own print shop publishing 'publick' papers for Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey. He also he coined the idea of lending libraries."
Franklin's eyes might widen to see the libraries of today, with fewer books and more electronic devices. Mackey said some of the governmental papers are all digital now, and the office is working to digitize older volumes, as well.
"They're trying to digitize lots of their back files where they start current and they go back, from newest to oldest. They're working on getting everything," she said.
"The Occupational Outlook Handbook is one thing they do not have in print. It's digital now." The document tells job outlooks in different fields and salaries for the upcoming years.
Mackey has been working to let the public and students know this treasure trove of information is just a click away.
"We don't have a lot of people from the public coming in looking for things. That's why we're highlighting it," she said. "I thought that if I create the displays, they might use it more than if they had to look it up, because they don't know what to look up. But if you make the displays and put it out there for them to see-who wouldn't want to read all this?"
She added that she will not create a separate area for the public documents, but that they will be filed with the regular collection.
User names and passwords are not needed to access the collection, she said, which also contains some documents in Spanish.
"It's all about free government access for everyone," Mackey said.
The documents are available at guides.texarkanacollege.edu/govinfo.