 All right, a couple of a few people still trickling in. I am going to go ahead and get started with the opening spiel here. So hi again everybody. This is Larry Eames and welcome to the Help. I'm an accidental government document or government information library webinar series or help for short. This series is brought to you by the American Library Association's government documents roundtable and thank you all so much for coming. You should all be muted but in case you aren't, please mute your audio during the presentation by clicking on that audio icon next to your name. Turn it red. We encourage you to participate in the chat throughout the webinar and to leave questions in the Q&A. If you don't see your chat window, click on the chat icon now. It should be at the bottom of your screen and open it up that way. You can also drag the edge of the box to expand it. There are technical issues. Sam Hagar who has just dropped in the chat is on hand to help. Please feel free to chat with her or worst case scenario. Remember that the webinar is being recorded. We have plans for upcoming webinars in October. We'll be joined by Elizabeth Hayden to talk about the vital statistics system and if you have topic ideas or if you would like to present, go ahead and let me know. I'm going to go ahead and drop my email in the chat as well. You can see more of our webinars on our YouTube channel and if you are a YouTube user, go ahead and give us a follow over there. So without further ado, today's webinar is tips and tricks for new government documents librarians. Caitlin Tannis is the history and social sciences librarian and government documents librarian at the University of Delaware Library Museums and Press. Caitlin received her BA in history and anthropology from Susquehanna University in 2015. She has a MA in public history from New York University and an MLIS from Long Island University. Prior to arriving at the University of Delaware in 2019, Caitlin worked for Small Public Library in Northern New Jersey as the adult program coordinator. She was also the ships librarian for SUNY Maritime College. Everyone give Caitlin a warm welcome. Caitlin, I'm going to turn things over to you. Thank you so much, Larry. And hi, everyone. I'm really excited to be here. I'm going to just take a few seconds to just share my screen and pull up my own slides one moment while I toggle. All right. Hopefully everyone can see this. If not, please let me know. But I'm very excited to be here. When I was signing in earlier, I mentioned that this was actually a really big honor for me. I love the Help Women R series, which I will probably talk a little bit more about today since that did help me a lot, actually, within my first year being a government documents librarian. So this is really exciting for me. I'm really looking forward to having a conversation with you after my presentation. And I'm sure there are also people here on the line who have their own tips and tricks and their own helpful advice for new government documents librarians. So I'm really eager to hear from you as well. So hopefully if you have any advice or if anything that I say resonates with you, please chime in. I'd really like to learn myself from everyone who's on the call. So our agenda for today, I'm going to talk a little bit about my institution, of course, just to give you a little bit of a background of where I'm working and where I'm coming from. And then I'll go into a little bit more about the reflections and tips that I have for my first year as a government documents librarian and of what helped me. I'm going to talk a little bit about research questions and how I typically navigate them and what I had hoped that I had time for in the year, but just did not happen and what goals I have for the next year. So a little bit about me before I officially begin. I am history and social sciences librarian at the University of Delaware. I have been at UD for about two and a half years at this point. So I was hired in 2019 and I was originally hired for reference and instructional services, which is the department that I serve in and work in. So I work specifically with the history department, the political science and international relations department. So that's what I was hired initially and when I came in as, but since I've also taken on government documents, as well as the Biden School for Public Policy and Administration. And I also work with smaller programs like legal studies, which is a minor at UD and then the Center for Area and Global Studies. So a little bit about the University of Delaware. We're located in Newark, Delaware. It is spelled the same way as Newark, New Jersey, but we are pronounced different. So it's Newark. It used to be two separate words at one point in time. It's located in Northern Delaware. It's about 40 minutes or so from Philadelphia and about about 20 minutes or so from the city of Wilmington. So we're pretty central at the top. We have a little over 23,000 students, and that ranges from undergraduate to graduate students. We also have a very strong professional and continuing studies program that happens in the state. So we have a lot of people who are coming back to school. And so it's really interesting because we always get a really wonderful mix of people at our institution. It's a common misconception that the University of Delaware is a state school. We actually are not. We are state assisted, but we're privately governed. So we are not the official state university of the state. And we also are Lansing and Space Grant University. So a little bit about the library. Our official name is the University of Delaware Library Museums and Press. We have about over 2 million print books and over 500,000 electronic titles. Of course, during the pandemic, that number shot up through the roof because of the nature of online learning, of course. We do have four branch libraries, the first three that you see on the screen. So the Education Resource Center, the Chemistry Library, and the Physics Library are all located on our Newark campus. But the last library is actually on a satellite campus in Lewis, Delaware, which is about an hour and a half or so from our campus. So it's a marine studies based section of our university. We also have four special collections and museum galleries on our campus. And they are connected with the library and run through the library. Our special collections, I do just want to take note, we have a very large collection of different government, public or special collections material that's related to government information. So a lot of our politicians in the state of Delaware are alumni of the university. So they typically like to donate their papers at the end of their political career, kind of halfway through their political career. So of course, we have the Biden papers. And we also have Tom Carper's government, I'm sorry, Governor papers as well. So we have quite a rich collection of government materials. So in terms of our government documents collection itself, we are a member of the Federal Depository Library Program, so FTLP. And we have been a member since 1897. So our 125th anniversary is coming up this next year. We also are a repository for state documents within the state of Delaware. So we have quite a lot of collections that are on microphone that are typically found at Delaware Public Archives that we have copies of them at our institution. We also work with the Patent Trademark Resource Center Program. So in terms of our physical collection and our government documents collection, we have our collections kind of spread out in a number of different locations. Our print collection is actually in our annex location, which is on campus, but it's just in a separate building. That decision to move our entire print collection was actually done by my predecessor. So it was one of the last decisions that he made before passing it on to me. We do have a microform that includes a lot of microfiche, as well as the microfilm. And we also have additional DVDs and CDs as well in our collection. That's located on the lower level of the library. And we also have quite a number of different maps that we've gotten through FTLP, as well as other government publications on the lower level, as well. And then, of course, the bulk of our collection is really our electronic documents, which we have cataloged in our catalog called DougCat Discovery. So of course, it's right now over 500,000 and counting because we do, of course, gets updated every couple of weeks. So that's just to give you a snapshot of kind of what I work with on a daily basis. But now let's get into kind of the actual meat of the program. And I'm going to keep checking my clock to make sure that I'm running on time. Okay, so government documents librarianship. So I, like I said, I was not hired as a government documents librarian. I came in with other responsibilities. But because of the pandemic, which I'm sure has happened at all of your institutions, we've had a number of retirements at the University of Delaware. And one of those retirements was our government documents librarian who have been working with this particular collection for over 30 years, if I'm remembering the number correctly. What was nice about having someone announce their retirement was that it gave us a chance to kind of think through, well, who, who should get this responsibility? What, where does it make sense essentially in our library? And because I was working with the political science and international relations department, I kind of basically named myself as the person who I think should have taken over government documents. And thankfully, my supervisors agreed with me. I didn't really have that much experience with government documents. I kind of knew how to stumble my way around research questions. But I did have practice in that previous year of trying to answer government documents related questions. So I was constantly in conversation with our government documents librarian at the time. So it felt like a logical choice to name me as this person and take over after the retirement. What was really nice was that we were able to actually have some training sessions before he officially left. So I definitely was very lucky because I did learn a lot and try and at least soak up as much as I could before John Stephenson was the previous government documents librarian before John Stephenson officially left our library and went into retirement. And thankfully, he still is a very active colleague of mine. So if I'm ever in a pinch, I can always email him and he'll actually answer my questions, which is really quite lovely. And I think it's, it's definitely a privilege that I still have access to someone who has that type of institutional knowledge. But the downside of becoming a government documents librarian in 2020 was of course the pandemic. So I was learning everything completely online. And I wasn't able to actually see our physical collection before it was moved over. So I'll talk a little bit more about that in a few moments. But the pandemic, of course, had a slew of different challenges that all of us experienced. But this kind of added a different layer when I was trying to learn a new collection when I couldn't actually be in the building with the collection. So that's a little bit about how I became a government documents librarian. So again, I've been in the position for about a year now. And so as I was reflecting and thinking a little bit more about what helped me over the course of the year, I've kind of have a number of things laid out on the side. So I'm going to go through and kind of elaborate on each one. So I apologize for all the wording on there, but I'll explain all of them in due time. So the first thing that was actually not something that I even realized that I had experience with, but what really helped me, my predecessor when we were in training, he said to me, I really think you're going to be great at this job because you already have an understanding of the structure of our government. You already have a historical understanding. You know where things live. That's going to give you a leg up when trying to answer these research questions that are going to come your way. And as I was thinking about it, he was absolutely right. I think knowing just the basic structure of how our government operates, knowing some of the departments and agencies, knowing when things are supposed to technically shuffle into other institutions and officially be a part of the National Archives, knowing what things are published is really, really helpful. So just having a basic knowledge of the structure of our government is already going to give you a leg up. And I wanted to especially emphasize that today because I think especially in new positions where you're kind of thrown into it and you're not quite sure what is involved, I think knowing that you have prior knowledge about this is really important. And that's something that you should remind yourself and kind of give yourself a little bit more confidence with that. And if you don't know everything that you think that you should know, that's totally okay. There's again, tons of different resources out there that you can basically up your knowledge and areas that you think that you need help with. And I've definitely done that this past year. The other thing that really, really helped me as a new government documents librarian was going through and answering old research questions. It was so vital for me to just have this hands-on practical experience of trying to navigate all of the government resources and figure out what is this person asking? Is this available? Where is it available? And I'll talk a little bit about how I usually go through research questions in just a second on the next slide. But going through and actually trying my hand at answering these research questions that came in previously and then seeing my predecessors' answers were really helpful. We work with the SpringShare system, so most of that was recorded in some way. We usually have a little section that where we put in what the question was. But also, again, I was very privileged in being able to actually talk to my predecessor and say, hey, I see you answered this question. This is how I answered it. Does this make sense? So I really encourage you, if you don't have access to those old research questions, maybe you can ask the reference librarians and see if anyone has ever encountered a research question that they have had to pass on to the government documents librarian. Just try and find some practical way that you could actually practice getting at this information. It really, really, it just wasn't valuable to me. And I think all of us as librarians are kind of used to not always necessarily knowing how to do something until we've actually physically do it. There's so many different subjects that I'm not an expert in, but I could definitely stumble my way through a research question and help someone. So I really encourage you to try that. The next thing that I did, and this took up a really big bulk of my first year, was that I inherited about four research guides from my predecessor. And this was actually between two different people. So we did have someone who used to be in the reference department, who also worked with government documents in addition to John Stevenson. So the two of them had created these very long and extensive research guides that had just a wealth of information. But I thought they were a little bit hard to navigate just as someone who is more of a visual person. There was a lot of information on there. It was a little bit overwhelming. So I decided that I wanted to create new research guides for our government information. So I've actually whittled it down to two. So I have a government information and congressional publications guide. And then I also have a government legal information guide. So those are the two that I've been able to condense down a little bit. Oh, I'm sorry. So I have a census guide. So I have three. But going through those research guides, first of all, my predecessor was highlighting specific collections, highlighting specific things that were important at the University of Delaware for what we specifically had and were collecting. And they were highlighting where things were and also how the helpful tips and tricks that we like to provide for researchers. So me going through those research guides were really, really important because I was able to see what my predecessor had previously done without having a physical conversation with them. Right. I was able to go through and basically kind of follow the logic of why they included specific resources where I was able to cut out some things that I'm like, you know what? I really don't think that that's important information. One of the research guides had basically all of the links to every single department and agency that was at the that was in the government. And I felt like that was a little bit unnecessary for, you know, the age of search engines that we that we essentially live in right now. So going through those guides and really cleaning them up helped me a lot to understand the types of questions that I usually get and the types of things that we have at the University. The other thing that you're already doing is attending webinars. I attended so many I went back into the very vast archive of the help series and I watched a ton of them. And I would start actually had started doing this when I took on the political science department, just to make sure that I was up to date with how government information was was being presented. So and I really was interested in hearing other experts in the field. So I really encourage you to go back through those webinar series. I know that time is is very limited, but kind of strategically pick the ones that are are going to help you the most. Likewise, when I was asked a research question, I would actually go back through the webinar series and see if there was a particular one that would help me answer a particular research question. So it took me a little bit longer to of course step back to that person. But I felt like I was trying to properly educate myself to better answer that research question. I think in the long run and expanded my knowledge a lot on other areas that I probably wouldn't have encountered if I had just tried to kind of stumble my way through the research question. And of course, if you're an FDLP member, but also just a government, there's a whole bunch of webinars through info that are free that you can sign up for. I frequently also pass them on to my colleagues who might have to kind of be the gatekeeper to some of the government information questions. So before it comes to me, it might be asked of them. So at least I can get a little bit of a head start for our patrons and our researchers. So there's a ton out there. I don't really spend that much time talking about the FDLP program in this presentation. I can of course talk a little bit more about it in the Q&A portion of this. But especially with some of the things that we're expected to do in FDLP, like making sure our collection is up to date, every single year, the FDLP Academy FDLP webinars were really, really helpful for kind of those process questions of how do I navigate the system, this FDLP system. So the last two points, I'm going to very quickly go over. So first of all, this is something that I did when I actually started my job at the University of Delaware. I reached out to other government documents librarians in the area or who had jobs that I knew were similar to me just based on job descriptions and just based on their subject listings that they had on their research guides profile pages. So I actually reached out to a number of government documents librarians, including our regional librarian who works at the University of Maryland. So I reached out to her as well, just kind of talk with them and to ask them questions about what did you wish you had known before you had started in your government documents position? What are the things that have really helped you over the course of your career? And that kind of helped me figure out what skills I needed to build and what really I was lacking in my knowledge base. So I encourage you to have those conversations. Honestly, I was never told no. I was never turned down. So I think everyone in our profession is very helpful and willing to help someone who's a little bit younger in their career or younger in a particular position. So I really encourage you to try and make connections. And they're also really just important if you have questions or need a colleague for future publications or presentations. That's nice to network a little bit. I also was really fortunate that I had signed up for the Rusa History Section Mentorship Program, kind of right as I was starting my government documents position. And I was really lucky to actually be partnered with someone who was a history librarian as well as the government documents librarian. It just happened to be one of those nice lucky things that kind of fell into my lap. But that was really very important to me to have a mentor of some sort. So I could ask her questions about how, again, she's navigated being a government documents librarian. So that was really helpful. So if there's ever a mentor program, it might be worth it to see who you might be partnered with. You never know how much they might be able to help you. And then lastly, I'm an organizational person, of course. So I kind of wrote down important events and important dates that I kind of needed to wrap my head around. Especially for FDLP, there were a lot of dates and deadlines that kind of come up special events like Constitution Day that I really was not that aware of before I took on this role. So I kind of made a calendar. I went through my Google Calendar. And I wrote down all of these important events and dates that I should be aware of. And then maybe I should proactively start creating programming for them or doing something to engage a little bit. So that was a lot for this particular slide. So I hope you're still with me. Now I'm going to talk a little bit about research questions. And I'm not going to spend too much time on this slide, just in the interest of time. But there are some helpful tips that I was given to kind of navigate these really kind of difficult-seeming research questions when I first was introduced into this role. So the first thing that my predecessor told me, and that which I think is absolutely true, is that it can be really helpful if someone comes at you and they are looking for a particular report or if they're looking for something to locate and identify what department or agency is this coming from. Because once you identify that particular department or agency, then that helps you figure out what SUDOC number it is, so that then you could go and track down that SUDOC number and see what publications are available or see where we'll keep the publication from there. You can figure out where records are being passed on to. You can figure out specific reports that are being produced by those specific departments and agencies. So that, I think, is the first step in a lot of government information-related questions. Sometimes you already know that information, so you have a little bit of a leg up. Most of the time, no one's going to tell you the SUDOC number, so you're going to have to go and track that down. And so having the department or agency is very helpful. Titles can be very, very tricky, especially when they're in catalogs, because most of the time the actual titles are these long five-line titles. So it can be a little bit difficult to track down what you're looking for. So I would encourage you to try, the sounds kind of funky, but to kind of try and think in the way of government publications. And all of them have these kind of like long, wordy titles. It can sometimes be helpful to be a little bit too wordy in your search to track down particular titles. And that's definitely true if you don't have some of this additional information, like the SUDOC number or if you don't really know, if you're just kind of browsing through because you're interested in a topic like forestry. So it can be helpful to add a little bit more words to that. I also say this because How Do You Trust has a really wonderful collection of government documents, but most of them are untitled or uncataloged. And like literally the title is like uncataloged. And then they have like numbers one through a thousand. So if you don't look at the metadata a little bit closely, more closely, you don't actually know what publication this is. And that's because a lot of institutions, when they would get the print, they would get these little paper slivers of publications and then they would bind them together. And oftentimes those bound titles do not actually have a title. So especially in How Do You Trust, it's a little bit difficult to track down where, what you're looking at essentially. So that's why I kind of throw a little bit caution to the wind about titles. And then of course, reaching out to the government documents community has been really, really important to me in my role this past year. I've reached out a number of times to just double check that I'm not, I'm answering the question as fully as I can. Also, I really want to emphasize reaching out to other people because a lot of different institutions have done really amazing work or have collected specific government publications or government information collections that you might not know about. So for example, I was looking for this particular publication that was related to chemistry and chemical engineering. And it was not in the usual place that I would have probably looked. It was not in our catalog. It was a little bit tricky to track down. And it turns out that this one university in California had actually digitized most of those publications. And we were able to do an interlibrary loan to get that particular report. And I would never, ever have known that unless I had posted on the government documents listserv because some retired government documents librarians that I remember doing a digitization project. With that particular report, we probably have it. So use them as a resource. The other things that I have listed on the screen are just some databases and resources. I realize that not everyone has had access to all of these paid subscriptions, but I do just want to mention some of the ones that we have at the University of Delaware that I, of course, use quite frequently. So there's the ones on the bottom half of the slides. So congressional serial set, which is through Redex, I use quite frequently, although it is a bit of a clunky interface. So it's a little bit annoying, but the congressional serial set is in the process of being digitized. I think it's actually coming out this week, if I remember the date correctly. So there's another way of at least getting to that content elsewhere through Govenpo and other locations. Howdy trust I mentioned, Law Library of Congress has a plethora of digitized government documents content. They have such a lovely collection. And so I really encourage you to take a look. They also have constitutions and treaties from First Nations. So again, really just a wonderful collection that I don't think that many people know about. There is a webinar on the Law Library of Congress that I would encourage you to watch because I found out all the great information from them. I use hide online quite frequently. And Perquest Congressional is really the place that I actually go to quickly track down SUDOC numbers. There's of course other places that you can go to look up that information. But Perquest Congressional kind of is just a very quick interface that I've been able to navigate a little bit more easily. It's also really great if you're looking for particular testimonies or hearings. I've been able to look up particular witnesses related to different committees through this database. And I was able to track down that information a little bit more quickly than in other areas. And we also have access to SUNY and WASPLA, which are really great for Supreme Court hearings. But of course those are two kind of more legal, next to SUNY isn't a legal database, but it has a lot of legal case work and information. But I mentioned that the both of them, because they do have a really rich legislative history section, which a lot of my public policy students usually have to do some sort of legislative history within a number of their classes every single year. So those are some of the resources that I point them to. And of course, given FOA, I think I don't really need to explain it, but it's such a rich place to go and access a whole bunch of different information. It's really wonderful. And I'm happy to answer more specific questions about any of those in the Q&A portion. So I've been telling you a lot of tips, but I also want to recognize that there are definitely some challenges this year. And there are some things that I, as I reflect back on this first year, that I had wished I had made more time for, that I wish I had maybe known about. So first of all, I wish I had made more time to read more founding publications and fundamental textbooks on government information. I really felt like I just, I didn't make the time for that. And I wish that I did. I think having, again, as I mentioned before, having kind of a grounding and an understanding of the government publication world and government information world would have, I think served me in a better capacity and maybe having a little bit more of an authoritative voice telling me some of the history of this and some tips and tricks. That's something that is still, still on my to-do list to kind of broaden my horizon a little bit and hopefully become a better government documents librarian. I also really wish that I had the opportunity to go through the physical collection before it was moved. And I can still go to the annex location, but there kind of needs to be some finangling essentially for me to actually go to the annex location because it is of course locked. And there's only one person who actually works there. But as I mentioned earlier, my predecessor did move our physical location offsite. So I don't have a physical government publication section in the library anymore. You can see the picture on the screen is actually what it used to look like in their shelves are now empty. We're getting in the process of actually shifting our collection a bit. So that's why we had to move them offsite. So just I'm a visual person. So being able to actually physically see what we have, see what makes our collection unique, what it really, really helped me. That's what I did with my other subject areas. And I definitely would like to make more time, which kind of segues into my last point here. All of us are so, so busy. All of us are wearing five million different hats. And I really wish that I had done a better job of blocking off time on my calendar to actually sit and take more than an hour to watch a webinar, but sit through and kind of work through some of these resources that I would have liked to have gone through. I'm very protective of my time that I spend at home. So I'm happy to do some work once I get home, but I do want to make sure that I'm maintaining a work-life balance. So to me, it's not always realistic to come home and to read a textbook at night when I need a break from engaging with work every day. So blocking off that time in your calendar, I really encourage you to do that if you can. And just make sure that you're giving yourself space to learn. One thing that I did do that was really helpful is I told myself that on Fridays, which are usually my less busy days, I told myself that I would block off an hour to watch a webinar. So that's what I have been doing consistently. So at least I do make some space for some additional professional development and learning. So some of my goals going forward. So I just wanted to articulate some of what I'm thinking about and hopes that maybe that might encourage you to create some goals as you go forward in this role. So first of all, we have a very large microform collection. We have both microfilm and microfiche. And I don't know anything about it. I'm going to be very honest. There's really not that much information. There's not that much information that my predecessor passed down. So my goal for this upcoming year is to take some time and actually assess the microform collection. Part of it, of course, is just for space. We have all of these filing cabinets that are filled with microfiche. And they're very rarely used. So I would like to go through and kind of assess what we have in our collection and potentially make some decisions about weeding. We also have our 125th anniversary coming up. So I actually am going to be partnering with our special collections department to make a mini exhibition. We want to pull in information kind of larger government information across the state for our 125th anniversary. So I'm going to be planning that. And I'm very excited about this because I think it will give me an additional opportunity to learn about some of the really unique things that we have in our collection. That's unique to the University of Delaware and the state of Delaware. The other thing that I want to do, which I haven't done, so I encourage you to reach out to other government documents librarians or government information librarians, but I actually haven't reached out to any of the specific FDLP libraries in my state. So again, I just want to make sure that I'm networking with my colleagues that are in my vicinity. Delaware is quite small, as I'm sure you know. So this is kind of a way for me to just connect and make sure that we're supporting each other in our work. I'm also very concerned about kind of the national collection and the state collection of government documents. So I would like to have a little bit more of a conversation with them about what are you collecting? Is it the same as us? Is it different? How could we maybe collaborate in the future? Again, I think it's really important to make those connections across different institutions. And just as a side note, I've also reached out to our legislative librarian that's housed in our state department. So I've been talking to him too, and it's nice because he again has that background on the state level that has been helping me to kind of inform the decisions and the documents that we have on a federal level. And I also would really love to offer workshops. Right now we have no government information workshops, and I think it's a need that might be better fulfilled once I have a handle, a little bit more of a handle on this role and what we have. So I'm only going to talk for another five minutes or so because I wanted to leave about 15 minutes or so for kind of conversation and questions. So this is my last slide. So some FYIs and some takeaways. I want to be very, very forthcoming with you that I think imposter syndrome is still alive and rampant in me, especially when it comes to this position. Frankly, when I was asked to this webinar, I was like, huh, do I have the knowledge to actually share with a group of first year government documents librarians about this? I still have doubts about my knowledge. I still don't think it's the way that it should or at the par of the level that it should be at, but you know, I'm working on it. And I think that's kind of a lesson for all of us that we're all kind of a work in progress. You shouldn't expect to know everything right away. So give yourself a little bit of grace, give yourself a little bit of leeway and knowing your limits and then working on those limits. So I do want to make sure that you're fully aware that I definitely still feel like I am not officially a government documents librarian that I'm still kind of struggling through how do I navigate this world? How do I navigate these collections? I'm still trying my best. The other thing that I do want to mention is to trust your instincts. We're all trained librarians. We all have skills and expertise that we're coming. So you know more than you think that you do. There have been many times that I've been you researching a government documents research question or government information research question and I'm like, this is totally wrong. I'm missing something. I'm definitely not doing something correctly. And that at the time, I still had my predecessor here. So I was able to ask specific help and advice on that particular question. And it turns out that I was totally fine. I was doing it correctly. So trust your instincts. Trust that you know the library and what you're doing and kind of that you know how to follow the breadcrumbs, so to speak. I think that's, again, a really good reminder for all of us that we have some idea of what we're doing. It's okay. You know more than you think. And of course, as I've said many, many times, try to attend as many webinars, especially the help webinars. As you can, they did not tell me to say this. I just am a really big fan of the help webinar series. It's helped, again, helped me a lot in this role. And if you can't attend them, get the recordings, sign up anyway. There are many recordings that I have kind of in my back burner for one of those Fridays that I have some time to take. So that is my presentation. I have my email apps. I'll keep that slide up there for a second. But I really would love to hear from you. Are there any other tips that you found over the course of your first year that you think everyone should know about? I would love to know because like I said, I'm still learning. But I'm very excited to hear from you and answer your questions if you happen. I just want to say thank you so much, Caitlin, for presenting on this. I'm also like a relatively new government documents librarian and a lot of what you said resonated with my experience and things that I've done. And we definitely did not ask you to share your love of the webinar series. But since you have, I'm going to go ahead and drop it on the link to our YouTube channel. We have a couple of questions in the chat, one or two in the Q&A. So I'm going to go to Jeff's question in chat first. How do you access or transfer the physical documents in the annex collection when they're needed? Oh, that's a great question. So we have an annex request form that our users are expected to fill out. And so that includes the public, of course, where we are, I don't think I mentioned this, we are open to the public. So I have done my best to try and get people to actually look at our research guides beforehand so that they're aware that they have to request this material in advance. So it's just a simpler request form. As long as it comes in before 1pm, they can get the information in the physical material that day. We're really close. It's like a five minute drive. So we actually have a truck that goes back and forth so that when that form gets submitted, it gets sent to our annex worker, Peggy, and then Peggy gets all the material on her little forklift, just really cool. And then she puts it in the truck and sends it over. If you get it to us after 1pm, then you have to get it the next day. But it's a physical truck moving situation. And then they're free to use it wherever in the library. They just can't check any of the material out. Oh, interesting. Okay, thank you. Yeah. And Brooke also asks, do you have any book recommendations? I assume for kind of learning more about how to do this kind of a role. Yes, I do. And I'm going to just kind of finagle off screen so that I can grab my list and then type into my Google Drive government. While I am doing that, is there another question so I can pull that and I can pop that into the chat? Ah, sure. So I'll turn to the Q&A and Kimberly says, great to hear from you. I also became a GovDocs librarian in 2019 rather spontaneously. I was wondering if you have a specific technical services person or persons working on the back end of GovDocs, acquisitions, processing, and cataloging. And if so, could you describe that relationship? In our program, the GovDocs coordinator in tech services has been in that position for 15 plus years and there's a lot of institutional memory, but she's not at all involved in public facing activities. Yes, yes. Thank you for that question. Yes, so that actually is my experience as well. So we do have our acquisitions department. We have two people who are cataloging our government material. One of them just retired. So unfortunately, we lost his institutional memory, but the other person has been doing this for, I think, 20 years. So they also, they don't really have any understanding of the public in those questions, but I find them really valuable. I have found them really valuable to talk to you because they see more of the physical material than I do because they're ones that are actually handling it every day and then because everything is in our annex location, they just automatically send it off to annex. So I really very rarely see the print publications that come through, but they've been extremely helpful to establish, again, that our current collection development or previous collection development practices are things that are a miss that are sections that I maybe I forgot to order one year. They're really amazing and they have a really fantastic memory for making sure that I'm on the right track and checking me a little bit. I do try and have a meeting. I had one meeting with them last year, so I'm going to try and continue that practice just so that they tell me if there's anything I miss or if anything has changed in that process. Did I answer that question fully? Yeah, I think it's kind of about that relationship and I think that that has been, yeah, it's great to have those relationships even within the library. And I, yes, and Kimberly has also affirmed that that was a good answer. I actually have a follow-up question of my own. Something that you mentioned when you were talking about the annex program that you have is that patrons are free to use the collection anywhere in the library but can't check things out. Is your GovDocs collection entirely in library use only? And maybe if you could talk a little bit about how that works, because I know in our collection, some isn't various institution to institution. Yeah, thank you. So it's honestly, it depends on the publication. I would say majority of our collection is only in-house, particularly the census data is definitely not allowed to be taken out. So we actually have little barcodes and security stickers on it so that if anyone tried to leave with the publication, it goes off and they'll be alerted. But we are pretty upfront about once the annex material is officially transferred over to that person, we're very upfront with our policies of this can only be read here. You're free, of course, to make scans and photocopies at will, but unfortunately, you can't check them out. I mean, also part of the issue with some of our publications not being checked out or whether it can be checked out is because since we are open to the public, we specifically have a public borrower card that you have to pay into that card. So not everyone has done that, so technically they would not be able to actually check out that material. So personally, you know, to make sure that we're not kind of alienating people or forcing them to have to pay for that public borrower card. I think it's a little bit better to keep it in-house. But we've never really had a problem of having people run away with our government documents, so we do have that security system, but they are, of course, free to use it anywhere in the library that they feel comfortable with. Right on. Thank you. Sorry, by the way, I did put two Amazon links to two books that I really liked in the chat. I can also, if anyone emails me, I have a couple additional ones that are a little bit more specific to print publications as well. Awesome. Thank you so much. I'm going to come up. So we have a question from Anna. Let me... Oh, I think I maybe I sent it to the person panelist. I'm sorry. I did that earlier with the links to our YouTube and my own email, so don't worry about it. But while you're kind of maybe resending those, we have a question from Jack. Right now, our library is suffering from large turnover and loss of student positions during the COVID period. Do you know of any particular training modules that can be adapted for training you, GovDocs, student assistants? Oh, that's a really great question for student assistants specifically. I mean, honestly, I think some of... I think that, and again, I'm not saying this just because I'm here, but the help webinars are very accessible. And honestly, I think we just went through a program of training student assistants and they, I think they can handle a little bit more than we give them credit for. So I think that would really be my first stop and recommendation. I see that Linda just put in another link in the chat. Anything that has fundamental information, I know Ben's guide is very kid focused, but it also might be kind of a fun way that college students might be able to get into the information and just at least be a little bit more accessible. In terms of actual programs besides the webinar, I don't know of any off the top of my head, so I encourage if anyone else has any ideas, but I don't know of any that are specific to students. I know of some that are specific to first year government documents librarians, but it might be a little bit more than what you're looking for. So I'm sorry, I don't have a better answer for that. No, I think that's a great answer. And seeing that link from Linda, I think that speaks to the comment that you were making earlier about the community around GovDocs and how we all have links for each other in that way as well. So I'm going to vamp for a moment, let some other questions maybe come in, let some people type. Because I did mistype my email earlier, so thank you again, Caitlyn, for being here to talk about this. And for everyone, if there are topics that you want to see or if you want to recommend someone, I know I was, we were able to ask Caitlyn because she was recommended as a person who would have this kind of knowledge. So I'm going to drop my email in the chat again and you should feel free to shoot me or Linda an email with the suggestion that you might have. And since I'll just ask one more of my own questions, as you're kind of talking about going through those research questions, was there one where you kind of had a moment you're like, Oh, wait, no, I've got this, like, I know what I'm doing. I went, whether that was one where you were going through the that backlog, that back catalog of research questions, or whether that was one that you got live from somebody where you had that moment of, Oh, I know what I'm doing, like I've got this job. Yeah, that's a great question. So there, there was a gentleman who had gotten in touch with me about a very, very specific citation that he found on a book that like wasn't even being published anymore. And he was like, I'm trying to track down this citation. I unfortunately don't remember what it was, it was officially for but, but it basically was like a Google book that he found this like, vague citation to a hearing that he was interested in. And I, I don't even know how actually how I did it. But I was able to go into one of our databases, professional or per quest congressional, and I was, you know, able to actually track down the hearing I was able to figure out exactly what it was. I'm just from this very terrible citation that actually wasn't the correct citation. And that was kind of it was a very valid moment for me. Because I had, I was like, Oh man, this is I'm not going to be able to do this. Like this is impossible. And I find I actually was able to track down the document. And I felt very good about myself. It was a life affirming, life affirming research question. And I did it all by myself, which I also think that, you know, give yourself a pat on the back when you get it. Yeah, absolutely. That's a great story. Thank you. Well, I am not seeing any additional questions, but I did want to say thank you again for, for joining us and for presenting on your experience as a first year government documents librarian. That was super enlightening for me. I know I made a couple of notes of things that I want to check out myself. And there's a lot more things coming into the chat. And for all of our webinar participants, thank you all so much for joining us on this fine one day. Thank you for having me. Thank you, everyone. Best of luck. Let me know if you have questions.