Scope Decisions

FDLP and CGP scope decisions

One of the key components for determining what makes a document a Federal information dissemination product within the scope of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) or the Cataloging and Indexing Program (C&I) is Federal Government Authorship, as stated in Superintendent of Documents Public Policy Statement 2019-1. The following are out of Scope.

Federal Reserve Banks and Federal Home Loan Banks – Out of Scope

In 2019, GPO Collection Development determined publications authored by the Federal Reserve Banks and Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBanks) to be outside the scope of the FDLP and C&I Program. These entities receive oversight from U.S. Government agencies, but are not officially sanctioned U.S. Government entities. They do not receive congressional appropriations and their employees are not U.S. Government employees.

Those information dissemination products authored by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors remain in scope. The Board of Governors is an agency of the Federal Government, reporting to Congress, though it does not receive appropriations. Its website is an official Federal government site.

Based on that determination, Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) and OCLC records for some information dissemination products determined to be out of scope were updated to include a note stating that this material is now out of scope, and PURLs directing to GPO’s server would not be maintained. WebTechNotes were issued when class stems and item numbers were deactivated.

This scope decision did not impact other in-scope Federal information dissemination products available through the FRASER digital library, maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Fraser is an official Partner of GPO, and GPO has an active an ongoing cataloging project, targeting in-scope records included in FRASER for the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications.

Please contact GPO via askGPO if you have any questions or concerns about this scope decision.