UAlbany's collection from the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) is shelved in the basement of the University Library, in the bound periodicals room. This collection is arranged according to Superintendent of Documents Classification (SuDoc). In our library, the SuDoc number on the spine of the book is always preceded by J 85.
The first component of the SuDoc number is alphabetic and denotes the agency from which the document emanated, e.g., EP - Environmental Protection Agency; NAS - National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The next component is numeric, denoting the specific administrative unit or office within the emanating agency and the type of publication it is. The combination of alphabetic and numeric components is followed by a colon (:) and is called the SuDoc stem. The stem is followed by the book number and can be based on the first word in the title. To summarize, the collection is arranged in agency order, broken down by administrative units, then by type of publication within the administrative unit, and then in alphabetic order within the type of publication.
For example, this is a display from our Library's Search tool for a publication in the FDLP collection:
J 85 -- UAlbany's prefix over the SuDoc number
HS 1 -- SuDoc designation for the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security
.2 -- SuDoc designation for General publications [HS 1.2: = SuDoc stem]
P 91/2 -- SuDoc book number for title Preparing Makes Sense
For assistance with government documents, consult a reference librarian or contact Karina Ricker, Reference & Government Information Librarian, kricker@albany.edu