HIST 3301 (Dr. Elizabeth Clark): Historical Methods (Govt. Docs)

Federal publications in Government Documents are arranged by SuDoc (Superintendent of Documents) number.  Unlike the LC Classification System, which arranges items by topic, the SuDoc Classification System arranges items by the agency which published the items. 

While you cannot browse items by topic, such as Cuba, you may find these broad SuDoc areas particularly useful:

Also, like many federal depository libraries, not all federal publications in the Government Documents unit are cataloged. All items received since 1995 have been cataloged, along with many older major sets and a variety of other historical publications.

The good news is that tools are available to help you find some of the cataloged and uncataloged resources. Learn more under the "How to Find It" tab on this page.

SuDoc numbers are divided, usually at the colon, into two parts -- the stem and the book number which then combine to make a complete SuDoc number.

All SuDoc numbers begin with one to four letters--indicating which department or independent agency authored the publication.  Next, when applicable, comes the bureau number.  It is divided from the rest of the SuDoc number by a period.

Following the period, each series issued by that bureau is also assigned a number.

After the stem, each individual issue or publication in a series is assigned a unique identifier, called a book number, following the colon. Unnumbered monographs, numbered monographic series, and serials, all have different types of identifiers.

Therefore I 29.6/6:F 75/988 stands for the 1988 edition of Ford's Theatre and the House Where Lincoln Died in the series National Historic Site Information Circulars from the National Park Service of the Department of the Interior of the United States of America.