The Federal Government of the United States publishes a great deal of information. Historically, the federal government has operated a depository system, whereby it sends out copies of publications to a large group of libraries. Before the Internet, those publications were primarily sent to libraries in a paper format. Technically, the publications are still owned by the federal government, and the libraries are simply making them available to the public. 

Part of the reasoning for sending out many copies of publications to libraries was that a future administration or congress could not restrict information about what previous governments had done, which might be historically relevant. (That is also why federal government publications are not copyrighted.) 

Today, much of the information made public by the federal government is in the form of electronic files which are online. Some libraries download those born-digital files into institutional repositories so that they will not be lost as the government changes. (For example, if an agency goes out of existence, the files on its servers might disappear and be lost to posterity if they were not saved by libraries.) For the last two months, government documents librarians have been busy downloading online information from the outgoing administration and congress to preserve their historical record in preparation for the new presidential administration and congress.

Because the federal government has distributed free copies of government documents to depository libraries, such as Winona State, those documents do not tend to be rare in Minnesota. Here are two government documents that are, nevertheless, on WSU’s retention list. 

National Power Survey: Environmental Research. The Report and Recommendations of the Task Force on Environmental Research to the Technical Advisory Committee on Research and Development. U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1974.

Waterborne Commerce of the United States. Part 2. Waterways and harbors, Gulf Coast, Mississippi River and Antilles. U.S. Army Engineer District, 1978.

Recap: In 2022, twenty-four Minnesota libraries joined together in a commitment to retain over a half-million print books which are scarcely-held in Minnesota. It is called the Minnesota Shared Print Collection. Here is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.