Call Numbers for U.S. Government Documents have the prefix "Docs". They are classified by Superintendent of Documents numbering system. The SuDocs numbering system is not based on decimals like the Library of Congress system which we use in the rest of the HSU Library. The letters and numbers represent a particular government department or agency, e.g., "A" for Agriculture Department, "HE" for Health and Human Services Department, "I" for Department of Interior and "JU" for Judiciary However, the letters "X" and "Y" are reserved for Congress. The designation "Z" is not used. The letters and numbers up to the colon constitute the class stem.

The numbers that directly follow these letters (before the decimal point) represent the specific office of the department. A number after the decimal point but before the colon represents the subordinate level offices or bureaus of the agency, and are treated as whole numbers.

The numbers after the colon represent individual publications in the series and their dates of publication (998 = 1998) until the year 2000.

If the call number is the same to a certain point, then varies, the order is:

• Years, Letters, Numbers. Examples in order:

If the part of the call number before the colon has numbers with slashes, the base numbercomes first, followed by the slashed numbers in order. The same rule applies to numbers that are dashed.

Examples (in order):

The number after the colon, identifies the type of publication. Read more about SuDoc classification by going to Federal Depository Library website.

Example:
We have diagrammed the call number C 3.186:P-23/190.

The first letter stands for the agency responsible for the publication, in this case the Department of Commerce. The first number tells us the subagency (the Census). The period in the number is not a decimal. It is used to separate the agency from the format of publication number; .1 is usually an annual report, .3 a periodical, and so forth. In this example, 186 designates a certain series put out by the Census. The numbers or letters after the colon vary. In this example they make up the report or series number, but often they refer to the title or main subject of the publication. The slash is a separator, and the number after it simply extends the call number. Sometimes it will indicate an edition number or year. In this case it is the specific report number.

In our library, we put the indicator "Docs" at the beginning of the SuDoc number, to distinguish federal documents from California documents and other materials. The call number is oriented vertically, as illustrated below.

Once you have found an item that you are interested in looking at, you need to write down the SuDocs number. For all items found in the print Monthly Catalog, the number is listed above the title. In the electronic version of the index, the SuDocs number is found at the beginning of the citation.

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