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ASERL Center of Excellence: Congressional Budget Office

This guide provides information about the Congressional Budget Office documents we collect as part of the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries' Center of Excellence program.

About ASERL Centers of Excellence

The Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL) Centers of Excellence program seeks to provide workable solutions to address the increasing cost of managing, preserving, and providing access to large collections of Federal government publications through the creation of several comprehensive collections, known as "Centers of Excellence" (COE), of U.S. government information from each Federal government agency. Built upon the foundation of existing holdings at Federal Depository libraries, these collections will become more complete with assistance from both Regionals, libraries who collect government information comprehensively, and Selectives, libraries who collect government information selectively, in the ten ASERL states.

Centers of Excellence will:

  • inventory holdings and ensure accurate cataloging and holdings records for the extant collection
  • actively replace damaged or lost pieces,
  • seek to fill holes in their collections, as necessary,
  • provide active preservation for the collection,
  • catalog the pieces that they own on OCLC, the worldwide union catalog for libraries, and identify them as the archival copy,&
  • participate in GPO's program to set holdings on OCLC for Regionals free of charge, if eligible,
  • enhance the visibility of, and accessibility to, their collection through digitization of holdings or linking to available public domain digital copies, as feasible,
  • actively participate in ILL/Document Delivery agreements, and
  • provide expert reference service for and promote the use of their collection.

ASERL believes creating these COEs will result in more reliable and predictable access to Federal publications for all libraries and citizens in the Southeastern states by specifying which Federal Depository libraries have the most complete holdings for each agency. ASERL appreciates the effort that all service points at their “centers” are putting into making sure their users know about the availability of these rich resources.