The Superintendent of Documents Classification System originated from the Library of the Government Printing Office between 1895 and 1903 (The Superintendent, 2004). It is attributed to Miss Adelaide R. Hasse, who assigned classification numbers based on government organization authorship to a List of Publications of the U. S. Department of Agriculture from 1841 to June 30, 1895. The system was first published by the Department of Agriculture in their Library Bulletin No. 9 in 1896, and this system has gradually expanded as the federal government has grown over the years. Some of the elements of the system have changed, but it is based on the same principles.
The system is based on the organizational status of the government author, and so it must change as the federal government undergoes organizational changes. This leads to publications from some agencies being located in several different parts of the system (The Superintendent, 2004). Despite all these changes, the classification system is still used, and has been adopted to arrange documents collections in most depository libraries and at the National Archives.
The Superintendent of Documents (SuDoc) classification system groups together government publications according to their government author (The Superintendent, 2004). Documents are grouped according to subordinate organizations within an agency or department. The executive departments and agencies, the judiciary, Congress, and all major independent establishments are assigned a unique alphabetical identifier which is based on the name of the organization, such as "A" for the Agriculture Department, "JI" for the Judiciary, etc. "X" and "Y" are reserved for Congress. "Z" is not used. Subordinate bureaus and offices are distinguished by numbers added to the alphabetic identifiers, with "1" designating the parent organization, and the secretary's or administrator's office. Numbers are applied in order from...