The minimum federal materials that a public library should consider purchasing
in paper are the United States Code and the Code of Federal Regulations.
The United States Supreme Court cases should be made easily accessible to the
patron, either by using an internet version at no cost or purchasing them on
CD-Rom. Other federal cases can be requested through the internet on a per document pay basis.
Information about purchasing and researching in these areas is listed below. If you follow
the recommendation listed in the previous paragraph, you will have subject or full-text
access to everything except the lower federal court cases. However, because cases are
a primary source material (part of what constitutes the law) they should be consulted when a patron
is doing federal research, and it would be appropriate to refer a patron
to a public law library to access case finding tools if your library can't carry them.
One more note. Depending upon which version of the federal statutes you own, you may also need to obtain
a set which publishes current federal laws as they are passed. If you own the United
States Code, one way to update it is with a set called United States Code Congressional and
Administrative News which will give you text of the new public laws, and a table telling you
which sections of the United States Code are updated with those new public laws. If you
own one of the annotated statute sets, either United States Code Annotated, or United States
Code Service, they have current enough supplementation that purchasing an additional set may not be
necessary.
Form books and citators (also listed below) may be too cost and space prohibitive for a public library to maintain.
Costs are classified as follows: $=under 100, $$=101-250, $$$=251-500, $$$$=501-1000, $$$$$=1001+,
and unless otherwise noted, cost information relates to the new, print version.