# Documents Expediting Project

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'''DOCEX''', the [common name](/source/common_name) for '''Documents Expediting Project''', was a program begun in 1946 by the [Library of Congress](/source/Library_of_Congress) (LoC)<ref>Annual report of the Librarian of Congress for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1946. Washington: GPO, 1947.</ref> to distribute duplicate copies of government publications they received from federal government agencies.<ref>Shaw, Thomas Shuler. [http://hdl.handle.net/2142/6275 Library Associations and Public Documents.] ''Library Trends'' 15 (1) Summer 1966: Federal, State and Local Government Publications: 167-177</ref> The program provided a means of obtaining documents that were not distributed through the [Federal Depository Library Program](/source/Federal_Depository_Library_Program), not for sale by the [Government Printing Office](/source/United_States_Government_Publishing_Office), and not available directly from the publishing agency. Initially, DOCEX was begun by the Librarian of Congress to make formerly classified documents available after [World War II](/source/World_War_II). Libraries could subscribe to the service and make selections from lists sent by LoC. LoC had a special arrangement with the [Central Intelligence Agency](/source/Central_Intelligence_Agency) (CIA) to distribute CIA reference aids, which consist of things such as posters of communist leaders of various countries.

The service was discontinued on September 30, 2004.<ref>''Annual report of the Librarian of Congress for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2004'' [https://www.loc.gov/about/annrept/annreports/fy2004/loc_annual_report_2004.pdf]</ref> A letter from Michael W. Albin explained that the decision to end DOCEX was a result of the service no longer being self-supporting because so many documents were available on the web and because several CIA titles had been discontinued.<ref>Albin, Michael W. Letter regarding the Documents Expediting Project. 2004. quoted in [http://lists.psu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind04&L=GOVDOC-L&F=&S=&P=101490 e-mail to Govdoc-l] posted by Roscoe Wolff-Watts, April 13, 2004.</ref>

==References==

{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==

*''[http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b3330770 Annual report of the Librarian of Congress for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1946]''. Washington: GPO, 1947. (From [http://hathitrust.org Hathitrust.org]
*Robinson, Judith Schiek. [http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/39195318 ''Tapping the government grapevine: the user-friendly guide to U.S. government information sources.''] Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1988, p.&nbsp;25.

== External links ==

* {{cite web | title=Library of Congress | url=http://loc.gov }}
* {{cite web | title=Federal Depository Library Program | url=http://fdlp.gov }}

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Category:Library of Congress

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Documents Expediting Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documents_Expediting_Project) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documents_Expediting_Project?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.