The practice has been to maintain only one copy in the collection generally and three copies for major Canadian federal and Ontario documents. Ephemera and pamphlets are not retained. Those that have long standing interest such as speeches, communiqu , policies and explanations of government programs, are kept and catalogued as regular monographs or serials. Most diskettes and CD-ROMs are relegated when updates are received. The only exceptions are those that have historical material and data which will not be updated, ie the Canadian System of National Accounts 1926-1976.
Some exceptions are theses, recordings, films, videos and maps.
These are collected at or sent to the relevant areas in Scott. The government documents collection does have some of almost each type of these materials but only when these are integral to the use of other materials, i.e. maps are needed in order to use the Census of Canada. Manuscript and archival material are not collected as a general rule. These would be primarily pre-1867 materials. The University of Toronto, Robarts Library, Government Documents Section has large collections in many areas where little material is acquired at York.