US federal government information sources
By law, the US Government Publishing Office is the "official, digital, and secure source for producing, protecting, preserving, and distributing the official publications and information products of the federal government," making it the world's largest publisher. Government "documents" range from tourist brochures to long books, speeches to astronomical data, gardening advice to technical reports, budget reports to the laws of the land.
Most GPO publications have been published online since the late 1990s and are listed in our library's Discovery Search (Primo) catalog: GPO has had an online-only publication policy since the early 2020s.
Extensive digitization of older documents (including many outside GPO's mandate) has been done by government agencies, by commercial database vendors (Voxgov, HeinOnline, ProQuest, Readex), and by nonprofits (LLMC-Digital, HathiTrust, Internet Archive); see entries for their collections elsewhere in this guide or in the libraries' Databases A-Z directory.
The library's most popular physical "Docs" are in a special section on the 5th floor of Newman library, identified and stored according to GPO's unique "SuDoc" call number system; you can find them in our catalog. Understanding the SuDoc number is crucial for locating physical government publications in the library.
The University of Montana has a good SuDoc Basics libguide. See also this University of Minnesota SuDoc Tutorial on YouTube. Don't be reluctant to ask a librarian for help.
Accurate SuDuc numbers are necessary for requesting delivery from library storage or from other libraries via ILLiad. You can find SuDoc numbers in:
Few libraries cataloged federal documents before the late 1970s; to locate earlier SuDoc numbers, it is often faster and easier to use the print indexes to the Monthly Catalog of U.S. Government Publications, 1895-2004, shelved near the Docs stacks (start at call no Z1223 .A183) than to fight with the online PDF indexes of US government documents from GPO.
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VoxGovVoxGov is an interesting application of “big data” to tracking the outputs – traditional documents and also official social media -- of persons and agencies of the US government. Coverage of some official print outputs extends back to the late 1970s. The content is updated several times an hour. Visualizations are simple but effective. The advanced search interface gives a sense of the scope of coverage and the many dimensions for filtering and comparing the data. You can also browse by policy categories, compare members of Congress, and track outputs from the last presidential, gubernatorial, and congressional elections.
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United States Government Manual, 1935 to Present"The United States Government Manual, the official handbook of the Federal Government, provides information on the agencies of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. It also includes information on quasi-official agencies; international organizations in which the United States participates; and boards, commissions, and committees." Searchable and browseable. Use XML view to read entries and selcted URLs.
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U.S. Government Information: Weekly Roundup (UC San Diego)This attempt to provide current awareness of federal government reports and activities" is part of a very extensive, carefully curated portal to information resources by and about the federal government. Useful complement to the fast, powerful VoxGov database.
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HathiTrust The HathiTrust Digital Library contains over 17 million scanned items and over six billion pages of scanned books, government documents, and other materials from academic and research libraries. Nearly 40% of Hathi content is in the public domain and accessible to you. Read onscreen or download book scans (use the yellow Log In button and select Virginia Tech as your "partner institution.") Most of the book scans were made available by Internet Archive and Google Book, with regular library cataloging added. Content is available in several image formats, text, and PDF. Covers 1200s-present. Affiliated HathiTrust Research Center enables computational analysis of works in the HathiTrust Digital Library (HTDL) to facilitate nonprofit research and educational uses of the collection. .
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How to Make a FOIA Request (from National Security Archive) Landing page includes links to "The National Security Archive User's Guide to the FOIA," tips and tricks, and sample letters for requesting documents from US federal agencies.
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HeinOnline U.S. Congressional Documents Library This collection features documents spanning the legislative and oversight functions of the Congress: Congressional Record (including its predecessors, Annals of Congress [1789-1824], Register of Debates [1824-1837] Congressional Globe [1833-1873]), Congressional Budget Office, selected CRS Reports [Congressional Research Service],Congressional Hearings, Committee Prints, Rules & Precedents, and additional primary sources, bibliographies, and manuals. Many Hein topical collections include these document types. The HeinOnline Portal offers a large and wide-ranging collection of historical and contemporary legal materials, including codes, treaties, constitutions, topical collections of historical documents, law reviews, and legal treatises from the US, Canada, and the UK.
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Congress.gov The official website for U.S. federal legislative information. The site provides access to accurate, timely, and complete legislative information for Members of Congress, legislative agencies, and the public. Replaced the THOMAS congressional portal, which was shut down in summer 2016. Congressional documents from the first 100 years of the U.S. Congress (1774-1875) can be accessed through A Century of Lawmaking.
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Congressional Serial Set (from ProQuest) Don’t be misled by the title: as the official historical record of the U.S. government, these resources are essential for any historical, political, or cultural research of the United States. The US Congressional Serial Set(incorporating American State Papers,1789-1838, and maps,1789-1969) includes documents on virtually every topic the US Congress has taken an interest in – which can be just about anything anywhere in the world -- since 1789 both for law-making and for oversight of executive-branch agencies: congressional reports on public and private legislation considered during each Congress (example); reports of investigations commissioned or conducted by Congress or its parts (example); reports from federal executive agencies (including land surveys, research and statistical publications, and reports of scientific investigations and explorations) submitted to Congress (example); budgets of the United States (since 1923) (example); treaties presented to the Senate (since 1979) (example); and reports and other documents of select nongovernmental organizations (example), from the Red Cross to the Smithsonian and the American Legion to the American Historical Association. Comprising only documents Congress has declared to be particularly important, the Serial Set does not (usually) include text of bills and resolutions, hearings, nor committee prints. See ProQuest's Serial Set guide. Alternative access to the Serials Set: HeinOnline. Our existing Hein databases have always contained substantial portions of the Serial Set, including the American State Papers, comprehensive coverage of Foreign Relations of the United States, and thousands of House and Senate reports and documents inside compiled federal legislative histories.
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SAM.gov (from US General Services Administration) US government system for discovering "contract opportunities" (formerly FBO.gov); "assistance" ( formerly CFDA.gov: descriptions of federal grants/awards/loans of all sorts, not only social welfare); reports and data about grants and contracts awarded and also about "entities" seeking or receiving them; wage determinations (was WDOL.gov); and more. Portions require registration to access.