• state and local
• federal and foreign
• intergovernmental organizations

What are Government Documents?

• sublime to the ridiculous
• primary sources
• something for everyone

Agencies from A to V

• Agriculture
• Commerce
• Congress
• Defense
• Education
• Energy
• Government Accounting
• Health & Human Services
• Housing & Urban Development

Formats

• paper (books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters)
• microfiche
• cd-rom (data, text)
• diskette
• video
• maps (paper, digital)
• other stuff: mobiles, kits & calendars
• Internet

• print and/or reproduce
• distribute and/or disseminate
• produce catalogs & indexes
  • provide bibliographic access
• sales programs
  • GPO bookstores

• all government publications (with exceptions) should be available through the program
• government publications should be available for free use
• there should be depositories in each state/congressional district

• internal use only/administrative functions
• classified material/sensitive to national security

• things that don't get distributed to libraries or cataloged by GPO -
  • decentralization/privatization
  • technology
  • desktop publishing
  • electronic/web documents

• public's primary source for government information
• approximately 1400 around the country
  • academic, public, federal/special
• Regional vs. Selective

• The documents remain federal property
• We must get permission to discard
  • must retain for at least 5 years
• We must provide free public access
• We must provide reference service
• We must maintain collections in good condition and keep track of them

• Oberlin College Library has been a depository since 1858
• we select roughly 37%
• gov docs are everywhere!
  • Dewey, Library of Congress, SuDocs
  • vertical files, branches, storage

• What exists?
• Do we have it?
• Where is it?

General

• GPO Cat/Pac (Marcive, Inc.)
  • July 1976--
• Monthly Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (MoCat)
  • - 1895--

• PAIS International
  • 1915--
• ERIC
  • 1966-
• various bibliographies
  • refer to separate handout

Specialized

• CIS: Congressional Information Service Index & Abstracts
  • 1970--
• American Statistics Index
  • 1974--

A 13.2: F 53/2-2

• alpha-numeric system
  • agency as author
• punctuation counts!

• check OBIS for post-1992 monographs
• check the Government Publications shelflist for everything else
• ask for help at the Reference Desk

• you'll probably have to ask the first time...

Legislation, Law, and Regulations

• Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Code of Federal Regulations, Federal Register , U.S. Reports
• congressional materials
  • Congressional Record, hearings, documents and reports, Serial Set

Statistics

• census reports
  • decennial census of population and housing
  • quinquennial censuses: agriculture, economic, government, manufactures, transportation
• other agencies
  • Agriculture, Education, EPA, Labor, Justice, NOAA

• Statistical Abstract
• Digest of Education Statistics
• Economic Report of the President
• Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics
• Vital Statistics of the United States

• American Statistics Index

• consider who is likely to collect information on a certain topic
• statistics are collected by agencies for budgetary purposes
• consider what information is going to be useful (as opposed to interesting)
• consider what is possible or feasible to collect

• the Feds invented the Internet (NSF backbone)
• no copyright issues
• Federal Web Locator
• GPO Access
  • Pathway Services
• Fedworld (NTIS)

• Census Bureau
• National Endowment for the Humanities
• US Geological Survey

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