Government Information and Resources
Brett Bodemer, CLA Librarian and Coordinator of Reference
Brett Bodemer
Subjects:Anthropology, Art and Design, Child Development, Communications, English, Ethnic Studies, Geography, Graphic Communication, History, Journalism, Music, Performing Arts, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Political Science, Psychology, Social Sciences, Sociology and Social Work, Theater and Dance, Women's and Gender Studies, World Languages and Cultures
Key U. S. Government Sites
Digitized Federal Documents
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Gov.info.govAbove, you can find a wealth of info, including:
United States Code
Code of Federal Regulations
Federal Register
Congressional Hearings
Congressional Reports -
Library of Congress (Guide to Law Online)Links to Code, Statutes and more, with explanation and interpretive tips.
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Google Scholar (Case Law)Check the button for "Case Law" and then Check the button for "Federal Courts"
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Foreign Relations of the United States1861-1960 (with some gaps).
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Foreign Relations of the United States1945-1988.
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Homeland Security Digital LibraryIncludes Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports, Executive Orders, Strategy, Policy Documents.
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CIA ARCHIVES (Crest FOIA Reading Room)Digital archives of declassified documents.
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NASA Technical Reports ServerNTRS provides access to aerospace-related citations, full-text online documents, and images and videos – scientific and technical information (STI) created or funded by NASA. The types of information include conference papers, journal articles, meeting papers, patents, research reports, images, movies, and technical videos. Reports and documents date back to 1958 (NASA) and 1915 (NACA).
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TRAIL (Technical Report Archive & Image Library)Digital Archive of U.S. government technical reports issued primarily prior to 1976. Content includes reports from the Atomic Energy Commission, the U.S. Bureau of Mines, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Services, the National Bureau of Standards, and others.
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Congressional Research Service Reports at UNTCongressional Research Reports offer concise and detailed summaries, and often point to primary documents. University of North Texas is compiling all those that have been previously published and putting them up for access here.
Catalogs of Government Publications
Searching For Government Publications in Other Catalogs
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WorldCatIf you know the title of what you are looking for, type it into the search box. Items NOT in our library can often be delivered by Interlibrary Loan, so if you see what you are after click FIND IT AT CAL POLY.
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HathiTrustHathiTrust is a partnership of major research institutions and libraries to preserve the cultural record. Over 5 million volumes of public domain materials are available through HathiTrust.
Cal Poly users can access open access or Creative Commons-licensed works, U.S. works published prior to 1923, and non-U.S. works published prior to 1923.
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Open LibrarySome items here are available in digital form, but you can also easily identify government documents after you search. For instance, if you type in House Reports Crime On the result list to the right you will see various government "authors" such as the House or Senate.
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Google BooksSome federal documents can be found fully digitized here, or identified and then ordered through Interlibrary Services.
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Techniques for Googling Government Information,Statistics and DocumentsAdd site:.gov to your search terms to get just information from government websites.
Add filetype:pdf to the same search if you want just pdfs.
Add the word statistics to your search to find statistics.
Kennedy Library Databases Useful For Federal Government Information
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Military & Government CollectionMilitary & Government Collection covers subjects related to all branches of the military and government, including defense systems, disease control, monetary policy, international relations, and environmental policy, with full text available for hundreds of indexed publications.
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Social ExplorerSocial Explorer provides access to the entire US Census data from 1790 to 2010, the entire American Community Survey (ACS) from 2005 to 2011 and more data from a number of sources. Users can create maps and use data visualization tools and reports to illustrate, analyze, and understand demography and social change. Users can also graph and chart data, export, save, and print maps and reports, and create multi-map presentations with an interactive slideshow tool.
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StatistaStatista is a statistics portal which provides direct access to quantitative data on media, business, finance, politics, and a wide variety of other areas of interest or markets. The database features unlimited downloads, source citations and direct use or export of results in PowerPoint, Excel PDF and Graphic (PNG) formats.
Users may need to disable ad blocking software on this site if search results links don't work. -
HeinOnline Government, Politics & LawHeinOnline is a government document and legal research database. It contains U.S. statutory materials, U.S. Congressional Documents and more than 2,500 scholarly journals, all of the world's constitutions, all U.S. treaties, collections of classic treatises and presidential documents, and access to the full text of state and federal case law.
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WestlawWestlaw is a legal research database that includes case law, state and federal statutes, administrative codes, newspaper and magazine articles, public records, law journals, law reviews, and treatises.