Federal Government Documents Tutorial
The Universe of Federal Government Information
The federal government is among the world's largest producers of
information. There aren't many aspects of society in which the
government is not involved, and for which some governmental agency has not
produced information relevant to your topic.
Government information can be pretty dull and dry; but it can also
be very exciting. At the one extreme might be a grading manual for
frozen brussels sprouts (A88.6/4:B 83). At the other extreme could be
matters you read about in the daily newspaper:
- National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United
States
(http://www.9-11commission.gov/)
- Operation Desert Storm (D 214.2:W 44)
- The Challenger disaster (Pr 40.8:Sp 1/R 29/v.-)
- Mount St. Helens eruption (I 19.16:1250)
The federal government produces an unknown number of informational
items that are not known to the general public. These are "Classified",
and, in our open society, should be only items that relate to national
security.
The Government Printing Office
(GPO), an agency of Congress, has a responsibility to identify all
unclassified government publications. GPO publishes a monthly
bibliography, the Monthly Catalog of U.S. Government Publications, that
contains lists of publications that are printed by, or become known to
GPO. Although it is meant to be comprehensive, the Monthly
Catalog falls short: there are an unknown number of publications
that fail to be listed in the Monthly Catalog.
There are also a number of specialized indexes of governmental
information, and GPO does not attempt to duplicate their contents in the
Monthly Catalog. More about them later.
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