Government Documents

About this guide

The purpose of working with government documents is to draw on the authority of the creators, government employees and official entities. This makes it very important to use reputable sources, such as the government itself and established vendors, to obtain government documents.

Each branch of the federal government, and each branch of state governments, generates unique types of documents. Understanding the document types is important to effectively searching for them. This guide will provide brief overviews of what sorts of documents each branch of the federal government produces, Leatherby library resources relevant to researching documents from that branch, and open online sources.

Government publishing

The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) is an agency designated by Congress to distribute information products for all three branches of the federal government. Originally a printing office, it now physically prints a variety official documents (such as passports) but also has the responsibility to distribute many documents electronically.

Electronic access to documents from the GPO has changed over the years, starting with GPO Access, then the Federal Digital System (FDSys), then GovInfo. Older guides on the subject of government documents may refer to the older systems, but the newer ones contain all the same materials. GovInfo also has extensive guides to all document types within available via the "Help" link at the top of the page. The newest online research tool from the GPO is DiscoverGov, linked below, which searches both GovInfo and GPO's Catalog of U.S. Government Publications.

Physical versions of government documents are sent to what are called "depository libraries." Some of these are selective, meaning they receive some chosen "classes" of government publications, and fourty-six regional depository libraries receive everything. The regional depository library for California is the California State Library in Sacramento. There can be two selective depositories per Congressional district. CSUF, UCI, and the Orange County Public Library system are all selective depositories in Orange County. All depository libraries are additionally required to make certain core documents available and to have staff who can help users work with the collection.

Documents outside of GPO

While the GPO is the official distributor of government documents, many agencies bypass it for at least some of their output. Almost all of this is electronic and is published via the websites of the agency responsible. Thus, the documents will not appear in DiscoverGov/GovInfo or be stored in depository libraries.