Research Guides
United States Federal Government Resources: Finding Books & Articles
Starting Points
- Catalog of Government PublicationsCatalog of U.S. government publications, 1976 - present.
- CQ.com (Congressional Quarterly)
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Supplies articles and information about public policy issues, politics and positions. Tracks Congressional bills. - HathiTrust US Federal DocumentsSearchable collection of digitized US federal documents. Largest collection of its kind to date.
- MarciveWeb DOCS This link opens in a new window
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Index to US government documents, 1976 to present - Military & Government Collection This link opens in a new window
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Presents current information on all branches of the military and topics relating to the military and military life. Provides full-text coverage of scholarly and peer-reviewed journals, pamphlets, and indexing and abstracts of hundreds of titles. Some full-text titles available in PDF format or scanned-in-color. (EBSCO HOST)
- Monthly Catalog of U.S. Government Publications
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The comprehensive index to historical information published by the U.S. federal government, describing over 1.2 million items published between January 1895 and June 1976. - PAIS International
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Covers social and public policy literature from thousands of periodicals, some government documents, books, and other sources.
- ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window
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Index to Congressional publications, 1789 to present; including full-text hearings from, 1824-1979 and full-text bills & laws, 1789 to the present. - ProQuest Statistical Insight This link opens in a new window
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Indexes and abstracts statistical information in three databases: U.S. government (ASI). State and Private (SRI), and International Inter-governmental organizaions (IIS). Enter search terms, then narrow results using the filters that appear in a box on the left.
Government Electronic Fulltext Sources
- govinfo.gov This link opens in a new windowAn expanding source for full text of some US Government publications.
- Hein Online This link opens in a new window
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Provides full text primarily of U.S. legal documents.
- MetaLibMetaLib is a federated search engine that searches multiple U.S. Federal government databases, retrieving reports, articles, and citations while providing direct links to selected resources available online.
- Science.govScience.gov searches over 50 databases and over 2100 selected websites from 12 federal agencies.
- U.S. Congressional Serial Set This link opens in a new window
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The bound, sequentially numbered volumes of all the reports, documents, and journals of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives constitute a rich source of primary source material on all aspects of American history.
Search WorldCat for Books
- Worldcat
Especially useful when you want to search as broadly as possible for a topic or when you are seeking a relatively rare item that isn't likely to be available at the UW. It also facilitates borrowing books from other libraries.
Tips for searching WorldCat for Books related to government:
- Try a keyword search: government and your topic. For example, the search for "government and spotted owl" will give you dozens of results. Use the choices in the left sidebar to limit the search. Choosing Washington (State) under Author leads to a small list of books by government authors.
- Use the Topic limit in the left sidebar to narrow the scope of your search. In the example search for government and spotted owl, choosing the topic agriculture leads to the publication from the Washington Forest Practices Board.
- Getting too many results? Don't want to wait for interlibrary loan?
Try UW Libraries Search for items *only* in our system and Summit.
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Homeland Security Digital Library
A research collection of open-source resources related to policy, strategy and organizational management. Image credit: Homeland Security Digital Library.