Skip to Main Content

Government Documents

The Government Documents Department at Tennessee State University is located on the 2nd floor of Brown-Daniel Library

Finding U.S. government documents

Two guides to locating government information during the second term of Donald Trump:

Federal Government Information After the 2025 Transition is a guide from UC-San Diego.

GODORT (Government Documents Roundtable) 2025 Presidential Transition guide

 

Some of the sites mentioned in the above guides include:

GovWayback shows how to use the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to access previous versions of U.S. government websites.

GovWayback's site has details and more complex examples, but it essentially involves adding wayback.com immediately after the .gov portion of the URL, for instance:

nih.gov    becomes    nih.govwayback.com

For more archived government documents, try Data.Gov at Harvard Law School.

CyberCemetery (hosted by the University of North Texas) archives websites of defunct government agencies.

Brown-Daniel Federal Depository Library

Tennessee State University's Martha M. Brown-Lois H. Daniel Library has been a selective depository for United States Government Documents since 1972. The library is one of four in the 5th Congressional District of Tennessee. 

In addition to our collection of tangible (print) documents, the library provides access to the U.S. government's vast collection of electronic resources.

This Library is a congressionally designated depository for U.S. Government Documents. Public Access to the Government Documents collection is guaranteed by public law. (Title 44 United States Code)

 

  

Like and follow us on social media!

 

Essential Websites

 

DiscoverGov searches the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) and GovInfo.

Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) -- searches all publications archived by the Government Printing Office; can be limited to online documents

GovInfo -- Provides free access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal government.  (GovInfo Tutorials)

Congress.gov-- legislation, legislators, calendars, and more, primarily from the 93rd Congress to the present

Congressional Research Service Reports at Congress.gov -- a new search interface for Congressional Research Service Reports (reports prepared at the request of a member of Congress)

USA.gov - Official portal to U.S. government information, organized by topic. As it covers areas such as travel and voting, it is more consumer- and citizen-based than GovInfo (which is more for researchers).

federalregister.gov -- "The daily journal of the United States government."

American FactFinder - Gateway to data from the decennial and economic censuses.

Data.gov  -- Over 300,000 datasets, from the past 15 years.

loc.gov -- The Library of Congress site provides online access to its extensive catalog, as well as online exhibits. Chronicling America has over 21 million pages of historical American newspapers

Google's U.S. Government Search Engine

How are government documents classified?

Federal government documents are classified according to the Superintendent of Documents (SuDocs) classification system.

Each SuDocs designation starts with a letter or letters indicating the agency issuing the item, for instance:

A Agriculture NCU National Credit Union Administration
C Commerce P U.S. Postal Service
D Defense PREX Executive Office of the President
E Energy S State
HE Health and Human Services SBA Small Business Administration
HS Homeland Security SI Smithsonian
ITC International Trade Commission T Treasury
J Justice TD Transportation
LC Library of Congress V Veterans Affairs

 

For a more detailed list, consult:

U.S. Government Information: Weekly Roundup

Gulf of Mexico/Gulf of America

As directed by the President, the Gulf of America enters the USGS official place names database

Non-US Government Information Sources

In general, English-speaking countries, and major organizations with English-speaking countries as members, have the strongest collections of government documents online, but other countries have extensive collections as well.

Other sources of U.S. government documents

In addition to the archived sites mentioned above, try

HathiTrust -- especially for older documents

Legal Information Institute -- Cornell University's Legal Information Institute provides selective legal resources, most of them federal and state government documents, for a lay audience