Accessing Government Information

With Spring fast approaching, the season of research papers will soon be upon us and the thought of accessing information will be at the forefront of most students' minds. panther.indstate.edu/tutorials/govdocs/index.jpg

Government information, usually a worthy source for most research papers, is often the most difficult to access and decipher. However, there are two new alternative sites to the U.S. Government Printing Office (http://www.gpoaccess.gov/). Government Attic (http://governmentattic.org/) and Government Docs (http://governmentdocs.org/).

Government Attic makes materials that are unavailable available to the public. There is no real theme to the content of the site; it is supposed to similar to rummaging around in your grandparents' attic.

Government Docs is a more organized, user-friendly site. Government Docs is a joint project between Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Project Oversight, Public Citizen, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Sunlight Foundation. The documents are fully searchable and users are allowed to comment and tag the documents. All documents are downloadable in PDF format.

Hopefully, these sites will help you in your research quest this Spring. Stop in the Library any time and we will be happy to help you find any information you need. Happy Reasearching!