LibGuides: U.S. Federal Government Information: A Basic Guide: General & Specialized Indexes

General Catalogs and Indexes

U.S. Catalog of Government Publications
The CGP is the finding tool for federal publications that includes descriptive information for historical and current publications as well as direct links to the full document, when available.

WorldCat (OCLC) This link opens in a new window
WorldCat is the OCLC Online Union Catalog, containing more than 35 million records describing items owned by MSU Libraries and libraries around the world; each record indicates library holdings. It is produced by the OCLC Online Computer Library Center and describes books, manuscripts, computer data files, maps, computer programs, musical scores, films and slides, newspapers, journals, sound recordings magazines, and videotapes.

Guide to U.S. Government publications.
Call Number: Z1223.Z7 G82
Lists government serials and series publications. Provides agency chronologies and traces changes in government and agency organization and publications over time.

MetaLib: Catalog of Government Publications
MetaLib 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. Refine your search results by exploring the various topics, date ranges, and author names.
National Archives Catalog
The National Archives holds historical U.S. government documents (federal, congressional, and presidential records) that are created or received by the President and his staff, by Congress, by employees of Federal government agencies, and by the Federal courts in the course of their official duties.
GovSpeak: A Guide to U.S. Government Acronyms & Abbreviations
This guide lists acronyms and abbreviations commonly used by the United States federal government. Each acronym is defined and links to the home page (or best alternative) of the identified department, agency, office, program or publication.

Specialized Indexes and Full Text Databases

GovInfo This link opens in a new window
GovInfo is a service of the United States Government Publishing Office (GPO), which is a Federal agency in the legislative branch. govinfo provides free public access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government, including Presidential Documents, the Congressional Record, Congressional bills and laws and regulations. The information provided on this site is the official, published version and the information retrieved from GovInfo can be used without restriction, unless specifically noted.
ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window
Includes Congressional Record 1789-2001, Congressional Hearings 1824-2003, Congressional Serial Set, Committee Prints 1830-present, CRS Reports 1916-present, Executive Branch Documents 1789-1932, and U.S. Bills and Resolutions.
ProQuest Statistical Insight This link opens in a new window
Indexes and abstracts statistical publications from the US government, state governments, international organizations, and professional associations. Includes ProQuest Statistical Datasets and the ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the U.S. [It is the WWW version of 3 print indexing sources: American Statistics Index (ASI), Index to International Statistics (IIS), and Statistical Reference Index (SRI).] Links to selected full-text materials are provided, some in spreadsheet format. The Library owns almost all the materials indexed in ProQuest Statistical Insight.

National Technical Information Service (NTIS)
This growing collection, including millions of publications and technical materials from U.S. federal agencies, industry and university contractors with the federal government. Full text for many of the reports is available online after users create a free personal account. You may also use ILL to access reports that are not available electronically..
Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC)
Publicly available Department of Defense documents and related materials.

Pre-1976 Publications

Many federal documents published before 1976 are not cataloged in the library's online catalog. Some exceptions are the U.S. executive branch documents, 1789-1909 microfiche collection and many serials.

Use the shelflist in the Government Documents department (3 West) to determine if a document published before 1976 is available in the library. The shelflist is organized by Superintendent of Documents (SuDoc) call number only.

Monthly Catalog of U.S. Government Publications
Commonly referred to as the Monthly Catalog or MoCat, this publication lists all of the publications produced by the U.S. Government Printing Office from 1895 to 2004. Initially intended to supplement the Documents Catalog, the Monthly Catalog served as the “comprehensive index” provided for in the Printing Act of 1895 after the Documents Catalog was discontinued in 1947. The Monthly Catalog was discontinued with the December 2004 edition, after which point the continuously updated Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) served that purpose.

Cumulative Title Index to United States Public Documents, 1789-1976 by Daniel Lester (Compiled by); Sandra Faull (Compiled by)
Call Number: Consulting Reference, 1 East, Z1223 .A131
ISBN: 0882220349
Publication Date: 1978-03-01
Title index for locating known publications. Index includes SuDoc number.
Cumulative subject index to the monthly catalog of United States government publications, 1900-1971
Call Number: Consulting Reference, 1 East, Z1223 .A181
Subject index to government publications. Must be used together with the Monthly Catalog Of United States Government Publications
Checklist of United States public documents, 1789-1970: indexes
Call Number: Consulting Reference, 1 East, Z1223 .A133
First systematic list of documents. Organized by issuing agency. No subject index.
CIS Executive Branch Documents by Congressional Information Service, Inc. Staff (Editor)
Call Number: Consulting Reference, 1 East, JK411 .C5
ISBN: 0886922747
Publication Date: 1993-01-01