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Government Documents Reference Collection: Home

This guide reflects the core collection of Government Documents in the Law Library's Reference Collection.

Government Documents Reference Shelf

The Jerome Hall Law Library at the Maurer School of Law is a congressionally designated depository for U.S. government documents through the Federal Depository Library Program. 

"Government documents" is a blanket term used to categorize any information disseminated by a government agency. As such, material produced by government bodies at the local, state, federal, and internation level, in addition to government-funded agencies and organizations, are all considered government documents.

This research guide is designed with the intention of helping you discover what type of information is available to you from federal government agencies. All of these resources reflect the core collection available in the library, and are categorized by publishing agency. While a good portion of the collection can be accessed electronically, this is not yet true of all of it. Their location in the library, and online when applicable, is provided.

FDLP

The Jerome Hall Law Library is a Federal Depository Library, which means you’ll have access to Federal publications, including all the publications of the U.S. Congress and the Justice Department.

Author

The original version of this research guide was created by Jennifer Kulka, Law Library Intern

Good to Know

What are SuDocs?

The Superintendent of Documents uses an alpha-numeric classification system which assigns a SuDoc number to each publication. This system classifies each document by an institutional author (Congress or a government department, agency or commission), not by subject.

A SuDoc number is composed of two major parts divided by the colon: the stem, which identifies the government department or agency (the author) that issued the publication and after the colon a book number which is specific to that document.

 

The GPO's govbooktalk

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