Strategies For Finding Electronic Government Documents

Strategies for Finding Electronic

Government Documents

Kristina Bobekb343@georgetown.eduNovember 5, 2008

Keeping Up…Keeping Up…

Overview of today’s session Updates on digitization initiatives: what’s

complete, what’s still in progressDatabases

LexisNexis Congressional HeinOnline

ALADIN e-GovDocsWeb initiatives

Digitization projects

Forthcoming releasesExercises: practice your skills

It can be hard to find government documents…

LexisNexis Congressional Collections already available in full text: CRS (Congressional Research Service)

Reports1916-present

Committee Prints & Misc. Publications1830-present

Historical Serial Set + Maps1789-1969House & Senate Reports, Documents

LexisNexis Congressional

Updated Digital Hearings: last year at this time, digitized back to the 1970’s

Now, for fall 2008: hearings are being digitized back to the 1800’sEmail: citations onlyNot RefWorks compatibleScans vary in quality

LexisNexis Congressional

‘Digital Collection’ means full text is available

GEORGE record for hearing

GEORGE record shows microfiche

holding for Vandenberg

Resolution on the North Atlantic

Treaty

Found that Defense Appropriations hearing…

HeinOnline – includes full text of… Code of Federal Regulations 1938-2008 Federal Register 1936-2008 American State Papers 1789-1828 Foreign Relations of the United States

(FRUS) 1861-1976 U.S. Federal Agency Library U.S. Presidential Library U.S. Statutes at Large 1789-2005

HeinOnline

The Big News: complete digitization of the Congressional Record Annals of Congress (1789-1824)Register of Debates (1825-1837)Congressional Globe (1833-1873)Congressional Record (1873-2003)Congressional Record Daily (1994-2008)

Congressional Record November 15, 1918

HeinOnline cont’d

Plus: Citation Navigator tool - accurate for known citations

Minus: Search leaves a LOT to be desired - can be long and unproductive

Not RefWorks compatible

Some people can be so demanding…

WRLC Government e-Docs

Marcive 100% loadDocuments Without Shelves

Library listed as E-GovDoc Location:

US GovPubs Online - Available to All Focus on recent documents (2000 and

later)

WRLC Government e-Docs To search only E-GovDocs

Click on ‘More Limits’Select LOCATION ‘EGovDoc’Click on ‘Set Limits’Search using keywords and retrieve only

electronic Gov DocsGPO titles: no authentication requiredMost useful for subject areas where our

collection is not strong

Internet Archive

http://www.archive.org/ Search on ‘government documents’ Collection is continually growing; multiple

contributors Good internal search Potential to be a major archive of full text

government documents

Registry of Digitization Projects

http://registry.fdlp.gov/

Google U.S. Government

http://www.google.com/ig/usgov

Limits results to .gov, .mil, .us internet domains

MARC Records for Serial Set

283,529 MARC records will be loaded into GEORGE from the LexisNexis Congressional Serial Set

Documents from 1789-1969 Included with our LN subscription Annual reports, House and Senate documents

and reports, more here… Full text and coming soon!

MARC Records for Digital Hearings As soon as they are available:

MARC Records will be loaded for the Digital Hearings collection

Included with our LN subscription Link to full text of hearing As with other subscription-based sources,

will require authentication from off-campus from to view

Time for exercises…

Any questions?Any questions?