Guides: U.S. Government Documents: Major Indexes and Documents at Penn

Accessing Documents through the Penn Libraries

The Penn Libraries have been a selective depository for U.S. government documents since the end of the 19th century and holds a strong collection of documents back to the founding of the nation. The Franklin Catalog provides access to bibliographic records for older print material, as well as publications in a number of online collections to which the Library subscribes. Also, Franklin Articles+ provides searchable access to a large number of full-text U.S. Documents. The Library has many documents from the 1960s - 2000s in microfiche, most of which are in LIBRA Storage and can be requested if needed.

As a Federal Depository Library Program participant, the Penn Libraries make U.S. government documents received through the depository program available for the free use of the general public. The Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center is the physical point of access for using the Penn Libraries' Federal Depository Library Program collection.

For assistance with documents, Contact Us

Publicly Accessible U.S. Government Document Search Tools

A-Z index of U.S. Government Departments and Agencies
Official U.S. Government list of contact information for U.S. federal government departments and agencies, including websites, emails, phone numbers, addresses, and more.
Catalog of U.S Government Publications
Contains records for historical and current publications and provides links to full-text when available. While records for publications dating back to the late 1800s are being added, for publications issued prior to 1976, the Monthly Catalog should be consulted too. (public site).
Congress.gov
Congress.gov is the official website for U.S. federal legislative information. It provides access to the full text of bills, resolutions, and public laws from the 6th to the current Congress, with the exception of the 12th Congress, and Senate bills & resolutions from the 16th to 42nd Congresses to the present. Check the coverage dates of collections for specific date ranges. Use the Advanced Search to search for bills and resolutions by Congress, legislation and law numbers, words and phrases, legislation type (i.e. H. R., H.Res., S., S.Res.), action/status, sponsors and co-sponsors, and committees.
GovInfo: U.S. Government Publishing Office
Includes the full-text of many notable executive, legislative, and judicial government publications. (public site)
MetaLib
MetaLib is a federated search tools that covers multiple U.S. Federal government databases, retrieving reports, articles, and citations while providing direct links to selected resources available online.
Monthly Catalog of U.S. Government Publications, 1895-1976
This database provides a comprehensive index to over 1.2 million items published by the U.S. government between January 1895 and June 1976. Provides PDF of page in print MoCat. (ProQuest)
U.S. Government Documents: The Basic Collection
Core U.S. Government resources made available at all Federal depository libraries.
USA.gov
U.S. government's official web portal. USA.gov was legislatively mandated through Section 204 of the E-Government Act of 2002. Since 2002, USA.gov has received an annual appropriation from the U.S. Congress. (public site)

Penn Subscription U.S. Government Document Search Tools

ProQuest Congressional
Searchable, full-text version of Congressional Publications from 1789 to the present, including the Serial Set. See Congressional Publications tab above for specifics.
ProQuest Legislative Insight
Provides full-text PDF scans of many legislative documents. Legislative Insight organizes these documents by their affiliation with a particular piece of (passed) legislation.

Proquest Regulatory Insight
Provides regulatory histories for federal statutes and executive orders. Identifies relevant Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations.
Voxgov Academic
VoxGov collects, organizes, and archives US federal government information sourced from government websites and government social media accounts, roughly 2000 to present. VoxGov has ingested millions of official releases and social media posts from Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and thousands of legislative and Congressional and regulatory documents. Advanced searching permits filtering by document type, branch of government, and demographics (for congressional members and candidates). Search results are displayed as lists of documents and in timeline, graph, and wordcloud visualizations, with filters for document type, etc.. VoxGov offers no-cost text-mining-capable output upon personal application by faculty, post-docs, and grad students.