Government Documents & Information

A "Government document" is any information product or service produced by any of the three branches of the Federal Government, or by tax-payer funded agencies on the state or local level. This category includes both digital and print resources.

the Freedom of Information Act —originally made law in 1966 —"provides that any person has the right to request access to federal agency records or information. Federal agencies are required to disclose records upon receiving a written request for them, except for those records that are protected from disclosure" for reasons of privacy or national security (U.S. General Services Administration FoIA Guide).

Moreover, In 2022, the White House and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a memorandum that announced that all US-funded research must be made Open Access by the end of 2025

These legislations together mean that any legislation, report, statistic, research output, etc., produced by the U.S. government or U.S. tax payer funds must be made freely available to U.S. citizens. As there is no legislation stipulating how or where these resources be made available, however, it can still be tricky to track some of them down. If you need help, please contact a librarian.

Many government-produced resources can be cited using standard methodologies for sources with a corporate author. Use the government body producing the resource as the author. See Citing and Writing or Citation Managers guides for help with the citing these sources in the style required by your professor.

There are some legal documents that require very specific kinds of citations due to their complex nature and the reference practices developed for U.S. legal practice. These types include citations for sections of the U.S. Constitution and statues, judicial opinions, legal case documents, arbitration and court rulings, executive orders and agency regulations. There are several universities with good guides and tutorials on this topic, including University of Arizona and Cornell Law School.

Reach out to an SJSU librarian if you need help understanding which style to use for the government document you are citing.

the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP),administered by the U.S. Government Publishing Office (U.S. GPO),was established by Congress to ensure that the American public has access to its Government's information.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library is designated as a "selective" repository in the FDLP, required to hold physical copies of the last 5 years of legislation and reports from the U.S. Federal and California State governments. The library retains copies of many older government publications as well, however, that are relevant to the curriculum and studies of the SJSU community.

The San Jose State Library joined the depository program in 1962 and serves California's 19th U.S. Congressional District. It is one of over 1,100 federal depository libraries in the United States.

There are several "full" repositories in California, from which physical copies of government documents not found in King Library can be requested. If you do not find the document you are looking for in OneSearch, please request a copy through Interlibrary Loan or contact an SJSU librarian for help.

While all non-classified documents produced by the U.S. government must be made available upon request, there is no provision or funding requiring all documents be made available in timely fashion, or on the internet.

Many state and federal agencies have moved from print publication to online-only publication (see announcement from U.S. GPO on 'Limited Print Distribution'), which means that most new government documents are quickly available online, but as there is no organizing rule on how the documents are published, they are spread across the internet on multiple websites, in multiple formats, with non-standard metadata.

Additionally, a variety of government and academic libraries have spent many years digitizing their older government document collections. Therefore most U.S. government documents are now available online, but not all of them. Digitization of all historic government documents is planned, but is by no means complete.

All this means that it can be tricky to track some government documents down, and at present they are not all available on the open internet. But they are all out there! If you need help, please contact a librarian.