Government Information

If you have a reference to a document published by a U. S. government agency, first check Worldcat Discovery.  Searching by the publication title is the quickest way to search. A large number government documents are now available online and either Worldcat Discovery or the Library Catalog will include a link to the publication. 

Should you find call numbers beginning with the prefix Doc Dept, these documents will generally be in print located on the South end of the 4th floor.  

There may be government documents available online but not showing up in the Library Catalog.  Search for a title using a site search in Google or consider a keyword search specifying ".gov" sites as follows:  idaho water supply site:.gov, bringing up  information from a variety of government agencies.

• Census Quick Facts
  QuickFacts provides statistics for all states and counties, and for cities and towns with a population of 5,000 or more.
• Catalog of U.S. Government Publications
  Lists and describes federal publications (primarily 1976- ) and provides direct links to those that are available online. Search by authoring agency, title, subject, and general keyword.
• Google
  You know you're going to use it, so use it efficiently: add site:.gov (site colon dot gov) to your keywords to limit searching to government websites. You can also limit searches to a specific department's or agency's website, such as site:dhs.gov (site colon dhs dot gov) to find only results from the Department of Homeland Security.
• GOVINFO
  A service of GPO to provide free public access to the full text of official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government. When you search the content available on GOVINFO, you will be able to download the full text of publications, but you won’t see records for documents that are not stored on GOVINFO.
• USA.gov
  The official web portal of the United States federal government. It is designed to improve the public's interaction with the US government by quickly directing website visitors to the services or information they are seeking, and by inviting the public to share ideas to improve government. Links to every federal agency and to state, local, and tribal governments, and is the most comprehensive site in—and about—the US government. A Spanish-language web portal is available at USAGov en Español.