WebJunction

GPO Access

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/index.html

This service of the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) offers official information from all three branches of the U.S. Government. Most important are the federal codes, laws, bills, reports, and other legislative, executive, and judicial resources. You can also find links to the "Core Documents of our U.S. Democracy" and the Catalog of Government Publications.

The site also features a portal to all Federal agency Internet sites. Some of the projects that can be found run in cooperation with universities and other partnerships. One such offering is "Government Information Online: Ask a Librarian" which will allow the user to chat or email a government information librarian and can be channelled to many participating libraries throughout the country. If you are looking for a depository in Arizona, please use the "Locate a Depository Library" link. All libraries that maintain a federal publications collection through the U S Government Printing Office's Federal Depository Library Program are listed on this page.

Exercise: Look for a Congressional bill from 2007 amending the Colorado River Storage Act and which was introduced as H.R. 1970. Look at the .pdf version and look for characteristics of this image. Now, go to Thomas on the Library of Congress' website (http://thomas.loc.gov/) and do the same search, looking for image characteristics.

Which representation do you prefer?

On which database was the information easier to locate? (Discussion)

Note: The U.S. Government Printing Office is the publisher of the Congressional Record, Congressional bills and many other Congressional and federal agency publications. Other federal agencies and commercial publishers get their copies from GPO and make indexing and format changes.