Beyond Google - Another Look at Finding Government Information - Government Documents

Finding Federal Data and Statistics

United States Census "The Census Bureau's mission is to serve as the leading source of quality data about the nation's people and economy. We honor privacy, protect confidentiality, share our expertise globally, and conduct our work openly."
Data.gov "The home of the U.S. Government’s open data Here you will find data, tools, and resources to conduct research, develop web and mobile applications, design data visualizations, and more...."
State Data Center (SDC) Program "Empower data users with understandable, accurate and timely information through the mutually beneficial partnership between the State Data Centers and the Census Bureau."
Missouri Census Data Center

Non-Government Statistical Sources

ICPSR "An international consortium of more than 750 academic institutions and research organizations, ICPSR provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for the social science research community."
IPUMS USA "PUMS USA collects, preserves and harmonizes U.S. census microdata and provides easy access to this data with enhanced documentation. Data includes decennial censuses from 1790 to 2010 and American Community Surveys (ACS) from 2000 to the present."

"Historical" Government Information

Born Tangible (Print, etc.)

Non-existent or missing catalog records
Non-existent or missing metadata

Born Digital

Deadlinks
Restricted access

FINDING AIDS

Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) Explore more than 284 billion web pages saved over time.
Hathi Trust Digital Library (United States Federal Government Documents Registry) "The HathiTrust US Federal Government Documents Registry is a database of metadata representing the comprehensive corpus of U.S. federal documents produced from 1789 to the present. It is not yet complete."
Cyber Cemetery (U. of N. Texas Libraries) "The CyberCemetery is an archive of government websites that have ceased operation (usually websites of defunct government agencies and commissions that have issued a final report). This collection features a variety of topics indicative of the broad nature of government information. In particular, this collection features websites that cover topics supporting the university’s curriculum and particular program strengths."
National Archives Catalog "The National Archives Catalog is the online public portal to our records and information about our records. The catalog currently provides access to over 2 million electronic records currently in the Electronic Records Archives (ERA), which are not available elsewhere online. The National Archives Catalog searches all web pages on Archives.gov, and presents those pages in the search results along with any catalog records. Researchers will no longer need to perform separate searches for finding aids or other information related to our records on Archives.gov."
Library of Congress Online Catalog "Library of Congress collections contain over 162 million books, periodicals, manuscripts, maps, music, recordings, images, and electronic resources. The LC Online Catalog contains 17 million records describing these collections. You can search Catalog records by keyword or browse by authors/creators, subjects, names/titles, series/uniform titles, and call numbers. Browse lists also include searching aids such cross-references and scope notes. Library of Congress cataloging dates back to 1898. The LC Online Catalog includes many early records (primarily for books and periodicals) created by the Library between 1898 and 1980. These records are gradually being updated to reflect contemporary language and usage. Authors/creators and subjects found on older records often contain the legend "[from old catalog]" to indicate possible deviations from current LC practices. In addition, records for some materials cataloged before 1980 are only available to researchers onsite in the Library's Main Card Catalog."

Alternative Search Engines

DuckDuckGo! "Our privacy policy is simple: we don’t collect or share any of your personal information. We don’t store your search history. We therefore have nothing to sell to advertisers that track you across the internet. Other search engines track your searches even when you’re in private browsing mode. We don’t track you — period. No tracking, no ad targeting, just searching."
dogpile "InfoSpace created the Dogpile search engine because your time is important to us. Powered by Metasearch technology, Dogpile returns all the best results from leading search engines including Google and Yahoo!, so you find what you’re looking for faster. Each search engine has its own method of searching and each will return different results. Dogpile looks at all of them, decides which are most relevant to your search, eliminates duplicates and reveals them to you. In the end, you get a list of results more complete than anywhere else on the Web. The time-saving philosophy of metasearch is so important to us that it even inspired our name! In rugby, players come together and pile on top of one another. This is exactly what Dogpile’s metasearch technology does – it compiles all the best results in one easy-to-access place!"
ixquick: the world's most private search engline "You have a right to privacy. Your search data should never fall into the wrong hands. The only real solution is quickly deleting your data or not storing them to begin with. Since January 2009 we do not record our users' IP addresses anymore. We were the first and only search engine to do so. Our initiative is receiving an overwhelmingly positive response"

Subject Librarian Art - image by Picasso

Julie Sayles

Email Me

Contact:

ATC - Library 116
281 425-6276

Government Documents: Beyond Google - Another Look at Finding Government Information

Finding Federal Data and Statistics

Non-Government Statistical Sources

"Historical" Government Information

Alternative Search Engines

Subject Librarian Art - image by Picasso