GPO Access

Are you looking for the text of the President’s last State of the Union address? Documents from a recent Independent Counsel investigation? A Congressional report on Hurricane Katrina? Or some other piece of information generated by the U.S. government? One of the first places you should probably look is GPO Access.

GPO Access, a web site of the U.S. Government Printing Office, offers electronic access to an enormous wealth of information produced by the federal government. Documents provided on the site are the official published versions from all branches of government. Titles from the Executive Branch include the Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, Economic Report of the President, and the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents. Legislative documents include the Congressional Record, the U.S. Statutes at Large, the U.S. Code, and Congressional Hearings. Coverage varies by title but generally dates back to 1994. Most sources can be both browsed and keyword searched, and the site’s multi-database search page allows you to search across more than one database at a time.

GPO Access also provides links to other web sites that it either hosts or has created in partnership with other entities. Two such sites that are especially helpful are the "Browse Topics" page, which arranges U.S. government web sites by topic, and the CyberCemetery site, which provides permanent online access to the web sites and electronic publications of federal government agencies and commissions that have ceased operations.

J. Fusaris