Free online government information: a resource guide

Abstract

Due to recent changes in budgets and policies concerning how government information is published, any library with Internet capabilities can now freely access materials previously found only in the member libraries of the Federal Depository Library Program. Just as commercial publishers discovered the cost‐saving advantages of online publishing, the Federal Government via the Government Printing Office as well as many individual federal agencies have also chosen this cost‐saving method of distributing their publications. These changes mean that a wealth of legislative, regulatory, legal, consumer, statistical, and historic information is only a few clicks away from users. The sheer number of sites available can be bewildering; however, there are some excellent sites which offer well organized selections of resources that you can either use directly as links by themselves or as the basis for writing a government resource page in‐house.