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Government Information in the Online Catalog
Search Tips

Government information may be found in many places in the UO Libraries, including the Document Center, the Knight and branch libraries. The Libraries' online catalog is an important tool for locating both paper and electronic publications. Here are some tips for successful use of the catalog in finding government publications:

  1. Search by title if you have a specific one, such as "Oregon statewide planning program".
  2. Search by author if you want publications by a specific government body. For example, "United States. Dept. of Homeland Security", or "Oregon. Water Resources Dept."
  3. A keyword search permits you to specify a topic, and also limit your results to a particular government entity. For example: choose Advanced Search; type "willamette river" in the first search box; select Author search for the next box, and type "oregon". The results will be publications about the Willamette River that were produced by Oregon state agencies.
  4. As an alternative to tip #3, you may perform any search, then limit it by author words in a governmental body's name. For example, do a Subject search on "refugees", then limit by the Author words "united nations".

You should be aware, however, that most U.S. government publications published from 1975 to 1996 are not in the catalog, and must be located using other means. The Summit union catalog is a good alternative. When you find listings in Summit of U.S. government documents from this "gap" period, bring the title and call number to the Document Center. Even if the UO Libraries was not listed as a "holding" library, Document Center staff may still be able to locate the document in our collection.

Maintained by: Ted Smith, tedsmith@uoregon.edu
Last Modified: 08/16/2006