WHAT ARE GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS?

Government documents are official publications produced by any government agency. Publications are issued by the government in the course of its work and are often mandated by law. They come in a variety of physical formats, including:

• Books
• Maps
• CD-ROM/DVD/VHS
• Microtext
• Electronic databases
• Internet sites
  

Texas A&M University Libraries is a depository for United States government documents since 1907, Texas state publications since 1978, and U.S. Patents since 1983. The library also owns the collection of United Nations documents in microfiche.

PHYSICAL ARRANGEMENT

The U.S. Federal Documents of each agency are grouped together using the Superintendent of Documents (SuDoc) numbering system. The beginning letter or letters of the agency name are combined with numbers to identify the item. For example, NASA documents begin with “NAS.” The paper and CD-ROM collection is located on the 5th floor of the Library Annex. Microforms are kept in the Course Reserves & Current Periodicals department of Evans Library, 2^nd Floor. Reference items are included in the Evans Reference collection.

Texas state documents are shelved by the State Library's classification system. This system also groups publications from each agency together. For example, reports from the Parks and Wildlife Department begin with the letter “P.” All Texas Documents are located on the 5th floor of the Library Annex.

The United Nations documents collection has its own classification system and are indexed in AccessUN. Microfiche are classed first by year and then in alphanumerical order by agency. They are located in the Course Reserves & Current Periodicals department of Evans Library, 2^nd Floor.

ACCESS

As a depository for U.S. federal and Texas state publications, Texas A&M University Libraries provides access and reference assistance for these collections to A&M students, faculty, and staff, as well as to the general public. Texas state documents and recent federal documents are searchable in LibCat (the Library online catalog). Pre-1976 federal documents are accessed using The Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications (call number GP 3.8:) located in the Evans Reference stacks. Several specialized electronic databases are useful when searching a particular type of material: the LexisNexis, Readex, CQ Congress Collection and more.

CIRCULATION

The circulation policy for government documents is the same as for other items in the Libraries. Most materials can be checked out for the following loan periods:

• two weeks for undergraduates,
• one month for graduate students, and
• four months for faculty and staff.

For more information contact
Laura Sare – Government Information Librarian
979-458-2200

http://library.tamu.edu/help/resource-format-guides/government-information/docs

Email Laura