Two Minute Tutorials (or less)
Working with Government Documents
Extend Search Government Documents
When you do the Extend Search, one option you can choose is to search in Government Documents. Selecting this will do your search automatically in databases of government documents in the U.S. and the U.K. It will also search for documents of Intergovernmental Organizations and Non-government Organizations. This tutorial will give you a very brief overview of what you are searching when you come to this page.
Extend Search
When you select U.S. Govt. Publications, you will be searching the official catalog of U.S. Government Publications. This database uses the controlled vocabulary of the Library of Congress, available through the Synonyms/Other Tools in the Extend Search. Take a 2-Minute Tutorial on controlled vocabulary.
Your initial search will be limited to online documents. When you revise your search inside the database, you may have to reset it to online documents. Do this by clicking on Advanced
Extend Search transatlantic
And you can revise your search, limiting to Catalogs: Internet Publications
Extend Search
When you select IGO Search, you will be searching a database from the Library of Northwestern University, which will search through the documents of many Intergovernmental Organizations, such as the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund.
For more information, see Northwestern University’s website
Extend Search
Another database made available through the Library of Northwestern University, is a similar search of documents from Non-Government organizations. For more information on these databases, plus lots more information, see Northwestern University’s website
Extend Search
The Congressional Research Service puts out lots of carefully researched reports designed to help members of Congress decide how to vote, but many of them have never really been collected. The University of North Texas Libraries has made a site where you can find many of them.
For more information on these useful reports, see the page in the AUR Library Wiki.
USASearch.gov is a U.S. government website that attempts to be a single place for information from the U.S. government. You still need to search other places, but it has a unique organizing tool, similar to Clusty (see the tutorial on General Search Engines).
Extend Search
Different Arrangement
Extend Search
The House of Commons and the House of Lords put out many research reports on all topics. These are similar to the Congressional Research Service Reports since they are made for members of Parliament to help them vote.
Extend Search
When you select Think Tanks, you will be searching Google according to a special page made by the Library at Harvard University that searches publications by think tanks. You will be searching for materials made primarily, but not only in the United States.
For more information, see the page on Think Tank publications in the AUR Library Wiki.
Extend Search
The AUR Library has made its own page that specially searches the think tanks located in Italy. Remember that papers can be in either English or Italian!
Extend Search
Policypointers.org is a special database that searches publications from think tanks all over the world, provides summaries and provides the link to the full-text.
Extend Search
The European Union Bookshop has more than 110,000 EU publications including speeches, treaties and publications from the EU institutions, agencies and other bodies dating back to 1952.
Extend Search
Finally, make sure you look at the Government Documents page in the AUR Library Information Wiki for additional information, and links to important sites for government documents around the world.
Two Minute Tutorials (or less)
Working with Government Documents Go to: List of Two-Minute Tutorials