Government Resources: Home

What are government resources?

Government resources include any official online or print publication from a government agency. Government resources may be published by any governmental entity from city agencies to international agencies. While laws and codes may immediately come to mind when thinking about government resources, other important government resources include:

• research reports 
• maps and national park pamphlets 
• presidential speeches and statements
• fact sheets
• statistical data (such as the Census) 

Why would I use government resources in my research?

While those involved in the law and government are certainly heavy users of government resources, government resources are useful for almost all disciplines.

Auraria Library is a member of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), which means the library provides and promotes access to U.S. federal documents directly through our website and physical space to the campus community and public for no cost.

While Auraria Library has a few government documents in print, including maps, most government documents are now available online. Though you can use a search engine, such as Google (see box below) to find government documents and other resources, it can be difficult to find specific items. Therefore, we recommend searching for documents via Auraria Library's Start My Research tool.

Government websites can sometimes be frustrating to use and occasionally it's easier to find government information by using a search engine such as Google. Use the tricks below then also add keywords to describe your topic and/or type of resource you are looking for.

Limiting by URL Domain: site:gov

With this, you can limit your search to websites that end in "gov," which are typically U.S. (federal, state, and city) government websites. You can also limit by other domains such as .edu (educational institutions) or .org (associations or organizations).

Limiting by Filetype: filetype:pdf

Many government publications are in PDF format and this allows you to limit to PDFs. You can also limit by other filetypes such as .ppt (PowerPoints), .xls (Excel), and .doc (Word documents).

Example Search: site:gov filetype:pdf education statistics