Skip to Main Content

U.S. Government Information at UC Berkeley: Finding Government Information at UC Berkeley

Finding Current Government Information

Use the search box below to discover current government information.  This box is a customized Google search and will search all .gov and .mil websites.

You can also hack a Google search by adding site:.gov or site:.mil to any search.  This will limit your search to those domains.  More information on advanced Google searching can be found in the Library's Google Research Made Easy guide.

Free Public Access to Government Information

Free public access to United States government documents in a federal depository library is guaranteed by law (44 USC §1911).  While UC Berkeley houses one of the most comprehensive collections of U.S. government documents in the country, the Library is one of over a thousand Federal Depository Libraries across the United States, and one of several Federal Depository Libraries in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Using UC Search to Find U.S. Government Information

UC Search, UC Berkeley's public catalog, is very helpful in finding United States government information at UCB.  The best search strategy is to use UC Search's Advanced Search link.  Once at the Advanced Search screen, change the first drop-down to Author/Creator and enter United States in the box next to contains:

Leave the remaining drop-downs as any field and enter your search terms in those boxes (think of broad search terms for this step).  You may also change the second drop-down to Author/Creator and add the name of a particular agency or department to find publications from that agency.  You can also have options to limit by date, and after your search you can limit by specific library location.

Many, but not all, of the online government titles in UC Search can be accessed by anyone. If you need a tangible title, note its physical location, call number, and status--UC Berkeley has over twenty libraries on campus and you wouldn't want to be in one library when the title you want is in another building. 

HathiTrust

HathiTrust (Hathi is pronounced hah-tee) is a partnership of libraries that works towards the goal of developing a shared digital access, preservation, and storage solution for the materials held in the member libraries. While similar to Google Books, HathiTrust's collecting focus is on scholarly materials and government information and the resource includes content and features (such as indexing and manipulation of results) not available in Google Books. Since HathiTrust is essentially a catalog, you can use the same advanced search strategy for finding federal government information described above in HathiTrust. They have also created a search for federal information that is updated regularly.

Full download of pdf's from the federal government is available for UCB students, faculty, and staff (Click Login and search Berkeley in the list, and follow the steps to create an account). Members of the public can download pdf's of federal documents page by page. 

Tips for searching HathiTrust:
  • Phrase Searching: Use quotes to search an exact phrase: e.g., "occult fiction"
  • Wildcards: Use * or ? to search for alternate forms of a word. Use * to stand for several characters, and ? for a single character: e.g., optim* will find optimal, optimize or optimum; wom?n will find woman and women.
  • Boolean Searching: Use AND and OR between words to combine them with Boolean logic: e.g., (heart OR cardiac) AND surgery will find items about heart surgery or cardiac surgery.
Tips for doing a full-text search:
  • Phrase Searching: Use quotes to search an exact phrase: e.g., "occult fiction."
  • Multiple Term Searching: When your search terms are not quoted phrases, avoid common words (such as: a, and, of, the) to speed up your search.
  • Boolean Searching: Use AND and OR between words to combine them with Boolean logic: e.g., heart OR cardiac will find items containing the word heart or the word cardiac; heart AND cardiac will find items containing both words. Use a minus (-) to remove words from the result e.g., heart  -cardiac will find items containing the word heart that do not include the word cardiac.

Creating Collections

  1. On the Collections page, click on login.
  2. Choose the University of California, Berkeley from the drop down list and click on login.
  3. Enter your CalNet ID and passphrase.
  4. Click on Create a New Collection and name your collection (the description is optional).
  5. Indicate whether it is a Private or Public collection.
  6. Click on Add.

In the future if you want to edit, change the private/public setting, or delete the collection, your collections will always be listed in the My Collections tab whenever you are logged in to HathiTrust.

UC Berkeley's Government Information Guides

The Library has created several guides on finding U.S. government information.  All of these guides contain links to Library subscription databases (off-campus access is restricted to current UCB students, faculty and staff) as well as free sources that can be accessed by anyone.  Subscription databases can be accessed by anyone from Library computers.

Which Agency?

One strategy to use when locating government information is to determine which agency would be interested in the same topics you want to research. This can be done by using the United State Government Manual. The Government Manual is the official handbook of the U.S. government and can give you an overview of what each branch of government, agency and office are responsible for, as well as a bit of history. This tool can help you narrow your search to the specific office(s) that would be interested in the issues you want to research.

UC Berkeley has several versions of the manual, both in print and online, going back to 1935.

Contact Jesse

Jesse Silva
guide author or co-author photo

Need help with research?  Have a question about the collection or the UC Berkeley Library?  Here are two ways to get in touch with me: