FDSYS -- Federal Digital System

The Government Printing Office (GPO) offers electronic access to federal documents at a new web site: www.fdsys.gov. FDSYS offers the breadth of United States Government information.

Full text legislative documents are available such as: Congressional Bills, the Congressional Record, Public and Private Laws, the Code of Federal Regulations, Public Papers of the Presidents, Budget of the United States Government and many others.

Among the myriad of publications, there is also access to MEDLINE, the National Library of Medicine database and to Science.gov, publications from the scientific community.

See your government at work.

The Government Documents Staff

Brown Bag on the Federal Digital System

Join us for a BROWN BAG LUNCH on
Thursday, March 10th , 2011
State Library of Massachusetts
Room 442 State House
12 noon until 1:30 PM

Bring your lunch and hear Bette L. Siegel, Government Documents Librarian in the library, explain and demonstrate this service, referred to as the provider of “America’s Authentic Government Information.”

To register for the Brown Bag, please go to: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/STJRNPB
You may also do so by calling Reference directly at 617-727-2590 or by e-mailing us at reference.department@state.ma.us.

Sponsored by the Friends of the State Library

Future Brown Bags will include:

April 28th, Lacy Crews Stoneburner, “Preservation of Family Materials”
May 19th, Neil Savage, “The History of the General Court”
June 14th, Michael Widmer, The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation
July 14th, Sean Murphy, reporter, The Boston Globe
August 11th, Dr. John Warner, The Massachusetts State Archives

Federal Documents at the State Library

The State Library of Massachusetts is a selective federal depository library and, as such, we participate in the Federal Depository Library Program. The library collects documents from numerous agencies including the U.S. Census, Congress, and the Justice Department as well as laws and regulations.

Some of the federal documents the State Library receives are these:

ED 1.109: 2009
The Condition of Education
This is an annual report on subjects like the growth in enrollment, statistics concerning poverty and education, statistics on homeschooling, reading and scores.

HE 20.7042/6: 2008
Health, United States, 2008: with Special Feature on Health of Young Adults
This publication has charts on mortality rates, influenza and pneumococcal vaccination among middle-age and older adults by age, and health insurance expenditures. It also covers death rates and birth rates.

PREX 3.15: 2008
World Factbook
This book, produced by the CIA, contains many facts broken down into topics by geography, government, military, and additional subjects for each profiled country.

J 1.14/7: 1995-2008 online
Crime in the U.S.
“Several annual statistical publications, such as the comprehensive Crime in the United States, are produced from data provided by nearly 17,000 law enforcement agencies across the United States.” It gives statistics on offenses in the categories of violent crime, property crime, homicides, burglary, and other unlawful acts.

J 1.8/2: F 87/2009
Guide to the Freedom of Information Act 2009
This book is an overview of the Freedom of Information Act requirements, exemptions, and litigation considerations.

For more links to federal documents go to the State Library’s web page at http://mass.gov/lib. Choose Government Data & Documents, then Federal Data & Resources