Federal Government Publications

Since 1877, the Kansas State Historical Society has been part of the Federal Depository Library Program. Currently, the program has more than 1400 libraries across the nation, including at least one in every congressional district. Depository libraries have made a commitment to provide free public access to federal government publications and information.

Particular strengths of the historical society's federal government documents collection include a complete run of the Congressional Record and its predecessors from 1789 to date and a near-complete collection of the Congressional Serial Set, a compilation of documents prepared by or submitted to Congress, which began publication in 1817 and more than 15,000 volumes later is still being produced. Within its pages may be found topics ranging from mid-19th-century Army explorations along the Santa Fe Trail to the establishment of the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site and from immigration in 1820 to the Persian Gulf War.

The depository collection also includes many late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century publications from federal executive departments, especially the Departments of Agriculture and the Interior. Holdings of the Official Postal Guide, while not complete, begin in 1803; for the Official Register of the United States, the earliest edition in the collection is that for 1825. The library has complete runs of the Yearbook of Agriculture, 1894-1993, and Statistics of Railroads in the U.S., 1888-1953, to name but two titles. Statistics for the federal census from 1840 to 1990 are also available.

A random sampling of other titles includes:

• Slavery in the Courtroom: An Annotated Bibliography of American Cases (Library of Congress, 1985)
• U.S. Infantry Tactics ... for the Use of the Colored Troops (War Dept., 1863)
• Wheat & Flour Prices from Farmer to Consumer (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1913)
• U.S. Commission on Obscenity & Pornography: Technical Report (1969-70)
• Instructions Relative to Entries Under the Homestead, Pre-emption, and Timber Culture Laws (General Land Office, 1883)
• The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (War Dept., 1880-1901)
• Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945 - 1 October 1946 (1947-49)

The current collecting policy of the depository emphasizes publications relating specifically to the land and people of Kansas, including agricultural, climatic, demographic, economic, geological, and historical information. We also collect military history, presidential and congressional documents and reports, and publications of the National Archives and the Library of Congress, as well as materials illustrative of general United States history and current events.

The depository collection also includes maps from the U.S. Geological Survey and other agencies for Kansas and adjacent states.

As federal government publishing moves from traditional print on paper to electronic dissemination, the Kansas State Historical Society depository is working to provide public access to Internet sources of federal government information.

Helpful websites for finding federal government information:

Government Web Servers by Agency An index to and hierarchical listing of WWW pages, arranged by agency name. Includes a search engine. A service of the National Technology Transfer Center.

FedWorld Searchable index to federal WWW resources arranged by category. Emphasis on science, technology, and business topics. Also includes links to government dial-up bulletin boards not otherwise on the Internet.

GPO Access Finding Aids From the Government Printing Office. A suite of services to help identify and provide access to federal Internet sites, including an index by topic to selected sites, index and links to Internet-accessible electronic documents cataloged in the Monthly Catalog of U.S. Government Publications, Government Information Locator Service (GILS) records (which attempt to describe each server and provide an idea of its contents), and a search engine for webpages.

INFOMINE: Scholarly Internet Resource Collections: Government Information Annotated lists of government Internet resources arranged by subject, from accounting to zoology, plus title and keyword indexes. Includes both official and private/university/commercial sources. A service of the University of California.

Federal Print Publications

Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (From GPO via Web) Publications distributed through the depository program since January 1994. Includes names of depository libraries receiving each publication.