Resource of the Week: Lost Docs Blog
By Daniel Cornwall, Head of Information Services – Alaska State Library
Forest Gump once said “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” That is a good description of the current Resource of the Week, the Lost Docs Blog at
http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info.
The Lost Docs Blog was created by Free Government Information to be a public clearinghouse of federal documents reported to the Government Printing Office (GPO) as so-called fugitive documents. Fugitive documents are reports and other federal government documents that are eligible to be described in the Catalog of Government Publications but are missed by GPO.
By providing a public feed of reported fugitive documents, Free Government Information hopes to provide more accountability for GPO’s cataloging section and to draw community attention to documents that depository libraries might wish to acquire before GPO can determine whether a reported fugitive document belongs in the Federal Depository Library Program.
The blog is powered by e-mail receipts received from librarians and others who have submitted fugitive documents reports to GPO. Volunteers at Free Government Information post these receipts so that they appear once or twice a day, depending on volume of reports. This is where the “box of chocolates” metaphor comes in. The documents that appear on the blog can be from any federal agency. This makes the blog a sort of miscellaneous current awareness tool of what falls through the official cracks — and an excellent resource for highlighting the breadth of government information.
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Read more about the Lost Docs Blog via Free Government Information.
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Bonus Resource of the Week: Shirl’s Basic Government Docs Cheat Sheet
+ Catalog of U.S. Government Publications
The CGP is the finding tool for federal publications that includes descriptive records for historical and current publications and provides direct links to those that are available online. Those not available online are available from a federal depository library.
To keep up with newly released titles, click the New Titles link at the top (duh). Click the “Preferences” link above the search box for a variety of options. Among other things, you can choose to search only those publications available in full text on the Internet (Internet Publications). See the light blue “Catalogs to Search” section just below the title near the top of the page.
+ Congressional Budget Office
CBO’s mandate is to provide the Congress with:
- Objective, nonpartisan, and timely analyses to aid in economic and budgetary decisions on the wide array of programs covered by the federal budget and
- The information and estimates required for the Congressional budget process.
You’ll also find PowerPoints, testimonies, etc. Note the “Frequently Requested” items at the lower right for a selection of “hot” documents. The keyword search tool at the upper right corner works pretty well. Douglas W. Elmendorf, CBO director, maintains a weblog, which is a good way to keep up with what’s new on this site.
+ Congressional Research Service (via Open CRS)
American taxpayers spend over $100 million a year to fund the Congressional Research Service, a “think tank” that provides reports to members of Congress on a variety of topics relevant to current political events. Yet, these reports are not made available to the public in a way that they can be easily obtained. A project of the Center for Democracy & Technology through the cooperation of several organizations and collectors of CRS Reports, Open CRS provides citizens access to CRS Reports already in the public domain and encourages Congress to provide public access to all CRS Reports.
There are other collections of CRS reports on the Internet, but the vast majority of them end up absorbed here eventually. Alas, the search engine on this site is marginal at best. You’ll have better luck using Google’s advanced search form; after typing your search in the boxes at the top, go down to the box at the bottom — Search within a site or domain: — and type opencrs.com.
+ Government Accountability Office
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress. Often called the “congressional watchdog,” GAO investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars.
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GAO’s best known products include reports, testimonies, correspondence, and legal decisions and opinions, which are available to the press and the public. We also produce special publications to assist Congress and executive branch agencies by recommending corrections to problems in government programs and operations, identifying long-term trends, and raising concerns about the nation’s fiscal imbalance.
The keyword search option at the upper right works pretty well; an advanced option is readily available if you need it. To keep up with new releases on a daily basis, check the GAO Daybook. You can browse collections of reports on hot/popular topics here.
See also: Pilot Phase Concluding: CIC & Google Partnership Digitizes Around 1.5 Million Volumes of U.S. Federal Documents
