Government Publications and Information--U.S. & Non-U.S.

CRL’s collection contains extensive holdings of foreign government publications, information, and data. It includes several hundred thousand volumes of publications from more than 100 foreign governments and their agencies. The collection consists primarily of administrative, legislative, and statistical materials, mostly from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Holdings are particularly strong for Western Europe and Latin America but also contain material from all world regions.

The retrospective holdings were built through deposits by CRL libraries of infrequently held published materials.  A major part of the current foreign documents collection consists of materials received as part of the Library of Congress Cooperative Acquisitions Project program. 

CRL’s collection of U.S. government records is large, including thousands of microform sets issued by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Collections include not only widely used census and immigration data, but also records of presidents, judiciaries, departments, bureaus, and independent agencies, which chronicle the activities of these U.S. government bodies since the Continental Congresses. Most sets are included in CRL's catalog with an indication of NARA's microfilm publication number as a searchable keyword (example: M1160 for the "Maury Abstract Logs, 1796-1861"). Commercially produced sets are cataloged according to title.

An official gazette is the legal newspaper of a country, or of an administrative part of a country, which publishes the text of new laws, decrees, regulations, treaties, legal notices, and court decisions. The Foreign Official Gazette database (FOG) contains records for approximately 650 official gazette titles from countries outside the United States. It serves as a “union list”.