GPO and Libraries Set Goal to Make Every U.S. Government Document Accessible

UPDATED POST (April 28, 2021): A New Government Publishing Office Project Makes You Ask, ‘Are They Serious?’ (Interview with Director of the GPO, Hugh Halpern) (via Federal News Radio)

From the Government Publishing Office (GPO):

The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) is undertaking a massive effort to capture and make publicly accessible every U.S. Government document through the National Collection of U.S. Government Public Information (National Collection). GPO will do this by digitizing documents and making them accessible on govinfo and the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP), as well as partnering with Federal depository libraries who serve as stewards for all tangible materials. The National Collection includes all public information products of the U.S. Government. To achieve its vision, GPO will identify, acquire, catalog, disseminate, digitize, make accessible, authenticate, and preserve all Government publications.

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In the National Collection, the public can find many historic documents, including authentic messages and Papers of the Presidents for Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln; the Watergate Hearings; documents on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; Presidential addresses and speeches; Acts that created Federal agencies such as NASA and the National Park Service; and more. It also includes important recent documents that are added daily such as the Congressional Record, Federal Register, Congressional Bills, Presidential Executive Orders, and more.

The National Collection is a geographically dispersed collection of the corpus of Federal Government public information, accessible to the public at no cost. The development, maintenance, and preservation of the National Collection is critical to providing free, ready, and permanent public access to Federal Government information, now and for future generations.

Through the CGP, the public can search for more than one million records in the National Collection and find direct links to the full document as well as nearby Federal Depository Libraries that offer the publication. GPO’s govinfo, the one-stop site for authentic information published by the Government, offers over two million content packages in the National Collection available for download. GPO’s govinfo is an ISO 16363 certified trustworthy digital repository—the only repository in the world with this certification

Filed under: Interviews, Journal Articles, Libraries, News, Open Access, Preservation, Profiles, Publishing