FW ECOL 515: Natural Resources Policy (Fall 2023) : Home

Welcome to your library course guide for F&WE 515: Natural Resources Policy.

Our library staff is committed to supporting your work as students and researchers. Please let us know how we can assist you with finding and using the information you need to successfully complete papers and projects--for this course and throughout your academic career at UW-Madison.

We can help you…

• Navigate our library site to find appropriate tools for your task at hand.
• Optimize a search by assisting you with your online searching strategies and using special features of a database interface (ask us about alerting services!)
• Access the full text of journal articles as well as books for background reading and items that might not be available at UW-Madison (ask about book retrieval and Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery Services!)
• Evaluate and organize your information (ask us about citation management tools!)

Need help?

or click for more options ...

If the federal government shuts down, it will affect the production of government information. Just how government information products/publications will be affected depends on a combination of factors, including the priorities and funding of the publishing/producing agency and the subject matter or nature of products/publications.

Here's some information about agencies and websites' contingency planning for shutdowns.

Regulatory publications

• Regulations.gov said (as of Saturday, September 30):  
  • "In the event of a lapse in Federal government appropriations, Regulations.gov will continue to operate as normal, including help desk support from our contractors, and availability of eRulemaking PMO staff. For questions regarding impacts to individual agency rulemaking or non-rulemaking actions posted for comment, please contact the relevant agency."
• The Federal Register (the official vehicle for publishing proposed rules, rules, notices, etc) will publish a document, Publication Procedures for Federal Register Documents During a Funding Hiatus, on October 3, 2023.  
  • An entry on the Federal Register's blog from January of 2019 said that
    • "As explained in our Notice, during an appropriations lapse, agencies without appropriations who wish to submit a document to the OFR must attach a special handling letter to the document which states that publication in the Federal Register is necessary to safeguard human life, protect property, or provide other emergency services consistent with the performance of functions and services excepted under the Antideficiency Act."
    • The notice says that it's submitting agencies who have to certify "that publication the Federal Register is necessary to safeguard human life, protect property, or provide other emergency services..."

Congressional publications

• Govinfo.gov, the platform that digitally publishes Congressional materials, will continue to print the publications of Congress.

Federal government agencies

• US Government Information: Shutdown, a guide from the University of California-San Diego Library has links to contingency plans from U.S. federal agencies. The guide says "these may indicate which of the agency's activities will continue and which will cease, which staff will be furloughed and which are "excepted" from furlough, and other details."
  • The agencies listed are mostly cabinet-level agencies or independent agencies and commissions. In some cases, bureaus and sub-agencies are listed under their "parent" agencies.
  • For instance, contingency plans for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service can all be found by following the Department of the Interior link. Contingency plans for the Forest Service can be found by following the Department of Agriculture link.