U.S. Government Publications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison : Historical Gov Pubs

Hathi Trust

• Digital library created through a partnership of major research institutions and libraries.
• Many of the scans of government documents were done by Google, and some parts of the scans may appear in Google Books. However, Hathi Trust allows the public to view more of these documents in full text than Google does.
• Provides free, public access to the full text of many federal and state government publications.
• Subcollection of federal government publications in HathiTrust:
  • U.S. Federal Documents, "as identified via the HathiTrust Federal Government Documents Registry. This collection is a work in progress, and is updated regularly to add and remove content."

Google Books

• Contains the text of many U.S. and state government documents.
  • Can search the full text of documents Google has scanned. This can help you identify documents of interest.
  • Because of Google's policies related to copyright, full text is generally available only for documents published before 1923.
• Searches for specific titles are most effective.
• You can search regular Google for government document digitization projects done by other institutions.

ProQuest congressional. Executive branch documents, 1789-1939

• Available for use in campus libraries, or off-campus use by UW-Madison students, faculty, and staff.
• Collection of publications from the Executive Branch of the federal government listed in the 1909 Checklist created by the U.S. Superintendent of Documents as a summary of all publications issued by the government since 1789.
• Includes fully-searchable access to 200,000-plus documents not included in U.S. Serial Set collection, as well as an additional 200,000 document chosen from the 1910-1939 period. 

Not all government publications are available online for free.  Many are still only available in print.  Some are available in print and online formats.

Because the UW-Madison libraries are a regional depository library, nearly all depository titles can be found somewhere on the UW-Madison campus.

The first step in finding any federal government publication at UW-Madison is to search UW-Madison's online library catalog.  Nearly all U.S. government publications published since 1976, and a number of those published before 1976, are included in the catalog.

If you can't find the historical government publication you're looking for, please ask a librarian for assistance!

As part of the Federal Depository Library Program, the UW-Madison Libraries make U.S. government publications available to the public at no fee.

End of Term Archive

• Collaborative project that captures and saves U.S. Government websites at the end of presidential administrations. The EOT has thus far preserved websites from administration changes in 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020, and 2024. 
• Current partner organizations.

Viewing the EOT Collections on the Wayback Machine

Content archived as part of the EOT project is being made available by the Internet Archive in their Wayback Machine. To search for and view historical snapshots of government websites:

1. Go to web.archive.org.
2. Scroll to the “Collection Search” area and select your desired End of Term (EOT) collection, such as: “End Of Term (US Gov 2024)” from the dropdown.
3. Type in keywords (for example, a federal agency’s name) or a URL.
4. Click “SEARCH” and visit the resulting archived web pages.

Archived Presidential White House Websites

• "White House websites are Presidential records. The official files that make up a Presidential administration's website are preserved in [the National Archives'] Executive Office of the President Electronic Records Archive. In order for the public to easily access the websites, the National Archives has taken an additional step to "freeze" the White House websites and make them available online. Because the archived websites are hosted by the National Archives and are historical material, they are no longer updated. Any broken links (internal or external) will not be updated.
• Archives go back to 1992 (though some pages are not accessible because the technology required to access them no longer works).

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