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Cataloging Toolbox for U.S. Federal Government Information

Cataloging Records Sources

Sources of GPO Cataloging Records.

​FDLP

  • FDLP Sources of GPO Cataloging Records - consult this guide maintained by the FDLP for the most current information.
  • The Catalog Record Distribution Program (CRDP) began October 2009. The FDLP distributes monthly bibliographic records to over 260 Federal depository libraries through a contract with Marcive, Inc. at no charge to participating depository libraries.
  • Records are available on the CGP on GitHub repository. Users may freely download record sets extracted from the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications. MARC records are available in the UTF-8, MARC-8, and MARCXMIL formats. Available record sets include:
  • Access this FDLP Academy tutorial by LCSM staff  to more learn about free GPO catalog records available via GitHub.

GPO

Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) "... is the finding tool for electronic and print publications from the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the U.S. government. These publications make up the National Bibliography of U.S. Government Publications. The CGP contains descriptive records for historical and current publications and provides direct links to those that are available online" (About the CGP) The CGP includes more than 500,000 records since 1976- , is updated daily and publicly available. Advanced search options are available. The CGP succeeded the print Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications, which dated from the passage of the Printing Act of 1895 and ceased publication in 2004. Although CGP now includes many Historic Shelflist records from the 1800s-1992, printed issues of the Monthly Catalog should be consulted for pre-1976 indexing.

  • Access to the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) via Z39.50 now available to Depository Libraries, allowing staff to log into the catalog and download records. Z39.50 instruction article.

OCLC

WorldCat contains GPO records from 1976- , plus earlier cataloging records contributed by other OCLC member institutions. Downloads available to subscribers only. Updated daily, GPO's Cataloging Branch creates records in this database. OCLC WorldShare Metadata Collection Manager has integrated the earlier OCLC GovDoc service. View a webinar about the service.

 

FDLP Data Manager (FDM)

FDLP Data Manager is the successor to Wichita State University's Documents Data Miner (DDM). FDM is a collection management system for libraries in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) using data provided by the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO). A web-based data warehousing and data mining tool, FDM assists depository libraries in processing, cataloging, and development of their FDLP collection. For full details go to https://www.fdlp.gov/collection-tools/fdlp-data-manager

 

MARCIVE, Inc.

Note: Marcive announced in September 2024 that the company would cease doing business at the end of December 2024.

ProQuest

ProQuest, a commercial publisher, makes MARC records available for its collections. Also see the ProQuest "Government Information MARC record" Libguide for more information.

 

Sources of Non-GPO Cataloging Records

MAchine-Readable Cataloging (MARC) Records for SciTech Connect

The Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information offers free MARC records for the full-text reports available via SciTech Connect. Over 200,000 reports can be downloaded by year or by subject category. Records are for documents dating primarily from 1991 forward and were produced by DOE, the DOE contractor community, and/or DOE grantees. Legacy documents from DOE and predecessor agencies, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Energy Research and Development Administration, are added as they become available in electronic format. FAQ available.