Cataloging Toolbox for U.S. Federal Government Information

The Government Publishing Office (GPO) makes its cataloging records available to libraries in several ways. Consult with your library’s or consortia’s cataloging, metadata, or systems staff to determine how to integrate catalog records into your local workflow or to modify an existing workflow. You may catalog as many or as few digital resources as needed for your users. Cataloging is only required for physical Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) materials received at your library.

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.

FDLP Data Manager (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.

Download customized sets of CGP records from the 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:
CGP MARC Records
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Collection
Online FDLP Basic Collection (CGP)

In this webcast series, Library Technical Services (LTS) staff introduce the goals of our GitHub program, and the MARC record sets and other files that are available in our repositories.

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.

ProQuest provides MARC records for its databases, including Executive Branch Documents and ProQuest Congressional.

OCLC's WorldCat database 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. This webinar describes how the service works.