Government Information

Government Documents at UMBC

The Library is a congressionally designated depository for U.S. Governmnet documents. Public access to the government documents collection is guaranteed by public law. (Title 44 United States Code)

The Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery has been a member of the Federal Library Depository Program since 1972, currently receiving approximately 10% of available documents. The University of Maryland, College Park is our regional library and is a 100% recipient.

Documents published by the Government Printing Office (GPO) are not copyrighted and are indexed and available in a variety of online and print sources, many recent documents are available full-text online.

Documents received in hardcopy are in the Government Documents Collection located on the Lower Level . Access to the collection is from the elevator or stairs from the second floor. Ask at the Reference Desk for additional directions if necessary.

Documents received on microfiche are found on the second floor directly in front of the Honors College offices.

There are many tools for finding different sorts of federal publications. The most convenient source for current information is the USA.gov website, which gives access to the latest Federal and State information.

Published works:  The University System of Maryland libraries include Federal documents in the catalog.

Use the USMAI catalog to locate or download Federal documents. Print documents will be indexed by the SuDoc classification system, holdings information will identify the campus where these documents are available.  Full-text online documents have the PURL link directly in the record.

Additional catalogs for documents include: