Government Resources

Federal Databases         Search Engines for Documents   Popular Full Text Documents

                                               Free and Unlimited Access to Public

                                                     Federal Databases and Indexes                      

       Access to Archival Databases (AAD)

U.S. National Archives and Records Administration provide online access to a selection of nearly 50 million unique historic electronic records created in highly structured databases from more than 20 federal agencies on a wide range of topics.            

Agricola (USDA)

Database consisting of literature citations for journal articles, monographs, proceedings, theses, patents, translations, audiovisual materials, computer software, and technical reports pertaining to all aspects of agriculture.

American FactFinder

American FactFinder is a portal to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, including the Decennial Census of Population and Housing, American Community Survey, Economic Census, Annual Survey of Manufactures, County Business Patterns, and Population Estimates Program. FactFinder also allows you to map the data to various levels of geography.          

Bureau of Economic Analysis 

BEA databases provide a quantitative view of the U.S. economy by providing the most timely, relevant, and accurate economic accounts data such as domestic production consumption, and investment, exports and imports, national and domestic income and savings, the Nation's position in the world economy. Access to their statistics and the data used to derive the statistics comes in multiple forms, from static tables to downloadable data files for statistical analysis.

Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance

The database provides information on all federal assistance programs available to state and local governments; federally-recognized Indian tribal governments; territories (and possessions) of the United States; domestic public, quasi-public, and private profit and nonprofit organizations and institutions; specialized groups; and individuals.

Catalog of U.S. Government Publications

Primary database for federal publications that include descriptive records for historical and current publications made available through the federal depository system since 1994. Many publications currently contain permanent GPO PURL links leading to online full text documents issued by three branches of government.

(CIA) World Factbook From the Central Intelligence Agency. Site also lists other electronic titles.

It provides over 250 countries’ map and flag, geographic, population, government, economic, communication, transportation, military, and transnational issue information. Updated periodically throughout the year.

Child Welfare Information Gateway

It provide access to print and electronic publications and online databases covering a wide range of topics from prevention to permanency, including child welfare, child abuse and neglect, adoption, search and reunion, and much more. Child Welfare Information Gateway provides information about safety, permanency, and well-being of children and families on child welfare, adoption and related topics. 

       DARTS Pilot NTIS - National Technical Information Service
Freely accessible version of the searchable bibliographic records of  NITS products. NTIS database provides full descriptive summaries of more than two millions titles NTIS has received from government agencies since 1964. Free at Federal Depository Libraries. 

       Education Information Resource Center (ERIC)Dept. of Education
 The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) is a digital library of education-related resources consisting primarily of searchable electronic bibliographic records describing journal and non-journal literature selected by ERIC from 1966 – 2003. Some full text articles are also available.

Education Reports from ERIC (GPO)
Searchable full text reports from 2002 to the present on federally funded education research topics from the U.S. Department of Education's Educational Resources Information Center through GPO access.

Energy Citations Database

ECD includes scientific and technical research results in disciplines of interest to DOE such as chemistry, physics, materials, environmental science, geology, engineering, mathematics, climatology, oceanography, computer science and related disciplines. It includes bibliographic citations to report literature, The database provides free access to over 2.3 million science research citations with continued growth through regular updates. There are over 197,000 electronic documents, primarily from 1943 forward, available via the database. Citations and documents are made publicly available by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

GAO Report U.S. Government Accountability Office
GAO is an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress as the "congressional watchdog," GAO investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars. With virtually the entire federal government subject to its review, the agency issues over 900 reports and testimonies a year.  All published reports, testimonies, correspondence, and special publications are included from 1970 to the present. The Topics of Report cover every subject the Congress covers ranging from Agriculture to Veteran Affairs. For example, search “Terrorism” will come up 700 full text publications that categorized  by topics and by report types.

GPO Access
GPO Access is a primary web interface for across accessing the multiple databases provided and maintained by the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO). GPO Access provides access documents from the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government from as early as 1995 to the present. Most of them are searchable full text publications. Search by keyword, topic or multiple databases including the Federal Register, the Code of Federal Regulations, the Congressional Record, Congressional Bills, United States Code, Economic Report of the President, and many other titles. Full list of individual databases is available through the A-Z Resource List.

Homeland Security Digital Collection

Full text articles and scholarly research reports on homeland security and intelligence field.  The HSDL collection provides quick access to important U.S. policy documents, presidential directives, and national strategy documents as well as specialized resources such as theses and reports from various universities, organizations and local and state agencies. Free Access available at FSU library computer stations as a federal depository library. 

Housing and Urban Development Data at HUD USER

It provides reports, executive summaries, case studies, and guidebooks span the fields of housing and urban development, including the original electronic data sets generated by PD&R sponsored data collection efforts, including the American Housing Survey Some publications are available for downloading in the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) which allows the document to be downloaded, viewed, and printed with all of its original formatting and graphics.

Information Bridge

It provides free public access to full-text documents and bibliographic citations of Department of Energy (DOE) research report literature. Documents are primarily available from 1991 forward and contains documents and citations in physics, chemistry, materials, biology, environmental sciences, energy technologies, engineering, computer and information science, renewable energy, and other topics of interest related to DOE's mission.

National Security Archive

The Archive serves as a repository of government records on a wide range of topics pertaining to the national security, foreign, intelligence, and economic policies of the United States. It adds about 75,000 documents annually through the Freedom of Information Act.

North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) - Replaces SIC codes

NAICS is the standard used by Federal statistical agencies in classifying business establishments for the purpose of collecting, analyzing, and publishing statistical data related to the U.S. business economy. This official U.S. Government Web site provides not only access to the searchable NAICS, but also provides many full text documents at its The subject A-Z links. For example, click on “M”, selecting Manufacturing and Trade Inventories and Sales will link to full text updated documents of manufacturing and trade inventories and sales. .   

Military Periodicals Index (JFSC)

This database serves as a current guide to articles on military and naval art and science, operational warfare, joint planning, national and international politics. Journals such as Military Review, Armed Forces Journal, and quarterly publications, including NATO's Nations and Partners for Peace, RUSI Journal, and the Naval War College Review are indexed and many of individual journals do provide full text articles. The index is updated quarterly and more records, current and past are being added. The complete list of journals included in the database.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Data Archive (SAMHSA)

It provides the latest national data on (1) alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and other drug abuse, (2) drug related emergency department episodes and medical examiner cases, and (3) the nation's substance abuse treatment system.  and to promote the sharing of these data among researchers, academics, policymakers, service providers, and others, thereby increasing the use of the data in understanding and assessing substance abuse and mental health problems and the impact of related treatment systems.

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)
The NTRS is a valuable resource for students, educators, researchers, and the public for access to NASA's current and historical technical literature since it was first released in 1994. NTRS provides access to approximately 500K aerospace related citations since 1962, 90K full-text online documents, and 111K images and videos. The type of information found in NTRS include: conference papers, images, journal articles, photos, meeting papers, movies, patents, research reports, and technical videos.

NASA Image eXchange

Search over 300,000 references to images and videos in one or more of NASA’S online image collections; download and/or print images free of charge; For example, a simple “planet” search bring up more than 100 images containing thumbnail images, textual descriptions, images numbers, and links to more information, higher resolution images, and a link to the NASA Center that stores the image.

NTIS Index (The National Technical Information Service)
NTIS provides access to permanent depository of unclassified scientific and technical information. Over 2 million publications on scientific, technical, engineering and business related subjects can be accessed through the keyword search engine. NTIS is particularly useful for information on research which received government funding.

PubMed U.S. National Library of Medicine
Provides access to citations for biomedical articles back to the 1950's. Citations are from MEDLINE and additional life science journals. Includes links to many sites providing full text articles and other related resources.

Public STINET (Scientific & Technical Information Network)
A searchable database of unclassified documents in the Defense Technical Information Center's Technical Reports Collection, including the full-text of many documents. Also provides access to the Air University Library Index to Military Periodicals, Staff College Automated Military Periodical Index, DoD Index to Specifications and Standards, and Research and Development Descriptive Summaries.

National Environmental Publications Information System (NEPIS)

From the National Service Center for Environmental Publications, the site provides a searchable database of EPA reports, Federal Register notices, and other documents.

National Environmental Satellite Data Information Services

NESDIS operates National Data Centers for Climate, Geophysics, Oceans, and Coasts. Through these Data Centers and other centers of data, NESDIS provides and ensures timely access to global environmental data from satellites and other sources, provides information services, and develops science products. Users can access multiple databases through National Climatic Data Center, National Ocean Data Center, National Geophysical Data center.

STAT-USA: business, economic & trade related data. Restricted files in National Trade Data Bank are available at the Reference Desk and at the Government Documents Desk. Available in FSU Library Computer Stations

THOMAS U.S. Library of Congress
Search Congressional bills and resolutions, public laws, roll call votes, the Congressional Record, Committee Reports, Treaties, or explore a variety of other useful links.

TOXNET Toxicology Data Network: Databases on toxicology, hazardous chemicals, environmental health, and toxic releases (TRI).

TRIS Online (Transportation Research Information Services)

 Index to research in the field of transportation. It contains well over half a million records of references to (and some full-text links to) books, technical reports, conference proceedings, journal articles and on-going research in the field of transportation.

USGS Publications Warehouse

Reports and thematic maps database that provides access to bibliographic citations for over 70,000 publications and full product and thematic map content for over 40,000, including USGS numbered series begun in 1880 to forward.  Availability of Content ranging from full text to bibliographic citation is updated at daily basis.

USAID Development Experience Clearinghouse

USAID works to help people overseas struggling to make a better life, recover from a disaster or striving to live in a free and democratic country. As the largest online resources of agency-funded technical and program-related documents, the database presents over 59300 documents available in full text on subjects such as education, health, democracy, humanitarian assistance and more.   

United Nations Treaty Collection

 A collection of treaties and international agreements registered or filed and recorded with and published by the Secretariat since 1946 to the present. The collection currently contains over 158,000 treaties and related subsequent actions which have been published in hard copy in over 2,200 volumes. Currently, the UNTS is being enhanced to include the latest desktop published volumes. The other additional searchable databases such as Monthly Statement of Treaties and International Agreements  and Text and Status of the United Nations Conventions on Terrorism also are available in the collections.

USASpending

Searchable database of Federal government spending, with complete annual data beginning with FY 2000. It provides citizens with easy access to government contracts, grants and other award data.  Users can search by agencies, competition type, and products/services provided.

U.S Patent Databases( Full-Text and Full-Page Image)

Provided by U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the database allows users to search and view the full-text of U.S. patents from 1976 on, and patent applications beginning with March 2001. Patents issued between 1790 and 1976 are searchable only by patent number and current US classification.