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19 September 2003

Tapping the Treasures of Government Documents

by Sheldon Greaves, Ph.D.

A paper presented at the 2nd Annual Citizen Science Conference, 20 July 2003, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.

Part of the fun and challenge of doing science on an amateur basis is solving the problem of doing more with less. As an amateur, you have to exercise ingenuity and creativity to solve problems. That's the fun part. The challenging part is having to cope with the perception that just because you are not doing science for a living, you can't possibly know your field as well as a professional. The only way to answer this kind of criticism is to do your homework, but another way of looking at it is to leverage information resources that corporate and academic professionals tend to miss. We have to bear in mind that simply by dint of their mindset, amateurs have options open to them that are usually ignored by professionals because corporate and academic researchers often do their work using "traditional" resources.

Last year at the Philadelphia Conference I presented a paper on "Guerrilla Scholarship", which is my nomenclature for doing science and scholarship using non-traditional research methods. Today I want to talk about one of the most fertile and universally ignored resources for the citizen scientist--or researcher on virtually any other subject imaginable--namely, publications generated by the United States Government.

Big. Really, Really Big.

Before I begin, I want to impress upon you the scale of this resource. The US Government is the world's largest publisher of information. Just one government organization, the National Technical Information Service (which we will discuss later), releases over 5,000 new publications every month. In recent years, the GPO has cranked out new titles at the rate of about 40,000 per year. So please be aware that my presentation today does not even scratch the surface. It is more like a blurry Polaroid of the surface taken through a dirty window from an altitude of several thousand feet. I have, however, prepared a list of some of the more interesting resources germane to citizen science, and I plan to make an expanded version of this list available via the SAS web site.

The fact that government publications are so numerous means that the Government Printing Office is making every effort to make more and more documents and resources available via the Internet. This should come as a surprise to no one. One advantage to this strategy is that electronic resources tend to coalesce into a few established databases or web portals, as is seen in other parts of the Web. In the case of government documents, this process is ongoing and sometimes sluggish, with a few exceptions. One downside--at least in my opinion--is that the brick and mortar Federal Bookstores across the country and closing down. Although it is possible to order available government documents online or by phone, I still miss the opportunity to actually go and browse shelves of real live books. This is not just soggy sentimentality on my part; shelf browsing is a recognized and effective research technique. This is why most libraries go to the considerable expense of arranging books by subject on their shelves, so that people can browse them.

Because government research and publishing is paid for with taxpayer money, the government makes this information available to ordinary citizens, even if it isn't always obvious. Also, because taxpayer money is used to produce it, most government documents are copyright free. However, most people--including many academics and professionals--know little or nothing about these resources. And those that do frequently underestimate the scale of what's out there. This presents a great opportunity for amateur scientists to "scoop" their professional counterparts.

What are government documents? They can be books, periodicals, slides, videos, films, posters, audio recordings, maps, kits, databases, pamphlets... pretty much any form of media you can imagine. Although there is a concerted effort to make as many of these publications as possible available on the Internet, the majority are still only available in print or microform. Many items are commissioned by Congress to help lawmakers understand certain issues. Others are produced by various agencies and departments as part of their mandate. Still others are the result of research done using government funds, which usually requires researchers to submit a report of their work.

Why So Obscure?

So why don't more people know about and use these resources? The problem is that with so much information coming out so fast, advertising these documents is cost-prohibitive. There is no single totally comprehensive index of government publications; most publications emanate from individual departments of the government. Although they are theoretically supposed to, it is impractical for the Government Printing Office to compile a comprehensive index. Besides, word of new publications does not always make it from various departments to the GPO. Those indices that do get published contain a total of between nine and ten thousand titles at any given time, which is far below the actual number of available titles.

The "shelf life" of government publications presents yet another obstacle. Most government publications remain in print for an average of eighteen months. They stay listed in the regularly-updated indices for an average of two years. If and when they do go out of print, locating a copy can be problematic. You might be able to obtain a copy at a local repository library (which I will discuss later), or contact the agency that originally published the document and hope they still have one lying around. As a last resort, you may need to contact the Library of Congress or the National Archives.

Another problem is that government documents use a classification system different from ordinary libraries, called as the SuDocs system. This means that government publications are shelved apart from ordinary titles, so even if they are part of a public library, they may not be where you would normally expect to look. Ironically, most Library Science degree programs do not require their graduates to know how this system works. The challenge, then, for citizen scientists, is developing some additional research savvy needed to tap these rich veins of information.

Getting Started

So where do we begin? Most government documents are stored in special repository libraries. By law, there must be at least one government documents repository library in each congressional district. Often these repositories are part of a state or university library. There are over 1,300 repository libraries across the nation, each of them well-maintained and competently staffed. To find the location of repository libraries in your area, visit http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/locators/findlibs/index.html.

How do we look up a government document? Let's start with general resources and then move to specific items. Probably the best place for the average person to start is the Catalog of United Stated Government Publications, which is available online for information published after 1994. For resources printed prior to this time, you will need to consult the Monthly Catalogue of US Government Publications (1895-1994), MoCat for short, which is available at most repository libraries. Please note that MoCat is not comprehensive. It only lists the more popular titles or titles from agencies that happened to send their latest publication lists to the Superintendent of Documents office. However, it's a start.

Another general-purpose resource is the Congressional Information Service CIS Index. The United States Congress commissions an enormous amount of research on every subject imaginable. They also publish committee prints, reports, hearings, and other documents. CIS is the index to all of these resources. It is only available in print, although a CD-ROM version is available that has indices from 1970 on. CIS also publishes a separate index to committee hearings. A 1994 article noted that during the previous sixteen years the House committees alone had held a total of 54,034 hearings, which comes to about 20 hearings every day the House was in session. If you are working on a subject or problem that might have been even remotely involved with some kind of legislation, chances are there is some information here that you will find useful.

Congress also maintains a research arm at the Library of Congress called the Congressional Research Service. This is a collection of scholars and scientists who conduct research and compile reports to help lawmakers keep abreast of the many issues they have to deal with. These reports are carefully checked for accuracy and objectivity and lack of partisanship, so they are usually quite reliable. CRS generates a vast number of such reports every year. However, neither the CRS index nor the reports are available to the public. So how do you gain access to this information? Call the office of one of your congressional representatives and tell them that you are interested in a particular topic and you need to know if a CRS report has been issued on your subject. They will do the search for you. If there is a report available, they will send you a copy, usually free of charge. I've used this service myself and the results were quite satisfactory. This is also a cool resource to know about if you are trying to help a student research a report for school.

Hopefully, very soon you won't have to jump through those bureaucratic hoops. Those reports that have to do with environmental science are quietly being posted on the web through a portal maintained by the National Council for Science and the Environment, located at http://www.NCSEonline.org/. The Federation of American Scientists also maintains an open database of downloadable CRS reports related to space and science issues on their web site, http://www.fas.org/spp/civil/crs/. Of course, these will only contain recent reports. For reports older than a few years you may need to contact your congressional representatives.

Now these indices are free to the general public, but if you feel like spending lots and lots of money, most government documents are indexed in fee-access databases like LexisNexus, Dialog, and other services. However, you will pay a great deal of money for the privilege, at least from my perspective. It might save you time in the long run; and time, as we all know, is money. So it's your call. The trade-off in efficiency and time saved may well be worth it.

Tracer Bullets

The Library of Congress maintains a useful reference called the Tracer Bullets series. These are bibliographies compiled by Library of Congress librarians in which they assemble what they consider to be the best generally available books and articles on a particular subject. These bibliographies are updated every few years and some of them are quite lengthy. Although subjects covered are a little uneven, what they do cover, they cover well. They have an excellent bibliography, for instance, of books on science fair projects. Bibliographies generally are a more useful research tool, because they are usually compiled by someone who knows the territory. Tracer Bullets are available from the Library of Congress web site as part of a larger Science Reference Services page (http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/catalogs.html).

Another more general-interest resource you should know about is the US Government Periodicals Index. Most people don't know that the government publishes about 180 periodical titles on a wide range of subjects. Moreover, these periodicals are not usually indexed in references like the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature used by most researchers looking in trade magazines. The US Government Periodicals Index is available at most repository libraries. You can search periodical citations online using LexisNexus, and some university web sites let you search if you are a student or staff member. You might also be able to search this index from a public library terminal.

Playing the Numbers Game

Collecting data is at the heart of science. The American Statistics Index (1974-) is a reference that I suspect can be used imaginatively by citizen scientists for a wide range of studies that involve health issues, economics, or resource usage to name just a few possibilities. The usefulness of this reference derives from the fact that the government either counts everything imaginable or obtains such data from others who do. The ASI presents subject-organized access to every imaginable statistical table, list, or publication produced by the government. It includes many category indices which make it all the more useful. Although generally published a few months after the year it covers, there are also multi-year culmination editions that usually cover five years at a time.

There are also two similar references published by CIS titled Statistical Reference Index (1980-) and Index to International Statistics (1983-). The first covers a wide range of statistics collected by nonfederal US agencies such as cities, universities, trade groups, and so on. The second indexes the statistical publications of some 100 international bodies, such as the UN and the European Union. Now I must point out that these are indices of citations, and do not contain the full text of the publications. However, any library that owns one or more of these indices probably has those documents available on microfiche. But in general, those microfiche sets will not be listed in the library's general catalogue. The only way you're going to find them is through these indicies.

Finally, I want to conclude this overview of general index resources by describing the Government Printing Office Subject Bibliographies Index. These are approximately 150 subject bibliographies used to categorize the publications, subscriptions, and electronic products for sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO). Unlike the Tracer Bullets, they are restricted only to currently available government documents. Bibliographies of interest to science enthusiasts include Aerospace, Aviation, Wildlife, Aquatic Life, Nuclear Power, Grants and Awards, Earth Sciences, Electricity and Electronics, Energy, Environmental Protection, Specifications and Standards, Minerals, National Park Service Handbooks, and many other subjects. You can view these bibliographies on line at the address on the screen (http://bookstore.gpo.gov/sb/).

The Mother Lode

So much for where to find references. Now I want to talk about the Mother of All Science Resources, the National Technical Information Service or NTIS. This department was organized during the last months of World War II to take scientific and technical information captured from the Germans and make translations available to the general public. The decision was made--a very wise one in my view--to make these documents available free of charge or copyright. Enterprising industrialists literally camped out on the NTIS doorstep to get the latest catalogues of new documents, and the new technologies thus acquired helped fuel the post-war economic boom. Today their collection numbers over 3 million scientific and technical titles.

Any scientific research project using government funds must submit a report of that research to the government. Today these reports are compiled and made available through the NTIS, no matter which agency originally conducted the research. To search current offerings, you can use the search engine on the NTIS web site, (http://www.ntis.gov/) which contains titles going back to 1990. There is also a database from 1964 to date which is searchable--usually at an exorbitant cost--through online database services such as Dialog. A company called Ovid also publishes a CD-ROM database that covers from 1983 to date.

But the main index for these publications is called Government Reports Announcements & Index (GRA&I), which is available only in print. One thing you should be aware of is that many repository libraries do not have access to NTIS indices. However, many other non-government libraries and organizations do. Ask around, starting at the nearest university or state library. Corporate libraries are another potential source. Because of the number of these reports, repository libraries do not normally have them available. However, you can order them directly from the NTIS--usually as microfiche--or read them at the Library of Congress, which is the only library that maintains a complete set.

The range of subjects covered by NTIS documents is impossible to grasp. I won't regale you with a long list of some of the more interesting titles. Suffice it to say that if you are doing anything at all that has anything at all to do with science, chances are that there are some relevant items available. And it's a good bet most professionals haven't looked there, assuming they even know about them.

One government organization that can easily be confused with the NTIS is this NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (http://www.nist.gov/). It's very difficult to do their web site justice. The best way to describe this resource is that if it has anything at all to do with measurement, NIST is involved. Their purpose is to "to develop and promote measurement, standards, and technology to enhance productivity, facilitate trade, and improve the quality of life." One of my favorite sections is a massive database of physical reference data, including fundamental physical constants, units of measurement, and uncertainty of measurement results. If you ever find yourself trying to remember one of these fiddlybits, this web site will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about it.

Seeking Technology?

The U.S. Government realizes the importance of giving small-scale innovators every advantage because such support yields big economic dividends in the long term. One resource you should find interesting is the National Technology Transfer Center (http://www.nttc.edu/), whose sole purpose is to take technology developed by the government and get it into the private sector. Actually, they are not a government agency per se, but a nonprofit organization located on campus of Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, WV.

Their main program works like this: You call this organization (800-678-6882), and tell them about the technical problem or challenge you are trying to solve. They can search technology databases from NASA, FEMA, DOD, EPA, and other government agencies and tell you if there is any technology in those databases developed by the government that is available for licensing. If they find anything that looks potentially useful, they will help you locate the technical and licensing information you need, free of charge. The NTTC does not make any profit from technologies or licenses.

NTTC also offers an evaluation service of technology under development by an individual or small company to see if it's suitable for market. There is a fee for this service.

Usually, when a person or business contacts the NTTC for assistance, they are eventually referred to a local Small Business Innovation Research Center. These are local or regional nongovernmental organizations that work alongside the NTTC to assist small businesses in getting their technologies to market.

A similar service for people seeking access to technologies and technical information is available through the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) and the Scientific and Technical Information Network (STIN).

DTIC manages 13 Information Analysis Centers staffed by experienced information specialists, scientists and engineers who help customers locate, analyze and use scientific and technical information in a specialized subject area. DTIC also hosts approximately 100 Web sites for other Defense programs and runs the DoD registration system for technical information. The STIN is a public portal which gives you access to unlimited citations of all unclassified documents added into DTIC from late December 1974 to present. There are also full-text versions of all unclassified, unlimited documents recently added into DTIC technical reports collection from September 1998 to Present. STIN also offers a "private" service available by subscription that features expanded citation databases, many additional full-text articles, and access to the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information's database and the British Library Document Supply Centre's "inside web" database.

Their web sites are located at http://www.dtic.mil/ and http://stinet.dtic.mil/ respectively.

Awards and Grants

Another site that might be of interest to the individual experimenter or small-scale entrepreneur is the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance, located at http://www.cfda.gov/. Using their web site, you can search through the many grants, awards, and other assistance programs available through the government. Awards and grants are available to companies, individuals, and nonprofit organizations. My cursory search turned up a number of research and development grants available for science research and education. If you're in the market for some support, this might be worth a look.

General Science Resources

The web is filled with small-scale government information projects. One that concerns scientific subjects is ScitechResources.gov, A Catalogue of Science and Technology Resources on the Web (http://www.scitech.gov/). It appears to be a project to index items of fairly general interest concerning science and technology. This is definitely a work in progress, so there are gaps in coverage. For instance, I used their search engine in the Nature section, subsection "Ecology" using the keyword "ozone" and got no hits. But a search under "Nature", subsection "entomology" and keyword "tussock moth" brought up three large databases on lepadopterae. I think this is a site worth keeping an eye on.

ScitechResources.gov also has a special section dedicated to citizen science (http://www.scitechresources.gov/browse-science-citizen.htm). These resources are geared more to the non-specialist, but they still contain a lot of solid information. I was particularly interested in the results of a search I did using the keyword "real time data". You can obtain access to current information on everything from local temperatures to current volcano hazards to satellite images. Many of the sites listed also had archives of historical data that amateur scientists could use to study trends over time.

Another potentially interesting science resource is Science.gov, located at http://www.science.gov/. This is another science portal that apparently draws most of its information from scitechresources.gov. This makes it mostly derivative and therefore less comprehensive, but still a useful tool.

Smaller Nuggets

Every area of human endeavor has a lot of projects that get started but are never quite finished. The US Government is no exception. Where the Internet is concerned, some dedicated searching can dig up numerous small web sites that represent small-scale projects or small projects that had larger aspirations until someone pulled the purse strings. The web is a strange place in that documents can exist for years, even decades, or they can vanish after a few weeks. In this respect it rather resembles my desk. Fortunately for us, the trend on Government web servers seems to be one of conserving documents rather than deleting files to free up server space. To the best of my knowledge, many of these sites are not indexed in any single Government site, and many of them are sufficiently old that they don't rate highly on search engine results. Their contents is usually spotty and dated, sometimes badly so, and they often contain links that don't work. But occasionally you find something that leads you to something else that you can use.

For you biologists out there, I suggest you take a look the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) run by the Department of Agriculture (http://www.itis.usda.gov/). This amazing system is a collaborative effort of not only US government agencies, but universities and government agencies from Canada and Mexico. Type in the name of any plant, animal, fungus, etc.--common or scientific name, and the database will give you a complete breakdown of the taxonomy of your entry, link you to other databases with relevant information, and even provide names of acknowledged experts on that particular species. You can also use ftp to download pieces of the database based on a range of specifications, such as a particular taxonomic branch, or even the entire database if you desire.

You should also be aware that some government agencies publish information in areas where you wouldn't expect their involvement. For instance, NASA has considerable online information for teaching Earth Science. The US Geological Survey maintains some very useful wildlife identification databases. The lesson here is that scientific information will permeate through departmental boundaries, and your search strategies should do likewise.

Partner Institutions

Another idea to keep in mind is to look for organizations that partner with government. One excellent example is the Education Resource Information Center (ERIC) at Ohio State University. This web site has an excellent section for science, mathematics and environmental education (http://www.ericse.org/) including some well-maintained link pages. The copyright status of documents created through private and government partnerships is variable, but since most of you are not likely to be looking to reprint what you find, it shouldn't be an issue.

Ohio State is not the only university that maintains links to government resources. Many universities and colleges maintain web link pages to government documents on their web sites, and many of these are nice summaries and form good jumping off points, although most of them are understandably biased to students of law and politics.

Another trick you might use (which you did not hear from me) takes advantage of the fact that many Repository Libraries are located in university libraries. In this day when ordinary people can't get access to a university library without paying some outrageous fee, Repository Libraries are, by law, open to everyone. I have on rare occasions gained access to a university stack by asking to be admitted to the Government Documents library. Generally access between the Government Documents library and the main stack is unimpeded, so I simply wandered into the main stack. Obviously I couldn't check things out, but library photocopiers are a boon to any guerrilla scholar with a pocket full of small change.

Conclusion

Although it is hopeless to think that I could possibly draw you a comprehensive map of the information resources available through government publications, just knowing they exist is the first step to accessing this vast pool of information. I hope to put some of the more important links to government information web sites on the E-Bulletin Archives page, and if any of you happen to find similar nuggets of information, please pass them on to me so I can share them with the rest of our membership. Thank you, and good hunting!

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