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Government Web Sites

Site updated and links checked on 3/23/2007
Primary Sites Searching by Branch of Federal Government Legal Information
Biographical Information and Telephone Directories Searching by Committee, Commission, Agency, etc. General Government Information Listings
Accessing Databases Public Policy and Issues Government Sites Listed by Topic
Finding Publications Online Finding State Government Information State of Iowa Information
County or City Government Information Statistics Local Cities
Specific Agencies with LOTS of Info Government Sites Providing Educational Resources Other Links
Gov. Sites for Kids Health and Safety Information Search Engines for Kids
Searching for Images Finding Military Information Finding Consumer Information

 

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  • Primary Sites
    • FirstGov -- Your First Click to the U.S. Government
      Searches BOTH federal and state  -- either separately or together.  Search for information about the government but it also has links for you as a citizen or as a business owner who needs to interact with the government.  As this web site says "On FirstGov.gov, you can search more than 51 million web pages from federal and state governments, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories. Most of these pages are not available on commercial websites. FirstGov has the most comprehensive search of government anywhere on the Internet. "
    • THOMAS -- U.S. Congress on the Internet  [Link to THOMAS Home Page]   Here is what they say about themselves: "Acting under the directive of the leadership of the 104th Congress to make Federal legislative information freely available to the Internet public, a Library of Congress team brought the THOMAS World Wide Web system online in January 1995, at the inception of the 104th Congress. Searching capabilities in THOMAS were built on the http://thomas.loc.gov/home/abt_thom.html information retrieval system, developed by the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval based at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
      The first database made available was Bill Text, followed shortly by Congressional Record Text, Bill Summary & Status, Hot Bills (no longer maintained), the Congressional Record Index, and the Constitution (now found, along with other historical Congressional documents, under the "Historical Documents" category on the THOMAS home page). Enhancements in the types of legislative data available, as well as in search and display capabilities, have been continuously added. "

    • The Library of Congress  This pretty well says it all.  "The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution, and it serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with more than 120 million items on approximately 530 miles of bookshelves. The collections include more than 18 million books, 2.5 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.5 million maps, and 54 million manuscripts. " If you want to see what they have on line, take a look at their Research Centers which covers the arts, science, business, etc.

    • Government Information INFOMINE Search Screen -- "Scholarly Internet Resources Collections."   This is brought to you by the University of California.  They state "U.S. Federal, state, local, regional and international government resources are collected. U.S. Federal resources are emphasized. Among state level resources, California is currently best represented. As a special subset of this collection, most of the more important Federally produced CD-ROMs are well represented (these represent the holdings of the Government Publications Department, a U. S. Federal Depository, at the Library of the University of California, Riverside). Subject concerns range from the arts through the social, physical and other sciences and from the applied to the theoretical. "

    • NTIS - National Technical Information Service Here is what they do.  "The National Technical Information Service serves our nation as the largest central resource for government-funded scientific, technical, engineering, and business related information available today. For more than 50 years NTIS has assured businesses, universities, and the public timely access to well over 2 million publications covering over 350 subject areas."

    • Federal Depository Library Listing As great as the web is, nothing beats a trip to a good library and for government documents and information the place to go is a depository library. Davenport Public Library is such a depository and the University of Iowa is a regional depository which means its collection is even more extensive. The Illinois State Library in Springfield is also a regional depository. As this site states "Regional libraries receive all materials distributed through the Federal Depository Library Program. Other libraries select materials according to the needs of their communities." There are 53 regional libraries. If you insist on going to the web, then you should still take a look at the web sites for the libraries that are depositories. Why? Because they have librarians who specialize in government documents and these librarians have frequently created web sites that usually contain an excellent list of government web sites. Use their knowledge! Listed below under "General Government Information Listings" are links to some of the regional depository libraries with good sets of web links.

    • SearchGov.com provides basic links to executive and independent agencies of the federal government as well as other popular government web destinations. It also includes links to each of the states. This is only a page of links and the subsequent pages have few links on them. Still this is a good place to go when you don't remember the exact web address of a common government or state agency.

    • Google Search Uncle Sam   (Google search of U.S. Government)


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  • Specific Agencies with LOTS of Info
    • Library of Congress, American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital LIbrary.
    • Federal Consumer Information Center This site has an excellent link to federal loans, grants, and assistance with links listed by agency. It also has a link to Kids.gov which is an interagency portal for all government sites targeted to children.
    • U.S. Department of State Not only does this have travel information and details about other countries, but it has a great deal of information about the United States that it makes available for people overseas. Don't overlook this one.
    • U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. Here is the file cabinet of the U.S. government. There is a tremendous amount of material here and some of it is making its way on line. Check out the digital class room.
    • Central Intelligence Agency. This one is not just for spooks. They collect a huge quantity of information much of which is not classified at all. Increasingly information they gather from the public records of other countries and about the U.S. is on line.
    • AskERIC Educational Information. While this is focused on education, it is a huge site linking to an enormous quantity of information about education. Here is what they say about themselves. "AskERIC is a personalized Internet-based service providing education information to teachers, librarians, counselors, administrators, parents, and anyone interested in education throughout the United States and the world. It began in 1992 as a project of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology and is now, with the ERIC Clearinghouse, a component of the Information Institute of Syracuse at Syracuse University. Today, AskERIC encompasses the resources of the entire ERIC system and beyond, using the subject expertise of the 16 ERIC Clearinghouses to respond to your education requests. "
    • C-Span This link takes you to the site index for C-Span where you can watch video from the archives (if you have the right player installed) but they also have great links concerning campaigns and elections, judicial resources, executive branch resources, and so on under the category "Classroom" or follow this link to the main page for "Classroom". This is a great resource for current political information but not really for finding information within the U.S. government.

      Also C-Span 2 on weekends is BookTV and BookTV is devoted to covering non-fiction books. If you enjoy books and reading this is a great resource.


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  • Accessing Databases
    • Multi-Database Search (Government Printing Office Access)
    • Thomas: Legislative Information on the Internet This is actually a database of legislative records and of the Congressional Record as well as numerous other databases which are listed at the web site. Most importantly this includes committee reports from the 104th to the 107th Congresses and includes a search of Congressional Committee Home Pages as well.
    • The Educator's Reference Desk (used to be AskEric Educational Information Database) Here is what they say about themselves: "The ERIC database, the world's largest source of education information, contains more than one million abstracts of documents and journal articles on education research and practice. This web-based version of the ERIC Database, provides access to abstracts which are also found in the printed medium, Resources in Education and Current Index To Journals in Education. The database is updated monthly, ensuring that the information you receive is timely and accurate."

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  • Statistics
    • Statistical Resources (University of Michigan listing by subject area)
    • FedStats Home Page Here is what they say about themselves.  "FedStats is the new window on the full range of official statistical information available to the public from the Federal Government. Use the Internet's powerful linking and searching capabilities to track economic and population trends, education, health care costs, aviation safety, foreign trade, energy use, farm production, and more. Access official statistics collected and published by more than 70 Federal agencies without having to know in advance which agency produces them. "
    • Statistical Resources  (Listing provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
    • National Center for Education Statistics This is the site map for this group. They have a huge quantity of education links and also some good links to education sites.
    • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (part of the Department of Health and Human Services)) has lots of good statisical information on state and national level concerning health, safety, and human development issues. See especially the section entitled "FastStats A-Z".

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  • Links to Education Sites Sponsored by Government Agencies
    • FREE -- Federal Resources for Educational Excellence Here is what they say about themselves: "More than 30 Federal agencies formed a working group in 1997 to make hundreds of Federally supported teaching and learning resources easier to find. The result of that work is the FREE web site."
    • Gateway to Educational Materials Here is what they say about themselves: "The key to one-stop, any-stop access to high quality lesson plans, curriculum units and other education resources on the Internet! "
    • Consortium for Education Projects This is part of "FREE" (see above) and this lists fascinating projects that your students can do over the internet or with materials that are readily available.
    • AskEric Educational Information Database Here is what they say about themselves: "ERIC is the world's largest source of education information, with more than 1 million abstracts of documents and journal articles on education research and practice. Our version of the Database, updated monthly with the latest citations available, provides access to ERIC Document citations from 1966 through August 2002 and ERIC Journal citations from 1966 through August 2002."
    • SearchEdu.com Provides a simple search of educational web pages, that is those ending with ".edu".

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  • Links to Other Useful Sites
    • New York Times This is an excellent site because you can have them e-mail you links to current articles on topics of your choice. This is an excellent way to stay abreast of what is going on in a particular subject area.
    • Volunteer Match Allows you to search by location, schedule, and interests for volunteer opportunities.
    • Search Engine Colossus Allows you to find search engines in your choice of languages or subject categories.
    • Asiaco Need information about Asian countries including government, news, business, and educational links? Go to Asiaco and you will find the links you need for all of Asia. It is organized by country but there are also links for Asia-wide issues.
    • SearcheBooks.com provides a search engine for online e-texts.
    • PublicLibraries.com is the place to go. Remember librarians were organizing information long before the web. They know how its done. So use them! And support them!
    • NatureServe Explorer Here's what they say about themselves, " a source for authoritative conservation information on more than 50,000 plants, animals, and ecological communities of the United States and Canada. NatureServe Explorer provides in-depth information on rare and endangered species, but includes common plants and animals too. NatureServe Explorer is a product of NatureServe and its network of natural heritage programs. " They also have a search engine for "the birds and mammals of Latin America and the Caribbean—more than 5,500 common, rare, and endangered species in 44 countries and territories" called InfoNatura.
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  • Gov. Sites for Kids
    • First Gov for Kids is the place to begin. Sometimes this a good place for anyone to start with because the sites tend to be more focused and to the point.
    • Ben's Guide to U.S. Government refers to Ben Franklin and is a useful site with information split according to grade levels. It also has good sources for parents and teachers.
    • C-Span in the Classroom has a lot of resources and links that are very useful. Their links include actual documents and videos relevant to understanding what the U.S. government is doing or has done.
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  • Search Engines for Kids
    • Ask Jeeves allows students to ask questions using complete sentences or phrases. The results are generally solid.
    • B. J. Pinchbeck's Homework Helper has been around for a long time now and is still really useful. It has become rather commercial though.
    • KidsClick! is a database of over 6400 sites compiled by librarians, and -- heh -- librarians are the information retrieval and storage experts!
    • The Awesome Library is just that and has been organized for different age groups.
    • Cool4Kidsuses the Kids and Teens Open Directory Project to collect links for people under the age of 18. Basically the Project uses large numbers of volunteer editors to sift through the submissions to find those that appropriate and best for kids.
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  • Searching for Images
    • Google has a good image search engine.
    • Altavista also has an image search engine -- or in this case, multimedia as you can search for audio and video, too.
    • Picsearch bills itself as a family-friendly search engine and it is. This is not an unimportant feature as searching for images on the web can result in undesirable results.
    • Ditto allows one to search or explore pictures by topics. The latter is useful as sometimes keywords don't match well with what is in the picture or the picture's context.
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  • Finding Consumer Information
    • www.recalls.gov Provides a product recall information to consumers from six different government agencies including the Consumer Product Safety Commission, NHTSA, United States Coast Guard, FDA, USDA, and the EPA. Thanks Susan for this link!

    • Consumer Reports This is an independent and non-profit organization that accepts no advertising. They review hundreds of household products and other items. Their print magazine and web site serve as invaluable resources for consumers to make wise purchase decisions.

Gary's address:
Kahl Education Center - EICC

326 West 3rd Street

Davenport, Iowa 52801-1219

Phone:  563-336-5263
Help Desk: 563-336-3456
Email:  golson@eicc.edu

Send mail to Gary Olson with questions about this web site.

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Eastern Iowa Community College District

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