GPO Digitizes List of Publications the Federal Government has Produced Since the 1800s

  • Last Updated: December 31, 1969
  • Published: September 15, 2021

The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) has digitized the Monthly Catalog of U.S. Government Publications, a historical list of publications the Federal Government produced from 1895 to 2004, as well as other historic Government publication indexes. Librarians, scholars, students, and the general public can use these indexes to find historic publications of the U.S. Government. These indexes have been digitized and published for the public to access for free on GPO’s govinfo, the one-stop site for authentic information published by the Government.

“Digitizing these indexes is the latest example of GPO’s continuing effort to capture Government information and make it available for the public to access,” said GPO Director Hugh Nathanial Halpern. “These Government document indexes provide the public with an easy way to view the historical account of what our Federal Government produced over time and expand the discoverability of historic publications for the public.”

The very first publication listed in the Monthly Catalog is a Diplomatic list for the Department of State from April 1895. Users can find the author, published date, and title of a variety of historic publications in the indexes, from WWII rationing posters to publications on UFOs to the Warren Commission Report, which investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The public may access the Monthly Catalog and Government Document Indexes at
https://www.govinfo.gov/collection/monthly-catalog
 https://www.govinfo.gov/collection/government-document-indexes.

In addition to the Monthly Catalog, GPO has digitized several other indexes, including the Descriptive Catalogue of the Government Publications of the United States, a chronological listing of publications produced by Congress and Executive branch agencies between September 5, 1774 and March 4, 1881. This catalog is commonly referred to as Poore’s, after compiler Benjamin Perley Poore.

The digitization of the Monthly Catalog and other indexes is one of a series of recent projects in which GPO has worked to expand free public access to Congressional information in digital formats. Previously the agency digitized the Congressional Record back to 1873, the Federal Register back to 1936, and the Public Papers of the Presidents back to 1929. In collaboration with the Law Library of Congress, GPO has begun a large multi-year effort to digitize and make accessible volumes of the U.S. Congressional Serial Set back to the first volume, which was published in 1817.