Government Publications
Finding Aids & Local Resources | About the Collection
The Contra Costa County Library is a repository for federal, state, county, and local documents. The Library was designated a Federal Depository in 1964. Free and open access to the government publications collection is guaranteed by public law (Title 44 USC). The Pleasant Hill Library houses over 60,000 United States, California, and Contra Costa County documents; documents of other regional agencies, environmental documents, and Association of Bay Area Government publications. Community libraries have city documents and local environmental documents for the areas that they serve.
Finding Aids and Local Resources
Online Catalog
Includes popular federal, state and county and local publications in the Library collection. The Documents Unit card catalog at Pleasant Hill Library provides access to all uncataloged materials.
California Libraries Catalog/WorldCat
Search CalCat for government publications in California academic, government, public, special, and school libraries. Search WorldCat for historical government publications prior to 1885.
Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (GPO)
The official catalog of United States government publications from 1976 to the present. Ultimately it will include all U.S. government publications ever published by the Government Printing Office.
California State Library Main Catalog
The State Library is the state regional depository for U.S. publications, and a full depository for California publications. It has holdings far beyond what is included in the Main Catalog.
Contra Costa County Public Law Library
The County Public Law Library has an extensive California law collection. It offers access to online legal resources through Westlaw and LexisNexis.
Melvyl (University of California Libraries)
Search for government publications in the University of California Libraries, the California State Library, and Hastings College of the Law, among other institutions.
Patent & Trademark Center
San Francisco Public Library, a U.S. Patent and Trademark Depository Library, has complete patents, 1790-present, and offers computerized searching of patents and trademarks.
San Francisco Bay Area Documents Network
24 federal depository libraries in the Bay Area offer free and open access to a wealth of government information. Their collections vary widely in breadth, depth and content.
About the Collection
The Library’s government collection includes census publications, tax publications; legislative proceedings, statutes, codes, and regulations; Supreme Court opinions, treaties; budgets and financial reports; labor, education, criminal justice, and health statistics; trade data; military histories; geological and environmental publications; topographic maps, flood zone and other hazard maps, CIA maps; county ordinances, Board of Supervisor agendas, and grand jury reports.
Government publications come in various formats--print, map, microform, CD-ROM and DVD—and are now primarily digital. Agencies at all levels frequently publish their actions, agendas, reports, statistics and periodicals at their websites. Many sites feature special databases and information retrieval tools, mostly free, some fee-based. (The Pleasant Hill Library provides free access to the USA Trade Online and the National Climatic Data Center Online Documents Library.)
Government information is accessible from all Library workstations. Filtering software on children’s workstations may affect accessibility to some government sites. All Contra Costa County community libraries are accessible to users with disabilities.
Many of the Library’s documents are non-circulating reference materials. Cataloged documents circulate in the same manner as other library materials. Ask the Information staff for help in checking out uncataloged documents, or to request interlibrary loans of publications not in the collection. The Library staff is happy to help users locate documents and to assist with any government information needs.
[top]