InfoGuides: Policy and Government: Find Information During a Government Shutdown

Alternatives to .gov sites

During a government shutdown, many publicly available government resources are not available. This page offers alternatives to commonly used government resources.

For Most Congressional or Executive Branch Documents & Quick Facts:

ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window
Offers access to congressional publications dealing with the wide variety of topics addressed by Congress. Includes U.S. Serial Set, Congressional Hearings and Testimony, Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports, Congressional Record, Legislative Insight, and U.S. Bills and Resolutions; as well as Executive Branch Documents (1789-1948), and Executive Orders and Presidential Proclamations.

For US Census Information/Data:

Social Explorer This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Access current and historical census data and demographic information. Create maps and reports to illustrate, analyze, and understand demography and social change. Tutorial for the Social Explorer database.

For other government issued data:

Statista This link opens in a new window
Integrates more than 80,000 diverse topics of data and facts from over 22,500 international sources. Includes statistics and studies gathered from market researchers, trade organizations, scientific publications, government sources and international organizations. Create graphs, reports and infographics. Data is easily exportable for analysis. Statista reports now allow you to create your own interactive industry comparisons with Tableau Workbook. Find the free tool here or via https://www.tableau.com/trial/statista-benchmark-report-uk. Tutorial for the Statista database.

Find Government Information in Mason Searches

The Mason Libraries Search can be useful to locating United States government information. The best search strategy is to use the Advanced Search option. Once at the Advanced Search screen, change the first drop-down to Author/Creator and enter United States in the box next to "contains". Here is an example search:

Leave the remaining drop-downs as any fields and enter your search terms in those boxes (think of broad search terms for this step). You may also change the second drop-down to Author/Creator and add the name of a particular agency or department to find publications from that agency. You can also have options to limit by date, and after your search you can limit by specific library location.

Wayback Machine- Internet Archive

During a government shutdown, federal agency websites will not be updated, or worse, taken offline entirely. If this happens, try searching the federal agency's url in the Wayback Machine, provided by the Internet Archive. Once in the site, enter a URL and if the site was archived, you can explore it. However remember that this link does not archive databases or most videos, and search boxes on the archived site will not work.