Government Search Engines

U.S. Government Printing Office (USGPO) FDsys
Provides public access to Government information submitted by Congress and Federal agencies. Search or browse publications.

USA.gov
The US Government's Official Web Portal.

GovEngine.com
This easy-to-use tool provides access to federal, state and local government information. To begin, click on the applicable state on the map. Or select "federal government" or "federal courts" from the right-hand or page-bottom menu. State listings offer links mostly (but not exclusively) to official government Web sites. You will find constitutions, legislative, judicial and executive branch resources, and an assortment of additional legal research tools.

Government Resources on the Web

The University of Michigan Documents Center offers this portal to government information. Available since 1995, it covers Web sites providing information pertaining to federal, state, local, foreign and international government. It arranges many of them by topic and provides brief annotations.

LOUIS (Government Documents Search Engine)
LOUIS, which stands for Library Of Unified Information Sources, is a new search engine for finding documents generated by the federal government. Currently, you may query the full-text of 7 categories of documents simultaneously - congressional reports, the Congressional Record, congressional hearings, the Federal Register, presidential documents, GAO Reports, and bills and resolutions. LOUIS updates its database daily from the Government Printing Office (GPO).

FedForms
Find a database of information about federal forms including where you can find them on the Web. Search by keyword or by agency.

GOV.Research Center
The Department of Commerce's National Technical Information Service and the National Information Services Corporation join to provide subscription-based, single-point access to multiple government databases, including NTIS (government sponsored research in a variety of industries), AGRICOLA (agricultural and life sciences), Energy Science and Technology (basic and applied scientific and technical research literature), Federal Research in Progress (ongoing federally funded projects in the fields of the physical sciences, engineering, and life sciences), AgroBase (agriculture), Nuclear Science Abstracts (international nuclear science and technology literature), RTECS (toxicological information) and NIOSHTIC (occupational safety and health literature). While some of these databases appear elsewhere on the Web for free, there may differences in date coverage and usability.

GovBenefits.gov
Several federal government agencies team to provide access to information about government assistance programs. Search for benefits by keyword or review a list of all benefits. Information provided consists of a brief description of the program, including eligibility requirements. Follow the "Am I Eligible?" link for an online questionnaire, which indicates your likely eligibility. The results of the questionnaire also refer you to additional programs where you might qualify.

Internet Archive: U.S. Government Documents
The Internet Archive maintains a collection of U.S. government documents. Currently, there are more than 2500 documents available in full-text in various formats. You may browse the collection by subject or keyword or search it by keyword. There is also an RSS feed for monitoring additions to the collection.

Intergovernmental and Non-Governmental Organizations Search

Two search engines that are useful for those doing research into topics of interest to Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

Sunlight Foundation
A non-profit organization based in Washington, DC that focuses on the digitization of government data and the creation of tools and Web sites to make that data easily accessible for all citizens.

SearchMil.com
Worldport Online, a Seattle, Washington area Internet service provider, offers a search engine for information stored on .mil Web servers. It claims to index more than 900,000 military pages. Test searches I ran also yielded .gov results.

U.S. Government Manual
GPO Access offers the U.S. Government Manual from 1995 forward.