CHAPTER 6

U.S. Government Documents and Technical Reports

MELODY ALLISON

In recent decades electronic formats and the Internet have created vast changes in the way government information is accessed. The federal government has been an early and proliferative adopter of using the Internet to provide access to the information it generates through public monies on behalf of the public. This change from print- to electronic-centric access has in turn greatly changed the way government information is found. Discerning reference sources from nonreference ones in this digital landscape requires adaptation of the traditional reference source definition to one useful for the electronic environment, especially necessary concerning government information. For this chapter in the sixth edition of Introduction to Reference Sources in the Health Sciences, the scope of reference resource is broadened to encompass any source that points to or provides access to desired information. It includes traditional reference sources such as reference books as well as digital versions of print reference works. Most important, it also includes websites that provide access to literature and other databases, publications, reports, histories, timelines, regulations, legislation, briefings, fact sheets, tools and toolkits, data and statistics, blogs, RSS feeds, audio and video files, images galleries, news communications and updates, social networking (including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and mobile), live chat and other personal communication opportunities, and much, much more.

This chapter begins with an overview of government information as it relates to health care. Sections follow on sources for a number of major government health-care focus areas (open access, translational sciences, patient rights and empowerment, initiatives and gateways). Finally, various selected federal government agencies that produce and provide access to information about health care are presented in relation to their affiliated units. This is an attempt to bring perspective about where agencies fall in the complex federal hierarchy. The Department of Health and Human Services and i ts affiliated units are not the only government units that produce and provide access to information about health care. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the White House also do, and information generated from them is included in this chapter as well. Government statistics will be more extensively covered in “Medical and Health Statistics,” chapter 12 of this book.

Introduction

Typically government information is seen as synonymous with lawmaking, and indeed this is a major function of our government. In addition to creating laws and regulations, the three branches of federal government—executive, legislative, and judicial branches—each have their own operations with documents that relate to their activities. The federal government is an immensely rich source of information related to activities that are funded by its branches, offices, institutes, agencies, and other entities. It invests billions of dollars into research and development in the sciences, making it an important if not essential source of information for a variety of scientific areas. There are no better examples than those that relate to health care.

Each year the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is the largest federal grant-awarding agency,1 funding “almost a quarter of all federal outlays . . . more than all other federal agencies combined.”2 A great deal of health-care information can be located from the websites of those governmental entities that supported the research. Examples of the types of health information resources that can be accessed from these sites are government-funded research summaries, technical reports (see Technical Reports in Dissemination of Government Health Research), health topic fact sheets, topic summaries, histories, timelines, regulations, legislation, briefings, tools and toolkits, data and statistics, newsletters, listservs, blogs, RSS feeds, audio and video files, image galleries, social networking (including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and mobile), and live chat and other personal communication opportunities. Also, the government has a number of health initiatives, such as HHS’s Health Communication, Health Literacy and e-Health; Healthy People; Dietary Guidelines; Physical Activity Guidelines initiatives; and the HHS Secretary’s FLU.gov, FoodSafety.gov, HealthCare.gov, InsureKidsNow.gov, LetsMove.gov, OrganDonor.gov, StopBullying.gov, and StopMedicareFraud.gov initiatives; and the USDA’s ChooseMyPlate.gov initiative, with website portals to related information.

But this does not entail all the information output produced by public monies. Currently much of the publicly funded research is disseminated through scholarly journal publication. Private publishers take the submitted work of researchers/​authors, including ownership (copyright), and distribute through a fee-based publication system. A large constituency of library, academic, and consumer organizations have joined forces to advocate for free access to publicly taxpayer-funded research, through such proposed legislation as the Federal Research Public Access Act.3 Public access advocacy groups feel that free public access is a right of taxpayers who fund research and that it will promote wider dissemination, and use, of the latest research by anyone, not just those who can afford the price of publications. There are a number of issues concerning the viability of this “open-access” model of research dissemination, and it remains to be seen if this will become the standard in the future, though currently there is a growing body of new and established publishers that are committing to whole or hybrid open-access publications.

Government information is a challenge to find for several reasons. For instance, standards and methods for information organization and location vary considerably from entity to entity. One cannot extrapolate the content organization from one entity website to another, making it necessary to learn how to find similar kinds of content type from site to site. Websites such as Search.USA.gov allow a federated search of multiple government sites. USA Search is a strategic resource that allows the public to search for government information across websites from all levels of government. The ability to search across the government space is critical to creating an open, transparent, and accessible government.

Additionally, the names of federal government entities can be very confusing, sometimes seem redundant, and even have the same name abbreviation. For instance, there is the Office on Women’s Health (OWH), the Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH), and Office of Women’s Health (OWH). If the sponsoring agent is not provided, it can take considerable finesse to find out who it is. In this example they are respectively the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); the National Institutes of Health (NIH); and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), and the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)/​Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) (all with the same latter name!). Not knowing the exact wording, including preposition, can make a significant difference in accessing information from each source.4^–6 And there is the Office of Special Health Affairs in the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) as well as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) that both use the same abbreviation, OSHA.7^–8

There are also agencies that on the surface seem related but are affiliated with entirely different main units. For example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has an Office of Foods and a Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.9^–10 The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), and the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).11^–13 And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a Food Safety Office.14 Again it is important to know that these agencies exist and how they relate, interrelate, or don’t relate, when pursuing information queries.

The terms used for government information types can be no less confusing. In one place a title may be called a document and a similar title elsewhere may be called a publication. Many times they are used interchangeably in the same publication or from the same source. Spellings of terms can also create a barrier to finding information that is available. For example health care and healthcare are stylistic variations of the same term which may be based on agency editorial preferences (or the writer’s) and consistently applied throughout a website or publication (or not). Sometimes both ways of spelling may be found throughout a single piece. The term used may even differ between the agency name and content published by that same agency (e.g., see reference 91). Finding the information depends on searching for the term as it is spelled, or it is not found. Note: the formatting style for this book used the term health care versus healthcare, though the term healthcare is used as quoted from source (e.g., Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality).

Knowledge about how our government is organized and what information products are produced will bring considerable order to what may seem to be overwhelming chaos. In addition to a growing amount of full-text government information directly available online, there are many bibliographic resources to bring order and control over the vast amount of government information that is created. On those occasions when success is limited, or remains elusive or overwhelming, assistance is as close as contact with a federal depository librarian.

Resources about Government Information Fundamentals

Fundamentals of Government Information: Mining, Finding, Evaluating, and Using Government Resources gives a basic overview of history of government information, legislative and regulatory process, judicial and other law, presidential documents, and the executive branch agencies. Government information is addressed in several areas—executive, statistical, education, environment and energy, business and economic, consumer, scientific and technical, and health. In the “Health Information” chapter, an overview and history of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Library of Medicine, Index Medicus, MEDLINE, PubMed, and MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) are given. Finding older medical journal articles not in PubMed is clearly outlined. Sources of health information are discussed, such as vital statistics, survey data, and research/​clinical trials. An introduction to federal, state, local, tribal, and international health resources and organizations are broached. The book also describes distribution methods for scientific and technical information and subject search strategies to locate them.

Forte and Mallory present a comprehensive overview of government information in their chapter “Government Information and Statistics Sources” found in the fourth edition of Reference and Information Services: An Introduction.15 They address the transition of government information from print to electronic resources. Major government reference sources are covered (e.g., guides, fact sheets, directories, catalogs, bibliographies, catalogs, indexes, legislative, and statistical information) along with related search strategies. Though health information per se is not covered, health information may be found in these categories, such as legislative and statistical information reference sources, and related search strategies may be most helpful when using these resources to locate it, nonetheless.

In addition to identifying basic federal government information sources, the book United States Government Information: Policies and Sources examines government information policies, all within a historical framework. Coverage includes information about all three branches of government, agencies, information-finding aids, privacy protection, the Freedom of Information Act, government publishing, depository library programs, paperwork reduction, and electronic government. Although very limited coverage of health-related topics is provided (e.g., Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act [HIPAA] and health statistics), this important work is extremely valuable in understanding how the federal government is organized and works, past and present. It was created as a tool to help make the vast wealth of government information (which has publications on most every topic), more accessible and thus more easily utilized by the public and professionals. A CD-ROM is also included that contains reprints of key documents cited in print volume, digital copies of select historical out-of-print documents, tutorials, examples of concepts from print volume, exercises, and questions and answers about government information.

Resources to Find Government Publications

The Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP), online counterpart of the Monthly Catalog of the United States Government Publications, is “the finding tool for electronic and print publications from the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the U.S. government.”16 The CGP contains more than 500,000 records dating from July 1976. Updates are provided daily. For records from original issue in 1895 to 1976, the print version titled Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications must be used.17 Links to online versions of documents are provided when available. As of 2004, the Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications was discontinued and the CGP became the only version.18 National bibliographic standards such as Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd ed.; Library of Congress Rule Interpretations; MARC21; CONSER; OCLC’s second edition of Bibliographic Formats and Standards; and GPO Cataloging Guidelines are used to create CGP records. Catalog records include title, publisher information, SuDoc number, item number, variation in title, edition, description, abstract, system details, subject, subject—LC, holdings, OCLC number, and system number.19

The CGP can be searched using a Basic or Advanced Search. The Basic Search allows keyword, title, author, and subject searches. The Advanced Search provides three concept boxes, each of which can be limited to one of many record fields. This search can be limited by year(s), format, and language. It can also be limited by one or more of the following subset catalogs: Congressional Serial Set Catalog (July 1976– ), Congressional Publications Catalog (July 1976– ), GPO Historic Shelflist (1870s–1992), Internet Publications Catalog (July 1976– ), Periodicals catalog (1976– ), and Serials catalog (1976– ). Links to electronic versions are provided when available. Also a “Locate in a Library” feature can be used to find a Federal depository library with a hard copy of the title or to locate assistance.20

A principal component of the CGP is the National Bibliography of U.S. Government Publications.21 Due to a number of access concerns, including multiple records for the same resource and inability to limit just to federal government information, and in keeping with its statutory requirements, the GPO made the decision to create the National Bibliography of U.S. Government Publications, a comprehensive catalog of unclassified U.S. government information.22 The National Bibliography of U.S. Government Publications is comprised of publications from the CGP, and includes “any information product, regardless of form or format, that any U.S. Government agency discloses, publishes, disseminates, or makes available to the public, as well as information produced for administrative or operational purposes that is of public interest or educational value.”23 Between 1976 and 2004, more than 337,000 records for federal publications were contributed to OCLC WorldCat, “resulting in a de facto national bibliography for U.S. Government publications.”24

The Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) Desktop “serves as a centralized resource for the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), which disseminates U.S. Government information to the American public through libraries across the nation.”25 This site provides information for FDLP libraries to support their role in providing this access.

MetaLib is a federated library portal that can search information in a variety of federal government electronic resources, such as catalogs, reference and other databases, digital repositories, and Web gateways simultaneously for articles, reports, citations, and other information. Basic, Advanced, and Expert searches provide flexible search keyword, field, topic, and resource selection or browsing search capabilities.26

The U.S. Government Bookstore is the “official online bookstore for U.S. Government publications for purchase from the U.S. Government Printing Office.”27 Items from the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) that are not available electronically, or when a personal copy is desired, can be purchased here. The Bookstore can be searched by subject, keyword, stock number, or title; or browsed by subject. Health-related subjects include aging, cancer, diseases, health care, mental health, nutrition, physical fitness, physically challenged, safety, and substance abuse. Orders can be done online, or by fax, phone, or mail.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO; formerly General Accounting Office) is an independent, nonpartisan agency that evaluates audits, investigates, and provides legal decisions and opinions regarding government policies and procedures, operations, and other activities for Congress to use in their oversight role. This includes research about health topics and issues. Reports and congressional testimony of these endeavors can be searched by keyword or report number in a search box on the upper right corner of any GAO webpage. Once this is done, Advanced Searches becomes an option. There are two search boxes with the title, keyword, summary, full text, and report number field options as well as limits for date(s). Reports and testimonies can be browsed by date, topic (e.g., Health), collection, or agency (e.g., Department of Health and Human Services). Results can be narrowed by source, date, topic, and agency.

GAO Reports from 1995 to present can also be searched using the Government Printing Office’s Federal Digital System (FDsys) (http://www.gpo.gov/​fdsys/). The Advanced Search allows limits to Available Collections, e.g., GAO Reports and Comptroller General Decisions, by Publication Date and keyword. Search can be narrowed by Date, Government Author, Organization, Person, Location, Keyword, and Document Category. GAO Reports and Comptroller General Decisions can also be browsed by collection using FDsys Browse Government Publications option.

THOMAS is a free Library of Congress service that provides federal legislative information to the public, such as bills/​resolutions, congressional activity, access to the Congressional Record, schedules/​calendars, and committee information. Bill texts and Public Laws can be searched by Congress (101–present) or browsed by sponsor. Appropriations Bills can be browsed by year (1998–present). Links to information about current legislative activities are accessible from the homepage. On September 19, 2012, the Library of Congress launched a new Web resource, Congress.gov (currently in Beta version), which will replace THOMAS.gov by end of 2014. The beta version of Congress.gov contains legislation from 2001-present, and member profiles from 1973–present with some from 1947–1972.28 The Congressional Record, Congressional Record Index, congressional calendars, committee reports (1995–present), nominations (1987–present), treaties (1975–present), and Senate Executive communications (1979–present) will be incorporated from THOMAS soon.29^–30 Congress.gov includes enhanced searching features such as ability to search all available content at once and refine results by Congress, legislative source, chamber of Congress, legislation type, subject of legislation, status of current legislation, committee, sponsor, cosponsor, and political party. Search results include bill and congressional number, latest bill title, sponsor, cosponsors, status of legislation, and latest action. Complete record includes bill summary, text, major actions, titles, amendments, cosponsors, committees, and related bills in tabular format. Support resources are available about the legislative process and current legislative activities, and Congressional profiles with biography, home state, district, party, time served, member website, and contact information. The clean design and search platform present access to a massive amount of information without overwhelming the user, providing much to look forward to here.

Another important source of government information is the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), which is “the Federal Government’s primary centralized resource for gathering, cataloging, producing, providing and preserving published information in all its forms.”31 Official information from all three branches of government, such as the Congressional Record, House Journal, U.S. Code, Congressional Serial Set, and Code of Federal Regulations, is distributed by the GPO, which provides electronic access to a growing number of these information products via its online Federal Digital System (FDsys) service.32^–33 Official government records can be an important source of health-care information. For instance, access to information about legislation, such as the Medicare prescription drug benefit program or the inclusion of women in biomedical research and drug analysis by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, can be important for both health-care consumers and professionals. In partnership with the GPO, the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), a program of the GPO Office of Information Dissemination (SuDocs), provides free access to our government’s information through disseminating “information products from all three branches of the government to over 1,250 [federal depository] libraries nationwide.”34

Dissemination of Government Health Research

Clinical Trials

A clinical trial is “a research study in human volunteers to answer specific health questions . . . conducted according to a plan called a protocol” that defines who, what, and how the study is being done and then evaluated for outcomes.35 Information about clinical trials can be used to learn about current research endeavors on particular health conditions, and can be a cutting-edge resource for locating research information. Literature reviews on publications from researchers with clinical trials of interest may identify useful, current information related to condition that has already been published. Caution: Although outcomes of studies may be interesting, only when these outcomes are published in a peer-reviewed medical journal should they be considered, and then with due diligence. Patients with some conditions may be interested in volunteering for consideration as participants in specific clinical trials. One place to investigate for information about clinical trials is ClinicalTrials.gov.

ClinicalTrials.gov is a registry of government and non-government-supported clinical trials conducted in the United States plus more than 170 countries that can be searched by medical condition or other variables. Guidelines for registration of clinical trials by investigator are provided. Each trial record includes information about participant flow, baseline characteristics, outcome measures and statistical analyses, adverse events, administrative information, and results, when available. There are guidelines about who can participate with contact information for the clinical trial. Information is available about what clinical trials are, benefits and risks, informed consent, etc., to assist those who are considering participation in a clinical trial to become knowledgeable about them.

Guidelines

Guidelines and standards for health care are important mechanisms to disseminate and promote incorporation of best practices based on evidence-based research. The standard definition for “clinical practice guidelines” comes from the Institute of Medicine: “Clinical practice guidelines are systematically developed statements to assist practitioner and patient decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances.”36 Accepted clinical practice guidelines are by experts in the focus area and sponsored by recognized entities, such as medical specialty associations, professional societies, and health-care government agencies. The process to create them is complex and includes a thorough, comprehensive literature review for prevailing and latest research evidence. This information is used to create recommendations with potential benefits, risks, contraindications, and caveats, which are then peer-reviewed and published and/​or disseminated in appropriate venues.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s (HHS) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), in collaboration with the American Medical Association (AMA) and the America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), created the National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC) to provide “an accessible mechanism for obtaining objective, detailed information on clinical practice guidelines and to further their dissemination, implementation, and use.”37

Content is identified by audits of established guideline makers and literature searches in major biomedical databases as well as submissions that satisfy NGC Inclusion Criteria. The NCG content can be searched, compared, or browsed. Expert commentaries, guideline syntheses, annotated bibliographies, and other resources are available including a free My NGC account. The My NCG account, when created, has a number of features, such as a display of the three most recent searched and the five most recent viewed summaries and ability to save “favorite” guidelines and organizations. Free topic, favorite information, and expert commentary alerts can be subscribed to.

Open Access

A vast amount of government-funded research has been done with results traditionally disseminated in scholarly journal publications. But due in large part to the “serials crisis” of the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s where serial price inflation rose considerably higher than the Consumer Price Index, new models for delivery of scholarly output were explored by academic and research libraries that would contain costs.38 One such model was the “Open Access (OA)” model where the scholarly work “is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.”39

In 2008 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) created the NIH Public Access Policy that boosted support for the Open Access model. This policy was implemented to advance science and improve public health through public access to published NIH-funded research results.40 The NIH policy requires that electronic versions of final, peer-reviewed manuscripts emanating from NIH-funded research and accepted for publication must be submitted to the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) PubMed Central (PMC), the NLM’s free archive repository of biomedical and life sciences journal literature, and available for public access within twelve months of publication.41 Currently PMC archives more than 2.4 million articles from more than 3,000 journal titles. Some journal titles are archived completely back to their first issues; some journal titles are archived completely from a later point on; and some journals provide only articles that were funded by NIH. More information about the NIH Public Access and the NIH Manuscript Submission System can be found at the PMC website.

Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) was originally introduced in the Senate in 2006 but not in the House of Representatives. In 2009 the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) was introduced as S. 1373 in the Senate and in 2010 it was introduced as HR 5037 in the House. In 2012 it was again introduced into the U.S. Senate as Senate 2096 and H.R. 4004 into the House of Representatives.42^–46 This legislation would essentially expand the NIH policy to all federal agencies with a budget of more than 100 million dollars and have a shorter time frame for open access to related published works. It would make the final manuscripts accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals emanating in whole or part from federally funded research from any federal agency freely available online in a stable repository maintained by the federal agency within six months of publication.

In December 2011, opposing factions arose with the introduction of the Research Works Act (RWA) (H.B. 3699) “to ensure the continued publication and integrity of peer-reviewed research works by the private sector,” including overturning the NIH Public Access Policy.47 The Research Works Act, supported by the Association of American Publishers and the Copyright Alliance, would prohibit open-access mandates for federally funded research, including the NIH’s Public Access Policy. Numerous scholarly societies and academic entities, including the Medical Library Association, opposed this Act.48 Considerable debate and lobbying ensued, including a boycott by thousands of scholars who stated they would not edit, review, and/​or contribute to journal publications that do not support this policy, effectively killing this legislation.49 Those who opposed still oppose, and other renditions of the RWA to foil FRPAA enactment are likely.

Additionally, the open-access movement has expanded to data created by federally funded research. The HHS believes that government data creates important benefits for its citizens and that sharing this data is fundamental to advancing our citizens’ health.50 Since January 18, 2011, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has required a “data management plan” with all funding proposals. The NSF policy mandates that investigators

Proposals must include how the investigator(s) will carry out this policy. The data management plan must include a description of the types of data and other research output, the standards and metadata to be used, policies for access and sharing with privacy and other protections as well as for reuse, and archival and access preservation plans.52 There are two guides to policy implementation for biomedical areas—the Biological Sciences Dictorate (BIO) and the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Dictorate (SBE).53^–54 Specific guidance will likely evolve over time as standards and metadata are created and refined. There may also be political lobbying from various entities about federal government data mandates as conflicts of interest are identified by these entities.

Technical Reports

The federal government sponsors a vast amount of research and development (R&D) through universities, corporations, and other organizations. Outlays for the conduct of nondefense research and development total more than 60 billion dollars, including more than 30 billion expended by the National Institutes of Health; over 500 million dollars of the total nondefense outlays goes to grants.55 Reports that include technical details are generated to document progress and results of this research, as well as to account for these expenditures of public monies. The National Technical Information Service (NTIS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, manages a fee-based clearinghouse of approximately 3 million scientific and technical information reports in over 350 subject areas.56^–57 In recognition of the public’s need, and right, to have access to unclassified information that it financially supports, the federal government through the U.S. Code (15 USC 3704b-2: Transfer of federal scientific and technical information) mandates that executive departments and agencies provide R&D results to the National Technical Information Service for dissemination to the public.58^–59 Although this code mandates that information about research supported by executive branch agencies is to be provided to NTIS, a GAO report found that this is not always done.60 At the time of the report GAO found 19 percent of NTIS technical reports could also be acquired from the issuing agency, Google.com, FirstGov.gov, or the GPO, with 37 percent of these available for free from the organization’s website.61 This likelihood increased exponentially since 1988, particularly for availability of technical reports from their issuing organization.62 These actualities have raised questions about whether a central, self-sustaining repository is the suitable way for dissemination of technical reports to the public, which has implications for the relevance and future of NTIS.63 The National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) concluded in a study that the NTIS should be retained for “fail-safe” permanent access and proper bibliographic control of research results.64 They additionally recommended that rather than be self-sustaining, the NTIS should be funded by Congress to acquire, maintain, and provide free access to the full text of these reports.65^–66

Technical reports may be comprehensive in coverage about the research or brief summaries; they may cover preliminary, progress, or final results. Locating technical reports is still not a “one-stop shopping” venture. Publications may not be easily recognized as technical reports; contract/​grant number and accession/​report series codes can be bibliographic indicators. As part of a comprehensive search strategy, it is important to “consider the source,” and it may well take a number of search tools to do a complete search. There are several to consider.

The National Technical Information Services (NTIS) is “the largest central resource for government-funded scientific, technical, engineering, and business information available today” and the clearinghouse for related technical reports, so this is the first place to begin searches.67 Government agencies may also provide access to technical reports for research that they have sponsored, sometimes without charge. Other stops along the journey include portals and databases such as the Information Bridge: DOE Scientific and Technical Information, NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS), National Service Center for Environmental Publications (NSCEP), PubMed, Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORT) Expenditures and Results (RePORTER) System, and Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORT) Report Catalog. Although it is not a major source of technical reports, the Government Printing Office (GPO) may have selected technical reports from federal agencies and thus be indexed in the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) and available through the federal depository libraries system.68

Depository librarians are important resources to assist in locating technical reports using their expertise and knowledge about government resources as well as their access to NTIS Database subscription via commercial vendors. Current advocacy for public access to results from publicly financed research, such as the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research (Public Access Policy), along with technological advancements, holds great anticipation for increasingly improved access to technical reports and other government information.69

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