As one of the largest publishers in the world, the US government publishes much of its resources for free online. Materials that aren't available online can be found in federal repositories. The Reese Library's Government Information Department is a federal repository located on the 2nd floor. Here you can find thousands of documents and a friendly staff to help locate government publications.
Government information in the Reese Library is located on the 2nd floor. Unlike the general collection, it is organized by s unique system called SuDoc. A SuDoc number looks like this: GP 3.22/2:245/988. For help locating documents with SuDocs, ask for help from the Government Information Department.
Government information, both print and digital, can be found in the library's catalog, GIL-Find. You can use the side panel to limit to "Reese Government Documents Paper" or "Reese Government Documents Digital."
Much of the US government's information can be found online, here are popular databases produced for public use:
GovInfo : official database for digital government information
Congress.gov : official source for federal legislative information (replacing THOMAS)
Census.gov : source for data related to a wide-range of information about economics, demographics, education, etc.
Data.gov: official source for governmental statistics and data
Bureau of Economic Analysis : source for US economic information
HealthFinder : source for government-related health information from the DHHS
NCES : source for education statistics from the DOE.
NCJRS : source for information related to criminal justice
Occupational Outlook Handbook: premier source for labor-related statistics
CIA World Factbook : comprehensive source on countries around the world
The following resources are interesting or fun websites created by government agencies or by third-parties using government data..
FBI Vault : database of released FBI papers on many infamous cases
The National Archives: Flickr account of the National Archives; contains thousands of images from the National Archives documenting American life, for example the 70s gas shortage shown above
Prints & Photographs Online Catalog : the Library of Congress's online colelction of photos and prints, including those produced by the US government
Photogammer : visualization map from Yale that highlights areas of government photography; can sort by photographer and year
National Park Service History Library : includes publications and ephemera from national parks
FedFlix : from Archive.org, a collection of federal films, from military training videos to PSAs.
DataUSA: comprehensive data visualization tool
The Racial Dot Map : data visualization tool that plots a colored dot for every person in the US