Legal Research

Comparision of Legislative Resources on GPO Access v. Other Government and Commercial Sites

GPO Access has recently conducted a comparison of legislative resources available in its collection with those in other government websites and commercial databases such as Westlaw, LexisNexis and HeinOnline.

The report concludes that "one of the primary advantages of GPO Access is the number of online legislative resources it provides to the public." The comparison reveals that it offers almost twice as many sources as any other government website or commercial database.

However, "in terms of scope of the legislative resources it provides, GPO Access is behind the other Web sites evaluated. Many of the other sites either contain historical content on their service or link to external sites with historical information, whereas GPO Access possesses current information that generally begins in the mid-1990s."

The two charts which accompany the report may be useful finding tools for locating legislative sources. The charts list several important sources along with the dates of coverage for various websites and databases.

• Comparison of Legislative Resources: Scope of GPO Access and Government Web Sites
• Comparison of Legislative Resources: Scope of GPO Access and Non-Government Web Sites

This is the fifth such report that GPO has conducted. Earlier reports are available on the Federal Bulletin Board at GPO Access.

Source: Virtual Library Cat's Eye View

Full post as published by WisBlawg - From the UW Law Library on December 17, 2008 (boomark / email).