Collection Development for Government Documents at the Boston College Libraries

Electronic format is preferred for this collection. The majority of the collection is electronic and, when possible, tangible material is converted to digital. 

• Electronic reports, articles, legislative documents, websites, ebooks, and digitized historic print materials are regularly added to the collection
• Bibliographic and full text, subscription databases are acquired to offer indexing and full text content to users that is unavailable through government resources or HathiTrust.
• Data mapping and visualization resources based on government data, such as the U.S. Census, are also acquired. 

The majority of collection material is in English.  Material produced by government agencies for dissemination to the general public is often published in Spanish and sometimes other languages and is included in the online collection.

New and recent digital publications are added to the collection on an ongoing basis.  Digital collections of historic material are added as needed.