Friday, August 6, 2010

Redistributing Federal Documents

Question: There is a federal bill that I’m interested in, and I want to share it with my colleagues through email and a listserv. Where can I find a copy that I can send around without worrying about copyright issues?

Answer: We’ve already talked a bit about the wonderfulness of the Library of Congress’s THOMAS, where you can search for individual bills by bill number, text, or sponsor. But did you know they offered full-text of each available bill?

Once you've found the bill you need, THOMAS will send you on to the Government Printing Office, where you can download a pdf of the bill. Since these are published by the federal government, they fall under public domain and you can distribute them to your heart’s desire.