The University of British Columbia

What this is:

GovInfo is a database of government online information resources, from different regions and levels, categorized in various ways, and searchable, browsable or listable in a variety of fashions. This page provides a description of the options and functions available for finding and displaying these resources. (Each of these functions is entirely independent of the others, so they can't be used in conjunction with one another.)

The first column -- searching:

Two search input boxes appear, that differ in the way they operate.

Find word(s) in title: This will find the exact word or phrase (or fragment of a word) in the title of the resource. (The "title" is the title of the web site or document appearing as the blue link to the resource in lists or at the top of the resource information page.)
This is a quick and simple search.
Examples:
• To find resource pages with "development" in the title -- enter development
• To find resource pages with any of the terms "develop", "development", "developing", "developed", etc. in the title -- enter develop


Keyword search: This searches not just the title but also the description(s) of the resource. (Most resources have at least a brief description that appears immediately beneath them in lists. Many also have a fuller desription that appears on the "About" page for the resource, as the "Description and Notes" field.)
This search is slower than the first one, but it can accept multiple search terms, and can combine them in different ways.
Examples:
• To find resource pages having both (or all) of the terms you enter -- use and
  e.g., trade and statistics
• To find resource pages having either (or any) of the terms you enter -- use or
  e.g., trade or commerce
• To find resource pages having the exact phrase you entered -- just enter the phrase
  e.g., free trade
• To find resource pages with different variants of a word -- use the truncation symbol, *
  e.g., canad* (finds "canada" or "canadian" or "canadians")
  
• These operations can be combined in various ways as well.
  e.g., free trade and canad* (finds pages having the phrase "free trade" and any of the word variants "canada" or "canadian" or "canadians" or "canadien")
  e.g., europe* and (trade or commerce) (finds pages having "europe" or "european" and either the terms "trade" or "commerce")

The second column -- browsing:

These drop-down menus let you put together browse lists of government information resources by selected category or categories.

Examples:
• To see a list of all resources pertaining to the region Latin America, pull down the *All Regions menu, select Latin America, and click on the Select button.
• To see a list of resources having a content type Treaties, pull down the *All Content Types menu, select Treaties, and click on the Select button.
• These can be combined in various ways, by choosing one category from more than one of the category types.
  E.g., To list all resources with a government level international and a format type gateway, simply select International from the *All Government Levels menu and Gateway from the *All Format Types menu, and then click on the Select button.

Note that multiple selections operate as multiple filters in a sense, so that only resources matching all the categories selected are displayed.

Also note that it's possible to categorize the selected list by any of the category types not selected, using the "Categorize by" buttons at the bottom of the listed resources.
For example:
• Display a list of resources in the region British Columbia having a format type Document -- then categorize them by Topic Area by clicking on that button at the bottom of the list.

The third column -- listing:

These links display different kinds of pre-defined resource lists.

Display KEY resources: "Key resources" actually appears as a Content Type, and is meant to designate a small number of government resources that are of exceptional importance or significance, or are commonly or widely used. This list is categorized by broad topic area, so many of the resources will appear repeatedly.

Display NEW resources: This lists government resources that have been added to the database in the past seven days.

Display ALL resources: This lists all the resources in the database alphabetically by title. (There's actually a separate list for each letter of the alphabet starting with A or non-alpha characters).