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GPO's Catalog of Government Publications


If you have identified a Federal publication that is not in the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) and was not distributed through the FDLP, you may have found a "fugitive" document, sometimes known as a "lostdoc" or GPO's preferred term "document discovery". Document discovery items can be reported to GPO through the askGPO system.

Please select the category "Federal Depository Libraries" and the subcategory "Fugitive publications/lost doc" to direct your request to the GPO acquisition staff for processing. In the past, GPO's direction was to use the "lost docs" reporting form available on the FDLP desktop. However, acquisition staff have found that askGPO requests for document discovery are easier to track. Therefore, askGPO is now the preferred method.

When submitting a document discovery item, please include as much of the following information to better process your request:
Title / Government publisher / Publishing date / URL where the publication is located / GPO-assigned SuDoc number, and/or Item number (if known) / OCLC number (if known for an existing bibliographic record of the resource)

  • Additional details might include: corrected copy, or single issue of a serial title, or if the title is in Braille.
  • If document discovery is for a non-English language publication, please include the language of the publication (e.g. Spanish, Korean, Chinese, etc.).
  • Please note, the askGPO system provides the ability to submit a surrogate as an attachment. It is GPO policy to have either an actual copy of the document or a surrogate in hand in order to process or create a cataloging record. A surrogate is defined as a substitute for a document (an issue of a serial or monograph, etc.) from which a cataloging record can be created. The surrogate consists of a copy of the title page or the title page substitute and any other pages providing additional information on which cataloging is based (e.g., t.p. verso, colophon, pages with a running title, spines or covers with differing titles from the title page).
  • Generally, GPO staff will bring in the electronic copy, if available. However, if the publication is only available in another format (CD, paper, microfiche) that information should also be provided.
  • If publications are intended to be issued as part of a NOAA Tech. series, please wait until the series title and number has been assigned before submitting/cataloging to ensure proper SuDoc assignment.

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Last Update: April 7, 2016