Government Publications

The Government Publications Section forms part of the Maps, Data & Government Information Centre, 4th floor, Bata Libary. It provides access and assistance with the publications, documents and other resources issued by governments or their agencies.

The collection is a rich source of primary materials, covering topics diverse enough to be of interest to every discipline. You can find information about the inner workings of government, locate a bill and all its amendments, access government-funded research, examine technical reports, track your MP's voting record, read through transcripts of legislative debates, compare and contrast census records of population and agriculture over time, read Supreme and Federal Court case reports and much more.

Experienced staff are available to assist you in meeting your research needs and to assist course instructors with specially developed labs and instructional sessions to promote the use of these resources.

The Collection

The Government Publications Section specializes in Canadian federal, Ontario provincial, and local municipal publications.

We support researchers requiring current and historical publications. Government publications are now largely released in electronic format. The library holds a selected print collection of (largely historical) Canadian government publications obtained through depository agreements with the Publishing and Depository Services Program (DSP) of the Government of Canada and with Service Ontario's Publications Program. We also collect selected publications from other provinces of Canada, as well as British and American publications.

Our collection includes Parliamentary papers (such as Debates, Sessional Papers, Minutes and Proceedings of Government, Journals) legal materials (bills, statutes, treaties and case law), financial documents (such as budget papers, Auditor General Reports, Estimates, and Public Accounts), reports and studies of royal commissions and task forces, intergovernmental documents (such as First Ministers Conference Reports, or reports from Canada-US committees), data and statistics (such as Census of Canada, and other Statistics Canada publications), and serials and monographs published under the authority of government departments and agencies. Documents published by international agencies and by foreign countries other than the US and Great Britain are located in Trent Library's main stacks or are part of Trent Library's e-resources.  

The collection includes over 200,000 publications in a variety of formats (for example, paper, microfilm, video, computer disc). We also have access to several thousand e-format publications through a variety of e-subscriptions, data providers and government programs.

Our collection is catalogued and available through OMNI, Trent Library's online academic search tool. 

Please contact us for assistance with finding government publications. 

We look forward to assisting you! 

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