How to Cite a Government Document

Published government documents can be tricky to cite. Often they are serial publications, and often the authorship is murky. There may be a person listed as author, or if there is not, then you can consider the agency issuing the document to be the author. The Chicago manual tells us what elements to include in a citation, gives templates for certain types of common documents, and then charges us to use good sense in citing others. Here, then, are the elements in a note citing a gov doc.

• Country, state, or political unit

• Agency or entity that issued the document

• Title of the document

• Individual author, if there is one

• Serial designation or other information essential to locating the document

• Date

• Pages

As you may infer from the remarks above, you may have to examine the document, determine its provenance, and then devise a form of citation that comprises the necessary elements and meets the criterion of common-sense clarity. Some examples may help.

5. Merritt Finley Miller, The Evolution of Reaping Machines, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Experiment Stations Bulletin 103 (1902), 7.

6. N. C. Donaldson, Grains for the Montana Dry Lands, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farmers' Bulletin 749 (1916), 8-9.

7. E. L. Rhodes, Kansas Handbook of Harvest Labor, Kansas Agricultural College, Extension Circular 23 (1921), 1.

8. Northwest Territories Department of Agriculture, Annual Report, 1901, 33-34.

As with other types of sources, gov docs can be cited with a short form in subsequent citations.

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