Finding Government Information during the 2025 Administration Transition

Regular Citation Guidance

Citing Government Documents:  This research guide provides resources for citing federal, international and United Nations government documents.

Recommendations for Citations of Missing Information

Each citation style has its own best practices for citing online resources that are no longer available.  For individual questions, the best route may be to reach out to your editor (for researchers) or professor (for students) for guidance.  Here, we will compile a list of recommendations that may also be useful to consider:

For websites or documents that have already disappeared:

• Check the Wayback Machine to see if you can find an archived copy of the web page to cite instead.
• Check our list of other archives and rescue efforts to see if it has been archived elsewhere.

For websites or documents you want to preserve in case they disappear:

• Save the webpage you are citing to the Wayback Machine:  use their browser extension (for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or MS Edge)  to make this part of your regular research workflow!
• Download a copy of the webpage or resource to your own computer.  Government information and websites are in the public domain, so there are no copyright concerns.  Therefore, you could upload your copy to a public personal website or citation library if needed.