In 1945, the California Legislature passed the Library Distribution Act (Government Code 14900 – 14912), which established the depository library program to make California state documents available to the citizens of the state. The California State Library is responsible for carrying out the provisions of the Act by developing and maintaining standards for depository libraries, granting depository status to libraries, and administering the depository program. CSU Stanislaus is a selective depository member of the California State Documents Collection and Depository Library Program. The California Government Documents Collection is located in the mobile shelving area on the first floor of the University Library. California government documents are shelved by CalDoc Classification, which is inspired by the federal SuDoc scheme.
The departments, agencies, and offices of the State of California collect, produce, publish, and distribute a variety of reports, datasets, and cultural, statistical, demographic, economic, and geospatial information. They also create and publish laws, regulations, executive orders, and other records of executive, legislative, and judicial decisions. Below is a list of general resources for finding and accessing State of California information and publications. This list of resources provides a useful starting point for finding California government resources. For more specific information, or for resources available by the specific branch of government, please use the navigation on the left-side of the page.
As a catalog of the California State Archives, Minerva provides access to summary descriptions their resources. The California State Archives is responsible for the management and preservation of state government records. Within the more than 300 million items in its collections are documents from the state's first constitutional convention in 1849, land grant records of the Spanish and Mexican eras, campaign contribution statements, State Supreme Court and Courts of Appeal case files, legislative committee files, original laws, papers of many of the state's leading politicians, and large collections of photographs, maps, drawings, and audio/visual materials.
Research on a wide variety of public policy challenges facing California. Articles and briefs are freely available on their website. For off-campus access to the California statistics, use the library's RAND State Statistics database link.
