Monday, August 31, 2009

Broken links for U.S. government documents



The links to many U.S. government resources are currently not working.

These links, also called "PURLs" or "persistent URLs" are maintained by the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO). GPO's PURL server had a significant hardware failure on August 24, 2009. The hardware has been fixed, but the process to restore online document service is on-going.

No data has been lost, and if you have a non-PURL internet address for the documents, you will still be able to reach them. Even documents hosted by GPO itself should still be available.

If you do encounter a broken PURL, do an internet search on the title, using Google or another search engine. I'm also happy to help look for a document.

Here's what a GPO PURL looks like: http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS5149

And here's a MadCat library catalog record with a PURL link.

Alternate access...

...to selected government documents in the plant & insect sciences not available in print at the UW-Madison: