Professor & Reference and Instruction Librarian Coordinator
St. Mary's University
One Camino Santa Maria
San Antonio, TX 78228-8608
USA
dduesterhoeft@stmarytx.edu
Find State Government Information
This guide offers basic information about each state (taken from the World Almanac and the Census Bureau) and links to pages developed by libraries and other organizations with detailed access to state government web sites. Some specialized types of pages (e.g., "Legal Resources") are so indicated. State online encyclopedias or handbooks are included, where available.
Note that some of the resources listed on these libraries' pages might not be freely available to users outside of the institutions.
Click on a state in the map below or refer to the appropriate alphabetical tab.
Thanks to the nice folks at GPO for sharing the coding for the clickable map above. The maps in the individual state boxes were adapted from those at 50states.com. (This site also includes a wealth of factual information for each state.)
Find information on all 50 states
When you need information on all the states in a single listing:
- AAAState of Play: Play and Learn the 50 Statesportal to kids' pages on the various state websites
- CountyOffice.orglinks to contact information by state and subject matter
- Government Resources: Stateslinks to state information from the University of Louisville
- My Congressional Districtget maps, demographic, and economic information by Congressional District
- State Blue BooksA listing of state informational resources often known as "State Blue Books." This guide is provided by the American Library Association's Government Documents Round Table (GODORT).
- State Contactscomprehensive listing of state departments of education, as well as other state offices related to education such as special education, PTA's, adult education, etc.
- State Tax Forms & Filing Optionslinks provided by the Federation of Tax Administrators
Legal Information:
- Court Rules, Forms, & Docketsan exhaustive listing of this useful information for each state; dockets are official calendars of court proceedings
- Guide to Law Online: US State & Territoriespart of the Law Library of Congress' guide to legal information
- State Constitutionslinks to constitutions and information about amendments
- State Legislative History Research Guideslinks collected by the librarians at the Indiana Univ. School of Law Library
Finding Documents: 
- BRB's Free Public Recordslinks to sites for obtaining public records from all the states
- Federal Depository Library Directory (FDLP)locate Depositories around the country and find contact information
- Open Government Guidecompendium of information on every state's open records and open meetings laws.
- State Agency Databases ProjectState databases including state agencies. Maintained by members of GODORT of the American Library Association (ALA).
- State Public Document Depository Libraries: Laws & Law Websiteslinks to state laws referring to deposit and distribution of state documents
State Government Statistics
- Individual state descriptionsdetailed descriptions of the different governmental entities in each state, and how they are organized
The Census Bureau's Census of Governments surveys report on the finances and employment of federal, state, and local governments, including data on pensions and taxes.
Here are some major links to their data on states:
- Annual Survey of Public Pensions (ASPP)"Provides revenues, expenditures, financial assets, and membership information for the defined benefit public pension systems."
- Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances"Provides statistics on revenue, expenditure, debt, and assets for the 50 states and D.C."
- Annual Survey of State Government Tax Collections (STC)Provides a summary of taxes collected by state for 5 broad tax categories and up to 25 tax subcategories.
The 50 State Capitol Buildings of the United States illustrated to Scale
Credits
This guide was originally developed by retired librarian Kathy Amen.