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U.S. Federal Documents

Northwestern University Libraries have been a U.S. Federal Depository Library since 1876. Our collection includes materials in paper, microfiche, CD-ROM, DVD formats and online formats. This guide is based on a similar guide by Kelly Smith at UCSD.

AEC Depository Materials

Northwestern University Libraries has a large collection of reports from the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) published 1940s-1970s and distributed to libraries in micro-card format.  The Guide to AEC Reports for the Depository Libraries (1959) provides information about what was included and excluded in depository program, along with other information.  We are working on compiling records for these publications to make them accessible.  While that work continues, the resources linked below may help you to identify specific publications.  With that information contact us to determine whether the publication of interest to you is available.

More about AEC Publications

The University of Minnesota Libraries provides the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Publications User Guide which is helpful background on what was distributed and how to identify material on topics of interest.

Penn State University has an ongoing project to catalog their holdings of AEC depository materials. This catalog search will retrieve AEC items published 1920-1970s that have been cataloged (approximately 20,000 items as of October 2022).

Search for AEC reports

The following databases are successors to Nuclear Science Abstracts and Abstracts of Declassified Documents, which are named in the Guide (1959) as the primary finding aids for these materials.  Search the databases linked below to identify AEC reports (along with much other material!!).

OSTI.gov
Searchable databases provided by the Dept of Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI)  can be used to identify most of the Atomic Energy Commission publications, as part of their mission to "... collect, preserve, and disseminate both unclassified and classified scientific and technical information (STI) emanating from DOE-funded research and development (R&D) activities at DOE national laboratories and facilities and at universities and other institutions nationwide."

NTRL
The National Technical Reports Library (NTRL) database includes technical reports published or contracted by US federal agencies.