Adobe Acrobat’s PDF produces a copy of the item exactly as it appears in the printed source, complete with graphics and pagination. Check with your journal editors to make sure that the PDF version is acceptable. This chart is not comprehensive, it is meant to be a quick refernce for finding common materials in PDF format. For more information, see the appropriate page in this research guide and the short guides in your law review materials.
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Legal and Non-Legal Source Materials |
PDF Versions Available Electronically |
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Cases |
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United States Reports |
HeinOnline (United States Reports, 1754-) |
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West Reporter Images (Regional Reporters; Federal Reporter; Federal Supplement) |
Westlaw (West’s federal and regional reporters from 1920-forward, PDFs not comprehensive, but check first.) |
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Administrative Materials |
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Code of Federal Regulations |
HeinOnline (1938-); GovInfo.gov (1996-) |
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Federal Register |
HeinOnline (1936-); GovInfo.gov (1936-) |
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Agency Decisions |
HeinOnline, selected decisions; some agency webites. |
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Legislative Materials |
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Bills (Federal) |
GovInfo.gov, official versions, 103rd Congress (1993-1994) to present |
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Public Laws |
GovInfo.gov, official versions, 104th Congress (1995-1996) to present |
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Statutes at Large |
HeinOnline (1789-) |
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United States Code |
HeinOnline (1925-2012); earlier statutes also available |
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Legislative History Materials |
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Committee Reports |
GovInfo.gov (1995-present) ; U.S. Serial Set, available on ProQuest Congressional (1789-1969, post 1970 material added on continual basis) |
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Congressional Record |
HeinOnline , Congressional Record Permanent Edition (1873-2009), the Daily Edition (1980-present) |
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Committee Hearings |
GovInfo.gov (selected, 1958-present); ProQuest Congressional (selected, 1824-present) |
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Committee Prints |
GovInfo.gov (some PDF available, 94th Congress-present); ProQuest Congressional (1995-present) |
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Proquest Legislative Insight (1st Congress-present). Select the Marquette Law Library account from menu. |
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Other Sources |
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Journal Articles |
HeinOnline (PDFs of law reviews and journals, helpful for historical articles); MARQCAT (run a journal title search, it may link to an electronic database with PDFs) |
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Newspaper Articles |
See the Periodicals tab in this research guide. |
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Google |
Check Google or Google Scholar for PDFs. Add “filetype:pdf” to your search query to locate only PDF versions of documents. Example: EPA "nanotechnology white paper" filetype:pdf |
An author may cite to a document found on a website. With luck, the author has provided a URL for the website and that site will still be available when you check it. If you have trouble accessing a URL citation —
Double-check the URL.
Search the root page (truncate the URL by deleting information up to each back slash) and see if the page has been moved elsewhere on the site by browsing or using the site index or site search feature.
Search the Internet Archive, a source of more than 30 billion webpages, many of which are no longer on the Internet.
If you locate the URL, consider requesting a permanent link be made as soon as possible to preserve it. Your editor-in-chief has access to information about Permalink.cc, the consortium for archiving permanent links that Marquette University Law School uses.
Use the Wayback Machine on the Internet Archive (https://web.archive.org/) if you are looking for a previous version of a URL. The Wayback Machine can provide snapshots of what a precise URL looked like on a given date, with many versions captured within a single day. If a website uses the same URL to update information, the Wayback Machine can be a simple way to find the older versions, often much easier than asking the entity that produced the material. Here is an example showing how the Wayback Machine displays its captures of the EPA main page, epa.gov, since 1997.
