In order to locate California government information in the UCLA Library's collection, you will need to search the UCLA Library Catalog. Read more about the types of searches below.
If you have the title of a report or know some of the title words, you can use the Basic Search Screen to search by title or keywords.
If you know what agency published the information that you're interested in, you can search using that agency as author. For example, if you are interested in beaches and land development, you would want to look at what the California Coastal Commission has published. Use the Advanced Search Screen, enter "California Coastal Commission" as Author/Creator. There are about 143 results.
If you have a specific topic that you want to search for, you can try an advanced search. If you were still interested in the Coastal Commission, but you wanted to look at San Onofre specifically, you would go to the advanced search page, put "California Coastal Commission" as Author/Creator in one row, then put "San Onofre" in the next row as a Subject and then 9 results are produced. You may need to refine your search from there, but you have successfully started your search.
If you are unsure which agency published the information you need, or if you think that more than one agency might have published information on it, you will need to do an advanced search on your topic.
For example, if you are interested in looking at how higher education is funded in California, you would need to look primarily at the California Postsecondary Education Commission, but also at the Legislative Analyst's Office, the State Treasurer, and others. In order to best locate information from the library catalog, you would do an advanced search. On the advanced search page, put "California" in one row, "higher education" in another, and "funding" in the third. This search produces 20 results. By clicking on "Higher Education [electronic resources]", you can see the subject heading "Education, Higher --California --Finance." Clicking on this subject heading produces 75 results that you are able to sort through.
If you need assistance searching or locating California government documents, contact the librarian.
It may also be useful to start your search by seeing what agencies exist and how the state government is organized. To do so, click here.