Government agencies are a significant source of information about public health policy, health economics, epidemiology, statistics, standards, guidelines, and other topics important to the Library's collecting mission. NLM collects government publications as follows:

U.S. Executive Branch: NLM collects U.S. federal agency documents and reports issued by the executive branch pertaining to health care and health issues, with particular emphasis on the documents produced by the health agencies within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

U.S. Legislative Branch: NLM generally does not collect Congressional legislative documents, as the Library of Congress takes collection responsibility for such publications.

U.S. Judicial Branch: NLM generally does not collect the publications of the Judicial Branch, as the Library of Congress collects these documents comprehensively.

U.S. State and local: Since the Library of Congress acquires a comprehensive collection of publications issued by state and inter-state offices and agencies, with the exception of works in the field of clinical medicine and technical agriculture, the National Library of Medicine generally restricts its collecting effort to compilations of state vital and health statistics, works on health care for epidemiologically important populations, reports on health policy issues of broad national interest, and compendia of health policies and regulations.

International: NLM collects the substantive publications of international non-governmental health organizations, such as the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization. NLM may collect important compendia of health laws and regulations and major health policy reports from other countries when they are likely to be of interest to U.S. health professionals or to scholars generally.

The Library participates in the Federal Depository Library Program as a selective depository library.