They are used most extensively for communicating scientific and technical information, but are also used to distribute a broad range of information across disciplines.
Many technical reports are the result of government-sponsored research.
Federal, state, and international agencies are large publishers of this type of material. They are shelved on the second floor of SEL near the reference area. Reports are either shelved by technical report number or SuDocs number. The SuDocs number is a number used to identify many government publications. These sources are particularly useful for identifying the issuing agency or organization of a report when you know only the technical report number.