Research Guides: Government: Digital Primary Sources

Recommended Resources

ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window
Indexes information produced by or pertaining to the United States Congress from 1789 to the present. Provides full text for many titles, generally from the early 1990's to the present. Includes bills, laws, legislative histories, committee prints, House and Senate documents and reports, the Congressional Record, Code of Federal Regulations, and Federal Register. Includes full text of Congressional Research Service reports, 1916-present; full text of Congressional hearings, 1824- ; full text of Committee Prints, 1830-2003; and full text of the Serial Set Collection with Maps, 1789-1969. For a complete description of contents, coverage, and update frequency, consult the online Help section.
HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
Full text image-based searchable database of legal periodicals. Database coverage for each periodical is from the beginning issue to the most current allowed under contract.
Digital National Security Archive This link opens in a new window
Contains the most comprehensive collection of primary documents available. The database includes more than 43,000 of the most important declassified documents regarding critical U.S. policy decisions.

Government Printing Office (GPO) Access
"Free public access to full-text, official federal information; federal information finding aids; and federal products for sale. Includes Code of federal regulatons, Federal register, Congressional record, and the U.S. code."
Political Database of the Americas
"Documentary and statistical political information on Latin America, including constitutions, electoral laws, legislative and executive branch information and election data."
Archives of Sexuality and Gender
Sources on sex and sexuality since the sixteenth century and post-1940 LGBTQ+ organizing in the US and United Kingdom.

Digital Primary Sources: Next Steps

Confidential print. Africa, 1834-1966.
"Provides electronic access to the United Kingdom's Colonial, Dominion and Foreign Offices' confidential correspondence relating to Africa between 1834 and 1966. This resource provides a searchable collection of scores of official documents and maps covering almost the entire period of European conquest and colonisation of Africa (with the exception of Egypt)."
Confidential Print: Middle East, 1839-1969
Foreign Office Files for China, 1919-1980
Formerly restricted British documents -- diplomatic dispatches, letters, newspaper cuttings, maps, reports of court cases, biographies of leading personalities, summaries of events and diverse other materials.
Mass Observation Online
A pioneering social research organization founded in 1937 to record everyday life in Britain. Material gathered from 1937-1955 including diaries and questionnaires sent in by its panel of volunteers, and research gathered by paid investigators.
U.S. Declassified Documents Online (Gale)
"[Affords] immediate access to a broad range of previously classified federal records spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The collection brings together the most sensitive documents from all the presidential libraries and numerous executive agencies in a single, easily searchable database ... [The] most comprehensive compilation of declassified documents from the executive branch."

Digital Primary Sources: The Rabbit Hole

Online Archive of California
In addition to finding aids from more than 200 participating institutions, Online Archive of California provides access to more than 250,000 digital images and texts.
Brazilian Government Document Digitization Program
"Digitized executive branch serial documents originally issued by Brazil's national government between 1821 and 1993, and by its provincial government from the earliest available for each province to the end of the Empire to 1889."
Colombia and the United States : political violence, narcotics, and human rights, 1948-2010
"Traces more than 60 years of U.S. involvement in Latin America's longest-running internal conflict, from the early days of the Cold War through the deluge of recent political scandals, which have revealed unprecedented levels of corruption in the country's major political institutions."
Fannie Lou Hamer : papers of a civil rights activist, political activist, and woman.
"Instrumental in organizing Mississippi Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and later became the Vice-Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, attending the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in that capacity."
U.S. nuclear history : nuclear arms and politics in the missile age, 1955-1968.
"Documents major developments in U.S. nuclear weapons policies and programs from the mid-1950s through 1968."
Chinese pamphlets : political communication and mass education in the early period of the People's Republic of China.
"Electronic version of collections at the Center for Research Libraries catalogued under the titles: Mass education materials published in the early period of People's Republic of China, 1949-1952 ; Mass education materials published in Hong Kong, 1947-1954 : reaction to the newly-established People's Republic of China."
Politics, Social Activism and Community Support: Selected Gay and Lesbian Periodicals and Newsletters (1947-2004)
"Newsletters issued by gay and lesbian political and social activist organizations throughout the country and on periodicals devoted to gay and lesbian political and social activist agendas—the "public" face of gay and lesbian activism."