U.S. Federal Government Publications: Historical

• Library of Congress Guide to Law Listings of what's available online for free (titles and years available). Some sources will lack search interfaces, but are good for drilling down to known citations. Includes legislative, executive, and judicial branch publications. See also their Century of Lawmaking site, with legal and legislative documents through 1875.
• ProQuest Congressional [and Executive Branch] Publications  (Duke only) Full text of most US Congressional titles 1789-present as well as Executive Branch publications through 1932. Congressional Record since 1985. Paper indexes are also available: Executive Branch.
• GovTrack.us Collects legislative information such as bill texts and voting records of members of Congress. Especially useful for its developer tools such as an API and bulk download of data from many past sessions.
• U.S. Congressional Serial Set, 1817-1994 (Duke only) Text of House and Senate Reports and Documents (and Journals 1953-1974); newer at govinfo.gov.  Also see U.S. Congressional Serial Set Maps for scanned maps from the Serial Set.
• America's Historical Imprints (Duke only) Especially in Series II (Shaw-Shoemaker bibliography), includes many of the pre-1820 government publications not included in the above sources.
• HeinOnline (Duke only) The text of publications since their inception, focusing on law and legislation, including the Congressional Record and predecessors
• The American Presidency Project  At UC Santa Barbara, gathers together many different types of documents and transcripts of speeches and spoken statements related to the Office of the President
• FRASER From the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, contains hundreds of digitized US federal government publications and unpublished archival collections relating to economics, banking, and public policy. Acrobat (.pdf) documents are fully searchable.
• Digitization Projects Registry A listing of digitization projects of historical U.S. Government publications that were previously only available in print format.

Access to recent information and/or access or indexing to historical publications, archival information (unpublished records of government agencies and declassified documents), technical reports (quasi-governmental reports prepared by contractors), and statistical data.

Many of the databases listed are subscription services available only to Duke University users.

• Key Databases for U.S. Federal Documents:  Electronic access points for current as well as historical government publications and for unpublished archival material from the federal government.
• Recommended Databases for Data/Statistics: Leads to electronic data collected by federal government agencies and Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs).
• Paper indexes: Many historic executive branch agency publications, particularly from 1933~1995 (a "black hole" for digitized materials), aren't accessible online and some are not even indexed by any electronic sources. A comprehensive search should include the following paper indexes in the Perkins Reference Collection on the 1st floor.
  • Cumulative title index to United States public documents, 1789-1976.
    Located in Perkins Reference at Z1223 .L478 1979
    Good for tracking down citations, especially for post-1932 executive branch documents that we don't have digitally.
  • Cumulative subject index to the Monthly catalog of United States Government publications, 1900-1971
    Located in Perkins Reference at  Z1223 .B834 1973, vols. 1-15
    Refers to entries in the Monthly Catalog (below), where you can find a call number..
  • Monthly catalog of United States government publications
    Located in Public Documents Collection, 2nd floor of Perkins, immediately following the Census Reference Collection (see map of floor).
    Annual volumes and 10- or 5-year cumulative subject indexes.