Government Documents Department
The University of Oklahoma's Government Documents Collection is now in storage, but items may still be retrieved via Sooner Xpress. Contact the Government Documents Librarian, Jeffrey Wilhite, and see his research guides listed here for more information: http://guides.ou.edu/government.
Government Documents Databases (U.S./Colonial)
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American Founding Era Collection (Rotunda)Includes papers of John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Dolley Madison, James Madison, George Washington, and the series Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution.
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American Indians and the American WestThe database contains a large variety of collections from the U.S. National Archives, a series of collections from the Chicago History Museum, as well as selected first-hand accounts on Indian Wars and westward migration.
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American Presidency ProjectSources include nearly every document from Messages and Papers of the Presidents of the United States and The Public Papers of the Presidents.
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American Race Relations: Global Perspectives, 1941-1996Digital archive covering foreign perspectives of American racial issues in the mid-20th century, containing unique primary source documents on racial justice from around the world and providing insight into many important historical events and movements.
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Apartheid: Global Perspectives, 1946-1996International survey of the effects of apartheid on South Africa and the world with a digitized collection of primary source documents related to apartheid.
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Avalon ProjectFrom Yale law school. It includes digital documents relevant to law, history, government, etc. from ancient times to the present.
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Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century (ProQuest History Vault)Digital reproductions of organizational and personal papers and federal government records, including the papers of Mary McLeod Bethune and Claude A. Barnett, records of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, government records on African-Americans in the military, black workers in the era of the Great Migration, files on surveillance of African-Americans, and FBI Files.
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Cold War: Global Perspectives on East-West Tensions, 1945-1991International primary source documents on the Cold War.
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Colonial State PapersFull text of "CO 1" from the British National Archives: Privy Council and Related Bodies: America and West Indies and bibliographic information with extracts from Calendar of State Papers, Colonial: North America and the West Indies 1574-1739. 16th-18th centuries.
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Congress and the Courts (HeinOnline)Provides access to relevant sources relating to the composition and structure of Article III Courts, as well as documents prepared by various Congresses relating to the purpose, formation, organization and restructuring of the federal government.
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Congressional Hearings Search Engine (1997-present)Searches the full text of U.S. Senate, House, joint or special committee hearings published by the U.S. Government Printing Office; updated monthly. This resource has been developed by the OU Libraries and supports user accounts which may be utilized to collect individual search results for statistical analyses. To request a user account, contact Tara Carlisle, Digital Scholarship Specialist. (tara.carlisle@ou.edu)
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Congressional Publications (also called Proquest Congressional)Full text of the American State Papers, Serial Set (House and Senate Reports and Documents), Congressional Record and older congressional digests, legislative information (hearings, bills, and laws), Congressional Research Service reports and Executive Documents, 1789-1932. See http://guides.ou.edu/Congressional for more information.
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Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports (1941-1996)Full text of U.S. government translations of foreign broadcasts, publications, and government statements. See http://guides.ou.edu/fbis for more information.
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Foreign Relations of the United States, 1860-1980Official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity.
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Founders OnlineFrom the National Archives. Correspondence and writings of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams (and family), Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. Over 150,000 searchable documents, fully annotated, from the authoritative Founding Fathers Papers projects.
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Hein Online (Law / Legal)Full text of legal documents including Foreign Relations of the United States, U.S. Presidential Library, including Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Public Papers of the Presidents, and more.
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Immigrations, Migrations and Refugees: Global Perspectives, 1941-1996Digital archive covering all aspects of 20th-century human migration, including first-hand reports and global analysis.
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Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS) Reports (1957-1994)Full text of English translations of foreign language materials from regions throughout the world. Includes monographs, reports, serials, journal and newspaper articles, and radio and television broadcasts. See http://guides.ou.edu/fbis for more information.
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Legislative Insight(ProQuest) - Contains fully searchable PDF images of full-text publications generated in the course of congressional lawmaking. Content includes the Public Law text, all versions of enacted and related bills, Congressional Record excerpts, and committee hearings, reports and documents. (Full text) See http://guides.ou.edu/Legislative for more information.
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LLMC DigitalProvides full text access to documents related to the U.S. Federal Executive, Judicial, and Legislative branches.
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Middle East and North Africa: Global Perspectives, 1958-1994Digital archive spanning 19 countries and four decades.
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National Security Archive (George Washington University)Founded in 1985 by journalists and scholars to check rising government secrecy, the National Security Archive includes a library and archive of declassified U.S. documents.
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Papers of Dwight David EisenhowerElectronic version of the 21-volume publication; covers Eisenhower's career before and during World War II and through his presidency.
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Public Documents MasterfileReferences to federal, state, local and international public documents, 1789-present. See http://guides.ou.edu/publicdocumentsmasterfile for more information.
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TRAIL (Technical Report Archive & Image Library)TRAIL identifies, acquires, catalogs, digitizes and provides unrestricted access to U.S. government agency technical reports.
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Treaties and Agreements Library (HeinOnline)Provides access to all U.S. treaties, whether currently in force, expired, or not yet officially published.
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U.S. Congressional DocumentsFeatures the complete Congressional Record bound version (PDF), as well as the daily version back to 1980 (updated daily). Also includes predecessor titles and other important congressional material.
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U.S. Declassified DocumentsFull text of previously classified U.S. government documents; ca. 1905-present. See http://guides.ou.edu/declassified for more information on the database.
Government Documents Databases (British)
See http://guides.ou.edu/britgovdocs for a detailed guide on locating British government documents.
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Avalon ProjectFrom Yale law school. It includes digital documents relevant to law, history, government, etc. from ancient times to the present.
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British History OnlineDigital library containing some of the core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles. Most of the material is free, but some is not. See http://www.british-history.ac.uk/subscribe.aspx for a list of material that is NOT free. We have access to some of that subscription material in the database State Papers Online, see below.
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Cabinet Papers, 1915-1984Records of the senior ministers of the British government.
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Colonial State Papers, 16th-18th centuriesFull text of "CO 1" from the British National Archives: Privy Council and Related Bodies: America and West Indies and bibliographic information with extracts from Calendar of State Papers, Colonial: North America and the West Indies 1574-1739. 16th-18th centuries.
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Georgian Papers OnlineThis catalogue currently contains descriptions and digitised images of over 200,000 pages of documents dating from the reigns of George I to William IV, including personal letters, diaries, account books and records of the Royal Household.
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Hein Online (includes English Reports, 1220-1867; Statutes of the Realm, 1235-1713)Full text of legal documents. Statutes of the Realm also available in different database, below.
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London Lives, 1690-1800 ~ Crime, Poverty and Social Policy in the MetropolisA fully searchable edition of 240,000 manuscripts from eight archives and fifteen datasets, giving access to 3.35 million names.
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National Archives (U.K.) CatalogSearching is free but there may be a fee to download records.
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Parliamentary DebatesParliamentary debates (often referred to as Hansard) are records of what is said in Parliament. Only since 1909 has Hansard been a verbatim report and official publication; before then, publications were based on secondary sources such as newspaper accounts.
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Parliament Rolls of Medieval EnglandFull text of the rolls of parliament (translated and in the original Latin, Anglo-Norman or Middle English). The rolls were the official records of the meetings of the English parliament from the reign of Edward I (1272) until the reign of Henry VII (1509).
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Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913Contains 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.
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State Papers Online, The Government of Britain, 1509-1714Full text of British government materials, including State Papers, Domestic and Foreign. Click here for more information on State Papers.
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Statutes of the Realm (in the Making of the Modern World database)Great Britain's laws and statutes, from the Magna Carta to the end of the reign of Queen Ann. Statutes of the Realm also available in the Hein Online database, see above.
Proxy URL
Some databases allow you to "bookmark" or "permalink" documents. If the link appears to have "ezproxy" and "lib" and "ou" an "edu" in it somewhere, it will probably work from off-campus. If not, add the following base URL text to the beginning of the "bookmark" or "permalink" URL:
https://ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/login?url=
The modified URL will take you to the library's login screen if you are not already logged into our website, or to the bookmarked document if you are on-campus or have logged into our website.
Legal Research
The Donald E. Pray Law Library is open to main campus students, and many (but not all) of its online resources are also available with a main campus OUNetID. See http://guides.ou.edu/lawlibrary for all Law Library research guides, http://guides.ou.edu/supremecourt for resources related to the Supreme Court of the United States. Contact their Reference Desk at (405) 325-5268 or email them at Law-LibraryReference@ou.edu
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Caselaw Access ProjectThe Caselaw Access Project (“CAP”) expands public access to U.S. law. Our goal is to make all published U.S. court decisions freely available to the public online, in a consistent format, digitized from the collection of the Harvard Law Library.
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CourtListenerStarted in 2010, CourtListener is a core project of the Free Law Project, a federally-recognized 501(c)(3) public charity and a California non-profit public benefit corporation. Free Law Project seeks to provide free access to primary legal materials, develop legal research tools, and support academic research on legal corpora.
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FastcaseProvides access to federal and state case law, statutes, regulation, constitutions, and court rules. Full text available.
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HeinOnlineAn expanding collection of legal information including legal journals, U.S. Supreme Court Cases, Treaties/Agreements and more. HeinOnLine provides the scanned page images of legal journals so that the user can view the page as it originally appeared in hardcopy.
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LegalTracIndexes legal publications, major law reviews, law journals, specialty law and bar association journals, and legal newspapers on Federal and State Cases, Laws and Government Regulations, Legal Practice, and legal subjects such as Taxation and International Law.
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LLMC DigitalProvides full text access to documents related to the U.S. Federal Executive, Judicial, and Legislative branches.
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NexisUni (formerly LexisNexis Academic)A collection of databases covering a wide range of news, business, and legal sources.
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Session Laws LibraryContains the session laws of all 50 U.S. states, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, as well as governmental session laws from the United States, Australia, Canada, and the Bahamas. Full text available.
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Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & LawBrings together, for the first time, all known legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world, including more than 1,000 books and pamphlets.
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Treaties and Agreements Library (HeinOnline)Provides access to all U.S. treaties, whether currently in –force, expired, or not yet officially published.
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United States Code (tends to be most up to date)Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the United States House of Representatives.
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United States Code (to 2018)HeinOnline contains the full-text of the United States Code (official version) and the Statutes at Large in PDF page image format going back to the start of these publications. This databases should be your source for locating official Acts of Congress or references to the official code.
Guide to Locating Court Records, Briefs and Oral Arguments
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Locating Court Records, Briefs and Oral ArgumentsGuide from Yale University.