Internet Primary Source Sites Relating to Political Science

Primary Source Sites available through the ASU Library

ArchivesUSA
(1950s+) Access to special collection details of more than 4,400 repositories includes records with complete detailed indexes for approximately 100,000 individual collections. Includes access through NUCMC and NIDS subject headings.

Center for Research Libraries CRL is a consortium of North American universities, colleges, and independent research libraries. The consortium acquires and preserves traditional and digital resources for research and teaching and makes them available to member institutions through interlibrary loan and electronic delivery.

Declassified Documents Reference System - US
(1941-1992) Includes full text of declassified U.S. government documents. Covers nearly every major foreign and domestic event from the end of World War II through the 1970s: the Cold War, Vietnam, foreign policy shifts, the civil rights movement, etc

Hayden Papers Database  This database enables fielded text searching of an electronic finding aid to the Senator Carl T. Hayden Papers, which are physically located in the Arizona Collection, Hayden Library, Arizona State University. Senator Hayden's papers comprise 815 boxes of archival materials produced between 1851 and 1979.

Hein Online: The Modern Link to Legal History Presently, HeinOnline has four major library collections: the Law Journal Library, the Federal Register Library(1939 – 2000), the Treaties and Agreements Library(1776- 2001), and the U.S. Supreme Court Library(1754 – 2004).

Homeland Security Digital Library  Provides access to important U.S. policy documents, presidential directives, and national strategy documents as well as specialized resources such as theses and research reports from various universities, organizations and local and state agencies on topics related to homeland security policy and strategy.

Lexis-Nexis Congressional (1789+) U.S. legislative information: hearings; committee reports; bills, bill tracking; Congressional Indexes; Congressional Record; Federal Register; Code of Federal Regulations; U.S. Code; Public laws; National Journal, Congress Daily, & member info.

LexisNexis Congressional Research Digital Collection  (2004+) contains background material used by Congress: CRS reports (from 2004 to present) and Committee Prints (from 2004 to present). Congressional committee prints are publications issued by congressional committees on topics related to their legislative or research activities. Committee Prints include: monographs, investigative field reports, draft reports and bills, analysis of bills, statistical materials, confidential staff reports, and hearing publications, etc. Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports are in-depth research reports that provide background information for Congressional investigations and legislative proposals.

Macmillan Cabinet Papers, 1957-63, On-Line
(1957-63) Provides historians and political scientists with direct access to documents from the highest level of Government during the Macmillan Administration. Contains 30,000 original documents, as well as five essays on the Macmillan Administration.

New York Times Historical Index: ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times 1851-1999 is an electronic database to articles published in The New York Times from 1851-1999.

 ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Atlanta Constitution 1868 - 1929; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Chicago Defender 1905 - 1975; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Hartford Courant 1764 - 1984; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles Times 1881 - 1985; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times 1851-2003; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Washington Post 1877 - 1990

Provides full text coverage of the above newspapers for their respectives years. Taken as a whole, these newspapers provide excellent historical coverage geographically and nationally. 

Proquest Executive Documents  Available as part of ProQuest Congressional Publications, the Executive Branch Documents 1789-1932 targets the entire range of executive branch publications.  Executive Branch Documents 1789-1932 includes all of the executive branch titles listed in the 1909 Checklist that were not included in the U.S. Serial Set, as well as additional titles chosen from the period, 1910 to 1932.

Women and Social Movements in the United States: 1600 - 2000 This database contains: 52 document projects that interpret and present documents, altogether these document projects provide more than 1,250 documents, 450 images, and 500 links to other websites. 19,000 pages of documents pertaining to Women and Social Movements. These materials have been selected by the Editors for their relevance to the focus of the website.

Primary Source Sites on the Internet

Comprehensive Sites ( Including but not limited to North America)

American Left Ephemera Collection   The collection emphasizes ephemeral items from the 1890s to the present.  While the majority of these items were produced by the Socialist Party USA (SPUSA), Communist Party USA (CPUSA), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), or organizations linked to them, the collection also includes material from a wide variety of other organizations and movements

Anarchy Archives  A project of Claremont Colleges to provide the collected works of the major anarchists and an online history of anarchists and anarchist movements worldwide, including a graphics archive.

Archive of European Integration  The Archive of European Integration (AEI) is an electronic repository and archive for research materials on the topic of European integration and unification. The AEI collects two types of materials: certain types of independently-produced research materials and official European Community/European Union documents.  Materials submitted must deal with some aspect of European integration or unification in the 20th and 21st centuries. 

 Avalon Project at the Yale Law School (3,000 BCE+)  Selected digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government.

Eurodocs: Primary Historical Documents from Western Europe 
This site (Harold Lee Library, Brigham Young University) has pointers to documents and full text works for Medieval and Renaissance Europe, Europe as a region, and over twenty countries.The time frame is Medieval to the present. The section for Germany includes a broad range of documents, from the 95 theses of Martin Luther to the 1990 treaty on German unification and some contemporary reports on racism.

The Historical Text Archive The oldest and one of the most important meta-history archives.

Internet Modern History Sourcebook Presents a diversity of texts available on the Internet in the area of modern European history and modern Western Civilization. Designed to serve the interests of teachers and students in college survey courses in subjects such as: the Reformation; Ancien Regime; Industrial Revolution; American and French Revolutions; Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment; The World Since 1945.

Marxist Internet Archives This excellent web page of the larger site “Marxist History” includes links to information concerning the Soviet state and Russian Revolution as well as to the full text archive of significant Marxist writers.

 Repositories of Primary Sources  A listing of over 2700 websites describing holdings of manuscripts, archives, rare books, historical photographs, and other primary sources. Coverage is worldwide.

The World Digital Library (WDL)  The World Digital Library (WDL) makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world. This open source website provides instant access to scholarly resources, and allows visitors to browse through a trove of artifacts spanning the history of civilization. The site brings together historical manuscripts along with secondary literature describing them.

UNITED STATES

Archives & Primary Sources - General

 100 Milestone Documents  The following is a list of 100 milestone documents, compiled by the National Archives and Records Administration, and drawn primarily from its nationwide holdings. The documents chronicle United States history from 1776 to 1965.

Core Documents of U.S. Democracy "To provide American citizens direct online access to the basic Federal Government documents that define our democratic society, a core group of current and historical Government publications is being made available for free, permanent, public access via the GPO Access service" The preceding quote from the Core Documents web page clearly delineates that this is an admirable attempt by the U.S. government to make available those documents and records it considers integral to an understanding of democracy in the United States. A comprehensive and important site.

Chronology of US Historical Documents
This site from the University of Oklahoma College of Law provides U. S. Historical documents from the Magna Carta to the present.

Foreign Relations of the United States
This State Department web site is a permanent electronic archive of information released prior to January 20, 2001. See www.state.gov for material released since President George W. Bush took office on that date. Online volumes available cover the Truman through Johnson administrations(1945 - 1968).

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
The National Archives web site includes descriptions of NARA facilities; copies of publications such as finding aids; and some Federal records regulations. The agency is working to improve access to the contents of the archives and this site should become increasingly valuable.

Resources for the Study of International Relations and Foreign Affairs - Vincent Ferraro site: An excellent comprehensive site covering US international relations and foreign affairs during the Twentieth Century. Click on the Documents internal link to go directly to that section.

US Congressional Documents: A Century of Lawmaking, 1774 - 1875: One of the major collections in the American Memory website, this invaluable (but hard to find) site includes all major congressional documents for the country's first century. The four main categories are: The Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention; Journals of Congress; Debates of Congress; and States and Documents.

 

Chronologically: 1900 - 1999

Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Digital Archives: A growing body of presidential and personal papers related to the FDR presidency. Included are the President's Secretary File(PSF); British & German Diplomatic files; US-Vatican Diplomatic files, Fireside chats; and the Hackett Papers.

The Holocaust History Project: The Holocaust History Project is a free archive of documents, photographs, recordings, and essays regarding the Holocaust, including direct refutation of Holocaust-denial. Another resource for documents on the Holocaust, Israel & Zionism & Jewish Communities is the Academic Guide to Jewish History.

 Civil Rights Documentation Project- A Mississippi site which includes transcripts of oral history interviews, a civil rights timeline, and bibliography.

Cold War International History Project This site contains transcribed primary sources on the history of the Cold War. Many of the items are from original or compilations from previously inaccessible sources in the former Communist world.

Declassified Documents Reference System - US (1941-1992) (Access through ASU Library) 
Includes full text of declassified U.S. government documents. Covers nearly every major foreign and domestic event from the end of World War II through the 1970s: the Cold War, Vietnam, foreign policy shifts, the civil rights movement, etc.

Free Speech Movement Archives. The link takes you directly to a list of pages and primary sources documenting the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley. This is the only way to get an idea of the extent and scope of this site's holdings.

Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact - provides documentation about the development of NATO and the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War. This site and the Cold War International History Project provide materials documenting the activities of the US' partners and adversaries during the long cold war struggle.

The Vietnam Archive "The Vietnam Archive mission is to collect and preserve the documentary record of the Vietnam War.... The Vietnam Archive currently administers two projects, the Oral History Project and the Virtual Vietnam Archive. More information about both of these project can be found in their respective sections of this website."