Tag: Primary Source Documents

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Historical Debates now available online

Great news from the Parliament of Canada today. The staff there have just launched a new website:

“dedicated to the reconstituted debates of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada.
In the early years of the new Dominion, the only account of parliamentary
debates was to be found in newspaper reports. These were saved in
scrapbooks by librarians of Parliament. As a centennial project, the
Parliament of Canada and the Library embarked on a project to reconstitute
these debates from the scrapbook accounts. As well, Senate debates
originally only available in English are being translated and published.

On this website
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Sites/LOP/ReconstitutedDebates/index-e.asp you will
find the Senate Debates 1867-1872 in both English and French and the House
of Commons Debates also 1867-1872 in both languages. Additional years will
be included as work on them is completed.”

The debates have been scanned from the originals so you get to see all the original typeface and formatting.

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Library Journal’s Notable Government Documents for 2009

Library Journal has published their annual selection on the most pertinent government documents of the past year.

Important issues included:

Digitization – “Google launched a collaborative project to scan every U.S. government document held by the libraries of the Big Ten universities and the University of Chicago. At the project’s end, the full text of an estimated one million to 1.5 million U.S. government publications will be available through Google Book Search and the HathiTrust Digital Library“- Library Journal

Hathi Trust Digital Library is  a digital repository for the nation’s great research libraries, bringing together the diverse collections of partner institutions. It was conceived as a collaboration of the thirteen universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation and the University of California system to establish a repository for these universities to archive and share their digitized collections.” – Hathitrust website.

Open government – The Obama administration created an Open Government Directive – “requiring executive agencies to make their activities transparent, to enhance the public’s role in policy making, and to collaborate more extensively with one another, with state and local governments, and with private institutions”

Some of the highlighted documents include:

Investigation of Failure of the SEC To Uncover Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi Scheme. public version. by H. David Kotz. U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission.

Restorative Commons: Creating Health and Well-Being Through Urban Landscapes. ed. by Lindsay Campbell & Anne Wiesen. U.S. Forest Svc., Publications Distribution.

Climate in Peril: A Popular Guide to the Latest IPCC Reports. by Alex Kirby. UN Environment Programme.

Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. UN Human Rights Council

You can view the complete list here.

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Social Media; Anti-Spam Laws; Federal Debt: New from PIRS

MPs and Senators study, debate and vote on a variety of issues and most of them wind up impacting most of us.  Ever wondered how they do their research?  As outlined in our entry of March 22, the Parliamentary Information and Research Service (PIRS)  has researchers on staff who “obtain and analyze material, and write…research papers at the request of Senators and Members of the House of Commons.”

Those research papers are freely available from the Library of Parliament webpage and provide you with a well-researched, cited, and readable summary of issues being studied in Parliament.  Why not take advantage of this tax-payer funded service when conducting your own research?

Here are some of the latest reports:

Researching older issues?  PIRS has reports on-site from as far back as 1991, though the majority are from 2006 – 2009.  For example:

The array of topics covered by PIRS is impressive, so if you’re looking for some primary source documents or if you are looking for something from the government’s perspective you may be well-served by the documents you find on their site!

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US Freedom of Information Act Documents

Need to look at US government documents that don’t seem to be publicly available?  All may not be lost!  Thanks to the tireless efforts of journalists, researchers, and average citizens thousands of documents that would otherwise remain closed to public scrutiny are made available each year through Freedom of  Information Act (FOIA)  requests.  Even better:  many of these folks  have contributed their FOIA documents to freely searchable web archives.  Here are a few of the best:

  • National Security Archive at George Washington University: “collects and publishes declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The Archive also serves as a repository of government records on a wide range of topics pertaining to the national security, foreign, intelligence, and economic policies of the United States.”
  • GovernmentAttic: “provides electronic copies of hundreds of interesting Federal Government documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act….(including) fascinating historical documents, reports on items in the news, oddities…and government bloopers.”
  • Electronic Frontier Foundation:  This site focuses on collecting and disseminating documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act “on controversial government surveillance programs, lobbying practices, and intellectual property initiatives.”
  • American Civil Liberties Union:   This portion of the ACLU website provides access to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act “relating to the abuse and torture of prisoners in U.S. detention centers overseas.”

Note,  some US Federal Departments and Agencies also have well-organized and fairly comprehensive collections of their own FOIA documents, such as

Huge kudos to Sheryl Adam for suggesting this topic and for finding these sites!!!  Watch the blog for a future entry on similar Canadian sources of FOI documents.

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Search the US Federal Register

“The Federal Register is the official journal of the federal government of the United States. In it, you’ll find any kind of proposal, notification, or solicitation for data that a federal agency puts out.”  It includes Presidential documents – including Executive Orders; current and proposed Rules & Regulations; and Notices.

The Register is currently available online, through GPO Access, but that site does not allow you to search all available content at the same time – the current year is available in a separate database.  A group of software developers has put up an alternate website that allows you to search or browse the Register from 1994 onwards in a single (much more attractive) interface.   You can browse by date, topic, agency or location.

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US Presidential Documents

Back in January 2009, the weekly compilation of US Presidential Documents morphed into a daily compilation.  It’s available from GPO access at: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/presdocs/index.html.  The current database includes all materials from the weekly compilation dating back to 1993.

“It includes such material as:

  • Proclamations
  • Executive orders
  • Speeches
  • Press conferences
  • Communications to Congress and Federal agencies
  • Statements regarding bill signings and vetoes
  • Appointments, nominations
  • Reorganization plans
  • Resignations
  • Retirements
  • Acts approved by the President
  • Nominations submitted to the Senate
  • White House announcements
  • Press releases”
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Canada Gazette – Digitization project

This isn’t exactly news, since this project began in 2007, but it was news to me!  According to a statement on the Gazette website “the Canada Gazette Directorate is working in partnership with LAC to digitize all issues dating from 1841 to 1997, so as to make them accessible to the public.”

The project is slated to be completed at the end of 2009, so not all the issues from this time range are available yet.  When the website was launched in May 2008,  only 30% of the collection had been digitized.  Presumably at this late date, the project is much further along….  In any event, the collection digitized thus far is available for keyword searching at: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/canada-gazette/index-e.html

Issues from 1997 to present are available on the Canada Gazette website at: http://www.gazette.gc.ca/index-eng.html

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GPO Access Content Migration

GPO Access is in the process of moving information into a new database: Federal Digital System (FDsys).  Some collections are no longer available in GPO Access, one is available  in both and the rest are set to be moved into FDsys by the end of 2009.

According to the GPO FDsys “is an advanced digital system that will enable GPO to manage Government information from all three branches of the U.S. Government.”

For a complete list of collections that have made the move to FDsys (and are no longer findable in GPO Access) see: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/search/home.action

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2008 Employment Equity Act Annual Report released

 The Honourable Rona Ambrose, Minister of Labour, today tabled the 21st Annual Report on the Employment Equity Act in the House of Commons. 

“The report examines the hiring, retention and promotion of the four groups designated under the legislation: women, Aboriginal peoples, persons with disabilities and members of visible minorities. The findings in the report, which analyzes 2007 data, indicate that improvements have been made in the representation of Aboriginal peoples and members of visible minorities, and that efforts must continue in order to increase the representation levels of women and persons with disabilities in the workforce. ”

You can read the full report at labour.gc.ca

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BC – Parliamentary Journals 1851 – 1991

Our sources tell us that the Legislative Assembly of BC is in the midst of testing an interface for the newly digitized parliamentary Journals from 1851 – 1991.  It’s live right now and you can search within all the volumes, browse the indexes & appendices or scroll through the individual volumes.  Note, from 1872 – 1876, the appendices include the Sessional Papers!  Heady stuff for historians indeed.

Beware, the URL includes the word “test” so this link may break in future.  We’ll post an update as soon as we hear of a permanent URL for this wonderful resource.

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