State and Local Documents
- City and State Documents in HOLLIS and WorldCat
- Indexes and Bibliographies
- City Documents
- Public documents of Massachusetts
- Documents of the City of Boston
City and State Documents in HOLLIS, WorldCat and HathiTrust
State and city names can be searched as Author keyword, but this usually retrieves too many publications of NGOs, learned societies and other entities. You can do a keyword search on state or city plus department name, by searching likely department name terms and finding the proper name.
Or you can browse the state or city name as Author in Browse HOLLIS by... A general and mixed group under just the state or city name will appear first, then the government departments. For city names add the proper state abbreviation (Boston, Mass). Use Standard not Postal
For material not available at Harvard, search in: WorldCat (the OCLC Union Catalog) which includes catalog records from over 45,000 libraries worldwide but largely U.S. Includes books, periodicals, archives and manuscripts, maps, videotapes, computer readable files, etc. Includes Boston-area libraries. For InterLibrary Loan, put the Accession no. (at the bottom of the record) in the Interlibrary Loan Request form.
WorldCat does not offer an Author browse. The Library of Congress catalog can be browsed (AUTHORs/CREATORS beginning with) to find material not held by Harvard. The Department names can then be searched in WorldCat. Hit the FindIt@Harvard button for an Interlibrary Loan request. Many state library and city library catalogs offer Author browses and often collections of digitized documents
HathiTrust Digital Library. Each full text item is linked to a standard library catalog record, thus providing good metadata and subject terms. The catalog can be searched separately. Although most post-1923 items are not full text viewable, many government documents are full text viewable. Search the city or state name as Author. For city names add the proper state abbreviation (Boston, Mass).
Monthly checklist of state publications (Title varies), 1910-1994). Library of Congress.
Documents (Lamont) | Harvard Depository | US Doc 5002.20
Online version
Index of economic material in documents of the states of the United States, Massachusetts, 1789-1904], by Adelaide R. Hasse. Washington: Carnegie institution of Washington, 1907 (Carnegie Institution of Washington publication 85).
HOLLIS Record
HathiTrust online version.
--This valuable source covers many topics.
Index to Current Urban Documents, 1972-1992
HOLLIS Record
Tufts has the online version.
In Hathitrust catalog search you can search keywords: police report, and Limit To: Full view only. On the left side of the Results page, you can limit to Place of Publication: United States. Be careful with date limitations. If you want a report for 1950, the report series may have started in, say, 1923, and 1923 will be the date on the HathiTrust record.
City documents not at Harvard can be requested via Interlibrary Loan. Often the best source is the local state or city library catalog. Finding city documents not at Harvard can be complicated, so ask me if this comes up.
Public documents of Massachusetts
State Library of Massachusetts has a vast collection of digitized documents in its DSpace collection.
The General Court of Massachusetts (State Legislature)
Commonwealth of Massachusetts: Reports of the Legislative Research Council (New England School of Law), 1964- . With Index of special reports authorized by the General Court: 1900-1988.
Legislative History: What? and Why? (New England School of Law)
Massachusetts Government Documents: Legislative (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
Massachusetts Law (State Library of Massachusetts)
Massachusetts Legislative (Boston College Law Library)
Massachusetts Legislative History (Massachusetts Executive Office for Administration and Finance)
Massachusetts Resources: Legislative (New England School of Law)
Public documents of Massachusetts. Boston : Secretary of the Commonwealth, 1858-
Google Books version
HathiTrust Version 1835, 1845, 1857, 1863-1918
FindIt@Harvard
Documents are arranged by number (examples):
- Board of Charity 17
- District Police reports: 32
- Board of police for Fall River (1895- ) 58
- Board of police for Boston 49
- Annual reports concerning prison labor 41
- Commissioners of Prisons 13
Others are listed in:
Catalogue of annual reports contained in the Massachusetts public documents; also of special reports and papers for 1898-1899. Prepared by the Massachusetts Library Club and issued by the Massachusetts State Library. Boston, A.L.A. Publishing Board, 1901.
Google Books version
FindIt@Harvard
Preceded by:
Documents submitted to the General Court. Boston : s.n., -1857 (Boston : William White, Printer to the State) (We have 1846-1856)
HOLLIS Record
(General Court is the legislature)
Index and guide to Massachusetts State legislative documents, 1802-1882. Compiled by Francis X. Blouin, Jr. Boston, Massachusetts State Library, 1972, 186 l.
HOLLIS Record
Index to Massachusetts legislative documents, 1883-1899, by Leonard Adams. Amherst, Mass. : University Library, University of Massachusetts, 1994, 214 p.
HOLLIS Record
Documents of the City of Boston
Oscar Handlin offers a valuable overview of Boston documents on pp. p. 297-362 in:
Boston’s immigrants, 1790-1880 : a study in acculturation. Rev. and enl. ed., 50th anniversary ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991, xvii, 382 p.
HOLLIS Record 1991 ed.
HOLLIS Record 1979 rev. ed.
HOLLIS Record 1959 rev. ed.
Documents of the City of Boston
HathiTrust Version 1836 1837,1850,1845, 1853-1922
HOLLIS Record 1838-1899
And also use the index
Boston City documents – Index 1834-1886
HathiTrust Version
A HOLLIS search on "Documents of the City of Boston" yields much additional material, as does a HathiTrust catalog search on Author: Boston and Keyword: Documents.