State and Local Documents

City and State Documents in HOLLIS+, WorldCat and HathiTrust

State and city names can be searched as Author keyword in HOLLIS, 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 Starts with/Browse.  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 (Chicago, Ill).  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 (Chicago, Ill) if needed.

Indexes and Bibliographies

State List: The Electronic Source of State Publications. Coverage varies by state, generally 1990s- .

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. [various dates, 1787-1904], by Adelaide R. Hasse. Washington: Carnegie institution of Washington, 1907 (Carnegie Institution of Washington publication 85). 
Find paper copies in HOLLIS by searching: "Index of economic material in documents" (in "")
HathiTrust online version.  Search the phrase (in “”) “Index of economic material in documents of the states of the United States” in Catalog search.
--California - Delaware - Illinois - Kentucky - Maine - Massachusetts - New Hampshire - New Jersey - New York - Ohio - Pennsylvania - Rhode Island - Vermont.
--This valuable source covers many topics.

Look for specialized subject bibliographies in the HOLLIS Catalog: Search, for example, "government publications" Chicago bibliography as a Subject Keyword search.  The term Bibliography MUST be searched as a Subject keyword: Change Limit to: anywhere to Limit to: subject.

Books describing state documents can be useful. Search in HOLLIS/WorldCat: State government publications -- United States -- Bibliography.

Digitized Collections

The overlapping lists in these four websites provide access to local digital collections:

Local Research Guides

University, state and city libraries may have research guides for state and local government publications. Go to local library websites and look for Research Guides

Examples:
New York City Documents
Baltimore
Chicago Research Guide: Primary Sources/Stats
Chicago Government Information

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 us if this comes up.