State and Local Documents
- City and State Documents in HOLLIS and WorldCat
- Indexes and Bibliographies
- Digitized Collections
- Local Research Guides
- Public documents of Massachusetts
- Documents of the City of Boston
City and State Documents in HOLLIS, HathiTrust and Internet Archive
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 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.
Many of Harvard's state documents can be searched in HOLLIS by entering: Code: Local call number: statedocuments*.
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).
The Internet Archive contains many full text state and city documents. Search Creator: state name, teh narrow by date and topic on the left.
LLMC Digital
Go to Online Services, then Browse Collections. A rich source of legislative and judicial documents
State Agency Databases Project
Laws, Legislative Materials, and Legal Issues Sources in State Agency Databases
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
Searchable in HathiTrust Advanced Full Text search. Put Monthly checklist of state publications as Exact phrase in Title field and your keywords in Full Text field, adjust date limits. This works best when you have a particular proper name to search, as you cannot limit by state.
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.
City Documents
Index to Current Urban Documents, 1972-1992
HOLLIS Record
Tufts has the online version.
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 me if this comes up.
Public documents of Massachusetts
State Library of Massachusetts has a vast collection of digitized documents in its DSpace collection.
Documents of the City of Boston