GPO Digitizes the Public Papers of the Presidents (1929-2013)
In 1957, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) began compiling and publishing Presidential writings, addresses, and remarks of a public nature under the series title Public Papers of the Presidents beginning with President Herbert Hoover. Now the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) and NARA have digitized the print volumes of the Public Papers of the Presidents and made them available on govinfo. There is one exception to the list of presidents included: President Franklin Roosevelt’s papers were published by a private printer before 1957 and are not available as part of the Public Papers series.
Each Public Papers volume contains the papers and speeches of the President of the United States that were issued by the Office of the Press Secretary during the specified time period. The material is presented in chronological order, and the dates shown in the headings are the dates of the documents or events. In instances when the release date differs from the date of the document itself, that fact is shown in the text-note.
NARA released a webinar with further explanation of the Public Papers and how to use the digitized papers on govinfo. To view the webinar, click here. Trexler Library also has a print copy of the Public Papers. Look in the Government Publications Collection (on Level A) under the SuDoc filing number AE 2.114: .
data.census.gov – the U.S. Census Bureau’s new resource
As of July 2019, data.census.gov became the primary way to access new Census Bureau data, including upcoming releases from the 2018 American Community Survey, 2017 Economic Census, 2020 Census, and more. All new data previously released on American FactFinder is now being released on the data.census.gov platform. The Bureau anticipates that archived data will be transferred from AFF to data.census.gov by early 2020. At its opening screen, data.census.gov invites you to “Explore Census Data.” In a presentation on the transition, Tyson Weister from the Center for Enterprise Dissemination (CED), U.S. Census Bureau explained the Bureau’s long term simplification goal for data access: “So with this we’ve received overwhelming feedback to make things simple, put things all in one place for you and that’s where we’re headed with Data.Census.gov. It’s much larger than the replacement of any one particular tool. What we’re working towards is making all of the Census Bureau data accessible to you in one place.”
For more information about the transition, click here.
To begin exploring, go to https://data.census.gov
