Library Briefings

Government documents from 1817 to 1969

The U.S. Serial Set Digital Collection is now available through LexisNexis

On December 8, 1813, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution ordering the standardized printing of "all messages and communications from the President of the United States, all letters from the several departments of the Government, all motions and resolutions offered for the consideration of the House, all reports of committees of the House, and all other papers which [produced] in the usual course of proceeding or by special order of the House." Since then, congress has published this collection of documents as the U.S. Serial Set. Northwestern University Library has acquired most of the Serial Set volumes in print and is now pleased to offer access to an online digitized collection.

The LexisNexis U.S. Serial Set Digital Collection is accessible through the Historical Full Text segment of the LexisNexis Congressional database. The collection will not be fully digitized until December 2005. When complete, it will include 13,000 volumes and 52,000 maps published between 1817 and 1969. The complete database will also include the American State Papers, a retrospective collection of congressional documents that span from 1789 to 1817.

While the Serial Set Digital Collection offers a number of advantages over the print resource, the primary benefit is improved searching. The digitized collection offers full-text searching of online documents, an improvement over the CIS print index that offers subject and keyword indexes based on document titles. Searches in the digital collection can be limited by document type, maps, or tables.

To access the digitized Serial Set go to the LexisNexis Congressional database (links also available in NUcat and Electronic Resources) and search in the Historical Full Text segment.

-- Catherine Morse