Update on databases at NARA locations

This press release was just received from the U.S. National Archives and gives us yet another reason to visit a NARA location. I use many of these in background, historical, and genealogical research. If you have any handouts from my various lectures you will note that I often recommend several of these.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                      

September 30, 2010

National Archives and Records Administration Makes Available U.S. Serial Set Digital Collection

Washington, DC… The National Archives and Records Administration will make available  the LexisNexis® U.S. Serial Set Digital Collection of US Government publications to the public free of charge in all NARA research rooms nationwide. 

The U.S. Serial Set is a collection of U.S. Government publications compiled under directive of the Congress. It contains comprehensive and often detailed information on an extremely wide range of subjects. Its earliest documents date from 1789 and additions are made continually.

The LexisNexis® U.S. Serial Set Digital Collection provides researchers—whether novice or advanced—fast, immediate access to this broad collection of historical congressional information.  This digital collection is powerfully indexed, easy to use, and lets researchers search across multiple other collections for more comprehensive results.  Researchers can access full-text, original documents from the pages of the original U.S. Serial Set. 

This Serial Set is the latest addition to the list of online commercial resources that NARA makes available free of charge to all researchers at its research facilities nationwide.  Other free online resources at NARA facilities include Ancestry.com, Footnote.com, JSTOR, ProQuest’s Research Library, HeritageQuest, Archive Finder, Digital National Security Archive, and digital New York Times and Washington Post, as well as EBSCO’s America: History and Life and Gale’s Biography and Genealogy Master Index and Declassified Documents Reference System.  Together, these resources provide free and open access to digitized NARA records as well as contextual information about NARA’s holdings.

For more information on these resources, see NARA’s Archives Library Information Center at http://www.archives.gov/research/alic/.  For information on NARA research centers nationwide see http://www.archives.gov/locations/archival-research.html.