Library Guides: U.S. Data and Statistical Sources: Textual Data

Free Public Access to Government Information

Free public access to United States government documents in a federal depository library is guaranteed by law (44 USC §1911). While UC Berkeley houses one of the most comprehensive collections of U.S. government documents in the country, the Library is one of over a thousand Federal Depository Libraries across the United States, and one of several Federal Depository Libraries in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Sources of Textual Data

This is a starter list to finding textual data from and about the U.S. Government.

U.S. Congressional Record (via Proquest)
Information on how to access the xml files of the Congressional Record and its predecessor titles. UCB Only
FDSys Bulk Data
Various sources of bulk text data from all three branches of government.
Congressional and Federal Government Web Harvests
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) conducted a web harvest (i.e. capture) of Federal Agency public web sites in 2004, and every two years for Congressional sites beginning in 2006.
Data.gov
Browse datasets published on data.gov by format.
Govtrack's Data
Provides access to bulk text from the U.S. Congress.
Internet Archive's wget
Information on downloading old website files from the Internet Archive (including old .gov sites)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) This link opens in a new window
ICPSR receives, processes, and distributes data on social phenomena in countries across the world. ICPSR maintains a data archive of on topics in the social and behavioral sciences, including specialized collections in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields. Includes survey data, census records, election returns, economic data, and legislative records.
Direct download access to data sets requires the creation of a personal account. In addition, analysis of ICPSR data sets requires the use of specialized software. For more information on this process, please consult the ICPSR Get Help page or schedule an appointment with the Library Data Lab.
Digital Scholar Lab (Gale) This link opens in a new window
Build textual content sets from Gale primary source collections for data visualization and text data mining. Users will need to click Sign In and login with their @berkeley.edu account
Primary source collections include: American Fiction
17th and 18th Century Burney Collection, American Civil Liberties Union Papers, 1912-1990, American Fiction, Archives Unbound, Archives of Sexuality & Gender, British Library Newspapers, The Economist Historical Archive, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Indigenous Peoples: North America, The Making of Modern Law, The Making of the Modern World, Nineteenth Century Collections Online, Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers, Sabin Americana, 1500-1926, The Times Digital Archive, The Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive, U.S. Declassified Documents Online

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U.S. Data and Statistical Sources: Textual Data

Free Public Access to Government Information

Sources of Textual Data