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Early State Records

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Overview

Early State Records, contains a compilation of the microfilm collection Records of the States of the United States of America that was created in the 1940's.

Included in the original project were: constitutions, the debates of constitutional conventions; statutes and early versions of compiled laws; journals and debates of the legislative bodies of the thirteen original states; administrative, executive, and court records; local, county, and city records; broadsides; records of the Native American nations; and newspapers covering British Colonial America and post-Revolutionary development.   The entire collection totals roughly 2,500,000 pages or images (approximately 1900 reels including at least one supplement.)

Provider: 
Law Library Microform Consortium [1]
Posted: 
Sep 7, 2016 12:42pm
Updated: 
Jun 2, 2019 12:05am
Source
CRL reviews are based on independent research. Information is researched by CRL staff and other specialists at CRL libraries. See CRL Review for additional source notes.
Details

Collection Content

Subject Areas: 
Arts and Humanities
Social Sciences
Resource Types: 
Archival materials
Economic information
Government publications
Government records
Laws and regulations
Legal documents
Newspapers
Print journals
Reports
Direct from Publisher - Denotes data sourced directly from publisher

Terms and Provider Details

Provider: 
Law Library Microform Consortium [1]
Website: 
http://www.llmc.com [2]
Main Address: 
P.O. Box 211284 (mail address)
2919 West Service Road (shipping address)
Eagan, MN 55121
United States
CRL Review
Collection Content: 

The Early State Records microfilming project was undertaken in the 1940’s by the Library of Congress in cooperation with hundreds of state and local agencies, academic institutions, and private collectors. The collection totals roughly 2,500,000 pages or images (approximately 1900 reels including at least one supplement). The project covered constitutional, legislative, executive, and administrative judiciary records of the first 48 states from their founding through the beginning of the 20th century, with the end date varying from state to state. 

Included in the original project were: constitutions, the debates of constitutional conventions; statutes and early versions of compiled laws; journals and debates of the legislative bodies of the thirteen original states; administrative, executive, and court records; local, county, and city records; broadsides; records of the Native American nations; and newspapers covering British Colonial America and post-Revolutionary development. 

In 2016, LLMC solicited contributions from its membership to fund "Phase One" of the Early State Records digitization, which includes content from the states on the Atlantic seaboard (13 original colonies + Maine and Florida) as well as all the Native American documents in the collection. Phase One digitization is expected to encompass 919 reels, roughly half of the microfilm collection. As of June 2017, LLMC had substantially completed digitization of records for Florida, Connecticut, and New York, among select material from other states. Phase One is estimated to require three years to complete.

Delivery: 

Material is hosted in LLMC-Digital [2] alongside other resources created by LLMC for its members. Work done to date on the digitization of this collection may be found at: http://www.llmc.com/collection.aspx?type=4&coll=501 [3].

Content is organized by state and by jurisdiction and/or type of document. LLMC Digital allows users search the full text of the entire collection, or within a subset of the collection. Search results are organized by title, volume and page within a volume, with text snippets highlighting the search terms. LLMC creates metadata at the document level, including title “abstracts” for relevant documents.

LLMC is preparing an additional call for funding for Phase One to support enhancement of metadata, including transcription of handwritten manuscripts. 

Terms: 

Terms of access and use are governed by Terms and Conditions of participation in LLMC Digital. Annual subscriptions are available for LLMC-Digital from LLMC (all CRL members may access LLMC resources by virtue of CRL's partnership with LLMC [4]).

Strengths and Weaknesses: 

The collection of Early State Records fulfills a significant gap in the historical record of the formation and governance of the U.S. states. As one scholar has noted [5], "The biggest obstacle to writing American legal history, in my view, is the dearth and inaccessibility of records of state legislative deliberations.  Certainly before the twentieth century, and arguably up to the present day, the bulk of American governance has been at the state level, and yet for the entirety of the 1800s and most of the 1900s, there are no records at all of the floor debates in nearly all the state legislatures, nor are the records much more substantial when it comes to other legislative proceedings, such as committee deliberations and reports." Digitization of this collection will expose a wealth of primary source materials from early colonial times to the eve of the American Civil War, largely obscured or inaccessible to scholars.The materials covered by this proposed digitization project complement the somewhat parallel commercial product from Readex, American State Papers [6], which focuses on Federal material. 

The collection is hosted within LLMC Digital. As such, utilizing the collection as a discrete body of materials may pose some challenges, particularly for researchers unfamiliar with LLMC's content organization  and platform functionality. LLMC has expressed the intent to create tutorials to provide tips on searching and using LLMC resources. 

Reviewers: 

James Simon, Center for Research Libraries

Sources

Sources for this review include information publicly posted or obtained directly from the publisher; data collected by CRL staff and specialists at CRL libraries; and examination of the digital collection when possible. Other sources are noted where cited. CRL continues to gather additional information on this resource and to solicit critical assessment.
CRL Offers & Status
StatusCurrentDescription
CRL FlaggednoPotential interest to CRL community
Offer PendingnoCurrently a candidate for CRL offer
Active OffernoCurrently offered for purchase or new subscription
Trial AccessnoAvailable for trial
Renewal OffernoCurrently offered for renewal
Expired OfferyesPast offers
Inactive / DeclinednoNo longer under consideration by CRL
Reviewed by CRLyesEvaluation available by CRL and community
Special AccessnoMember-only access available for a limited time
The complete offer and activity details for this resource are only available to CRL members.

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Source URL: https://edesiderata.crl.edu/resources/early-state-records

Links
[1] https://edesiderata.crl.edu/providers/law-library-microform-consortium
[2] http://www.llmc.com
[3] http://www.llmc.com/collection.aspx?type=4&coll=501
[4] https://www.crl.edu/collaborations/global-resources-partnerships/law-library-microform-consortium
[5] http://legalhistoryblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/researching-state-legislative-records.html
[6] http://www.readex.com/content/american-state-papers-1789-1838