Government Documents Resources: History, Arts, and Culture

Citations & abstracts for articles on the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada, which are covered in America: History and Life).

Here you can learn all about FBI records—including how to find records already released and how to request unreleased records through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or the Privacy Act. You can also find other information that will help you understand these records and the work of the FBI.

Enter your zip code and find the public library closest to you.

State Libraries are regional depositories of government documents and thus collect 100% of the material that the Government Printing Office publishes. It is the responsibility of regional libraries to retain a copy of all government publications received and provide services such as interlibrary loan and reference to selective depository libraries it serves.

The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution, the research arm of Congress, and the largest library in the world. It is also home to the U.S. Copyright Office.

Research your family history, military records, or a variety of other topics. They are the nation’s record keeper and preserve documents with legal and historical value.

The Presidential Libraries are archives and museums that bring together the documents and artifacts of a President and his administration.

Find more federal libraries around the world.

Find an A-Z list of American history topics and resources on the U.S. Constitution, Liberty Bell, flag, and more.

Find Census, immigration, and military records, and record-finding aids for genealogists and family historians.

from the National Park Service

The National Gallery of Art has one of the finest art collections in the world. It was created for the people of the United States of America by a joint resolution of Congress accepting the gift of financier, public servant, and art collector Andrew W. Mellon in 1937.

The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) collections are among the largest and most heavily used in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. dministered since 1933 through cooperative agreements with the National Park Service, the Library of Congress, and the private sector, ongoing programs of the National Park Service have recorded America's built environment in multiformat surveys comprising more than 556,900 measured drawings, large-format photographs, and written histories for more than 38,600 historic structures and sites dating from Pre-Columbian times to the twentieth century.

The Senate maintains over 70 paintings created by some of America's preeminent artists, commemorating many of the great persons and events of our national history.

The National Endowment for the Arts was established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. To date, the NEA has awarded more than $4 billion to support artistic excellence, creativity, and innovation for the benefit of individuals and communities.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency created in 1965. It is one of the largest funders of humanities programs in the United States.

All 50 states and the six U.S. jurisdictions (American Samoa, District of Columbia, Guam, Northern Marianas, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands) have state arts agencies. Visit NASAA's state arts agency directory to learn more about your own state arts agency.

The Architect of the Capitol preserves the Capitol facilities and grounds while providing Congress with safe, comfortable, efficient, and modern office environments. The AOC is responsible for the vigilant stewardship of more than 30 buildings and leased spaces located both on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. and in remote facilities.

Architecture/Fine Arts Division is responsible for the commissioning and care of all artworks in the GSA's Fine Arts Collection. The Art in Architecture Program commissions American artists to create publicly scaled and permanently installed artworks for federal buildings nationwide.

Apply for grants through the NEA website.

The collections in the Center's Archive of Folk Culture include folk cultural material from all fifty states, as well as United States trusts, territories, and the District of Columbia. The Center includes the Archive of Folk Culture, which was established in the Library of Congress in 1928, and is now one of the largest collections of ethnographic material from the United States and around the world.

Prelinger Archives was founded in 1983 by Rick Prelinger in New York City. Over the next twenty years, it grew into a collection of over 60,000 "ephemeral" (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films. In 2002, the film collection was acquired by the Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. Prelinger Archives remains in existence, holding approximately 5,000 digitized and videotape titles (all originally derived from film) and a large collection of home movies, amateur and industrial films acquired since 2002. Its goal remains to collect, preserve, and facilitate access to films of historic significance that haven't been collected elsewhere.

The nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institute

The national park system comprises 401 areas covering more than 84 million acres in every state (except Delaware), the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. These areas include national parks, monuments, battlefields, military parks, historical parks, historic sites, lakeshores, seashores, recreation areas, scenic rivers and trails, and the White House.

The Local Legacies project was initiated by members of Congress and individuals across the nation to commemorate the Library of Congress Bicentennial and to celebrate America's richly diverse culture. For more than a year, Local Legacies teams documented the creative arts, crafts, and customs representing traditional community life; signature events such as festivals and parades; how communities observe local and national historical events; and the occupations that define a community's life. More than three-fourths of Congress and 4,000 Americans have been a part of this once-in-a-lifetime project.

Cultural Resources are evidence of past human activity. These may include pioneer homes, buildings or old roads; structures with unique architecture; prehistoric village sites; historic or prehistoric artifacts or objects; rock inscription; human burial sites; earthworks, such as battlefield entrenchments, prehistoric canals, or mounds. These nonrenewable resources often yield unique information about past societies and environments, and provide answers for modern day social and conservation problems. Although many have been discovered and protected, there are numerous forgotten, undiscovered, or unprotected cultural resources in rural America.

Teaching resources from the Smithsonian Institution.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture is a place where all Americans can learn about the richness and diversity of the African American experience, what it means to their lives, and how it helped us shape this nation.

Presented here are BLS data that provide an economic snapshot of African Americans in the United States today.

70 collections of multimedia resources about African American history, from the colonial period to the present

USA.gov site in Spanish

The Hispanic Reading Room serves as the primary access point for research relating to those parts of the world encompassing the geographical areas of the Caribbean, Latin America, and Iberia; the indigenous cultures of those areas; and peoples throughout the world historically influenced by Luso-Hispanic heritage, including Latinos in the U.S., and peoples of Portuguese or Spanish heritage in Africa, Asia, and Oceania.

This website highlights projects undertaken by National Park Service parks and programs as part of the Service’s commitment to telling the American Latino story. Projects vary from increased interpretation, collaboration with community organizations, and the production of scholarly documentation.

The Asian Reading Room is the primary public access point for researchers seeking to use the Asian collections of the Library of Congress in the many languages of Asia. The reading room covers the area from the South Asian subcontinent and Southeast Asia to China, Japan, Korea, and Mongolia. With over 2.8 million books, periodicals and newspapers, a large number of manuscripts, and electronic media, the collections are the most comprehensive sources of Asian language materials outside of Asia.

The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in paying tribute to the generations of Asian and Pacific Islanders who have enriched America’s history and are instrumental in its future success.

Demographics and health statistics from the Center of Disease Control.

Links provided by Oklahoma Department of Libraries U.S. Government Information Division.

Find contact information for state, local, and tribal governments.

A diverse and multifaceted cultural and educational enterprise, the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) is an active and visible component of the Smithsonian Institution, the world's largest museum complex. The NMAI cares for one of the world's most expansive collections of Native artifacts, including objects, photographs, archives, and media covering the entire Western Hemisphere, from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego.

The National Archives holds information about American Indians who maintained their ties to Federally-recognized Tribes (1830-1970). Most records are arranged by tribe.

Every racial or ethnic group has specific health concerns.
On this page, you'll find links to health issues that affect Native Americans.

Information on Native American Heritage Month