Presidential Papers (01/09)
LexisNexis carries documents from all branches of government. The database Public Papers of the Presidents contains the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents and the annually produced Public Papers of the Presidents which are issued by the White House press office. Among other documents, this database contains writings, news conferences, executive orders, radio addresses, and nominations of the president. The source is located on lexis.com® via the following path:
Legal > Federal Legal - U.S. > Find Statutes, Regulations, Administrative Materials & Court Rules > Executive Branch Materials > Public Papers of the Presidents
You can use several segments when searching this database. One of the most useful is the headline segment. The headline segment can be used to retrieve the President’s State of the Union speeches. The database contains the President’s State of the Union speeches dated back to 1982. For example, to retrieve the President’s State of the Union speech from 2007, run the following search:
headline(state of the union) and date is 2007
To locate executive orders of the President use the headline segment and include both the phrase “executive order” and the number of the executive order in the segment. For instance, to retrieve Executive Order 13204, use the following search:
headline(executive order and 13204)
Radio addresses can also be located using the headline segment. When searching for radio addresses, it is best to search by date rather than the name of the president. For instance to retrieve all radio addresses of President Bush in 2008, run the following search:
headline(radio address) and date is 2008
That search retrieves 47 radio addresses in 2008. If you had included President Bush’s name in the search, the search would have only retrieved 3 documents. This is a good illustration that it is often better to use a broader search strategy rather than a more narrow and focused strategy.
Another very useful segment is the person segment. By combining this segment with a free-text search, you can locate remarks of a particular president on different subjects. The following search can be used to locate remarks by President Bush on the Patriot Act:
person(bush) and patriot act
For additional information on Public Papers of the President, segment searching, or free-text searching, visit the LexisNexis Support Center.
