ON POINT: Researching presidents of the United States

As the month of February comes to a close, it’s a good time to brush up on your knowledge of the 44 presidents of the United States. You could go see the movie “Lincoln” or pick up one of the many recent bestseller presidential biographies, but why not explore the vast amount of information available at your fingertips.

There are many sources of information about U.S. presidents, ranging from quirky trivia to scholarly research, available online. I have selected a few resources to highlight, including two of my favorites, the Library of Congress Virtual Services’ Presidents of the United States website and The American Presidency Project.

A warning — these sites contain so much interesting information, you may lose all track of time.

A terrific place to begin research is a presidential resource guide prepared by the Library of Congress. Beginning with George Washington, the guides highlight a wealth of information from various primary sources available in the Library of Congress digital collections.

Resources include letters, manuscripts, government documents, photographs, and a variety of media such as sound recordings and film. The resource guides also provide bibliographies for further reading and links to external websites: www.loc.gov/rr/program/ bib/presidents.

The Library of Congress receives frequent requests for presidential portraits. To keep up with these requests, a collection of formal and informal images has been created. The “By Popular Demand” collection contains at least one likeness of every president and most first ladies. Images may be searched by keyword or browsed by name or subject.

An explanation of the collection, links to additional information, and a bibliography of books for further reading are included, memory.loc.gov/ammem/odmdhtml/preshome.html.

The American Presidency Project is a collaboration between John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The site contains more than 103,000 electronic documents related to the presidency that have been compiled into a single searchable database.

In addition to documents such as presidential papers, executive orders and signing statements, researchers will find presidential Saturday addresses, debate transcripts and State of the Union addresses. The site has a host of quantitative data that is presented in tables and graphs, including the number of presidential news conferences arranged by year, federal budget receipts and outlays, and presidential job approval.

Presidential election data is arranged by election year and provides information such as nominees, vice-president nominees, electoral and popular vote. There is a media section that includes audio and video of various addresses, remarks, and news conferences given by presidents from Herbert Hoover to the present, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ index.php.

By law, individual income tax returns are private information and may not be disclosed without authorization. This privacy protection extends to public figures, including U.S. presidents. Since the early 1970s, most presidents have released their tax returns to the public.

The Tax History Project, sponsored by Tax Analysts, provides an archive of individual income tax returns made public by presidents dating back to Richard Nixon. In addition, the site has Franklin Roosevelt’s tax returns from 1913 to 1937. These tax returns were not released during FDR’s presidency but were later made public by his presidential library. The Tax History Project has begun collecting tax returns from recent presidential candidates, including those running in party primaries, www.taxhistory.org/www/website.nsf/Web/PresidentialTaxReturns.

Presidents often make headlines by vetoing or threatening to veto a bill sent to them by Congress. The U.S. Senate’s Virtual Reference Library explains the veto process, defines a pocket veto, and offers a brief history of the Line Item Veto Act. The veto procedures of both the House and Senate are described.

The site provides summaries of bills vetoed from 1789 to the present, including whether Congress overrode the veto. Analysis of veto histories can highlight the relationship between the executive and legislative branches of government and the system of checks and balances, www.senate.gov/reference/reference_index_subjects/Vetoes_vrd.htm.

The Senate’s Virtual Reference Library is also a good place to start when researching Supreme Court nominations. Presidents have the power to submit nominations to the Senate for review and consent. The site provides a chart of all nominations officially submitted to the Senate from 1789 to the present.
Each president’s nominees are listed, as is the justice they are to replace, the date the nomination was submitted, the vote tally, the result (confirmed, rejected, withdrawn, postponed, or no action taken), and the date of the vote, www.senate.gov/pagelayout/reference/nominations/Nominations. htm.
Presidential libraries’ websites are terrific sources of information and I cannot do them justice in a single article. The National Archives provides links to and information about the 13 presidential libraries, using the online collections and virtual tours, participating in educational programming, and planning visits to the libraries. www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/.
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Marie Calvaruso is the director of Libraries and Research Services at Harris Beach PLLC. She holds master’s degrees in business administration and library science. She is a past president of the Association of Law Libraries of Upstate New York and has served on the membership and retention committee of the American Association of Law Libraries.