External Resource: The American Presidency Project

About the Presidency Project:

The APP is affiliated with UC Santa Barbara and was launched in 1999 when then-graduate student Gerhard Peters joined with John Woolley to develop resources for students taking Political Science 157, The American Presidency. As the resources in the course website expanded, it became obvious that it was being accessed by an array of general users outside the University.

Our goal today is to be recognized as the authoritative, non-partisan on-line source for presidential public documents. By providing easy access to useful information, we seek to promote a more informed citizenry of the United States, high quality scholarly and media analysis, and a better understanding of American democracy throughout the world.

A few principles have guided us in developing the APP. These began with our goal of providing a resource for college students, but these turn out to be useful for all kinds of users.

Accurate. We have emphasized faithful reproduction of original published document sources--even when those involved errors. We add notes when relevant to point out error in the published document.

Categories. Documents are tagged with descriptive information that help locate similar types or categories.

Search. Users can search using user-defined words or phrases with restrictions as to president, dates, and document attributes. Starting in late 2018, these searches can be quite long and complicated and are case-sensitive. Users can browse through time-periods.

Inclusive. Our goal, still an aspiration, is to include all public presidential documents, related key historical documents, and basic statistics needed to study the presidency.

Analytical. We provide introductory essays to many topics with historical background, descriptions of main trends, and cautions about interpreting data.