New Public Policy Archive

PolicyArchive is a new, innovative public policy archive of global, non-partisan public policy research brought to us by the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Library and the Center for Governmental Studies, a nonprofit group that encourages civic engagement.

The archive "makes use Internet technology to collect and disseminate summaries and full texts, videos, reports, briefs, and multimedia material of think tank, university, government, and foundation-funded policy research. It offers a subject index, an internal search engine, useful abstracts, email notifications of newly added research, and will soon expand to offer information on researchers and funders, and even user-generated publication reviews. Over time, it will grow to include policy content from international and corporate organizations." (website)

PolicyArchive's goals are ambitious. While it now holds more than 12,000 policy documents from about 220 think tanks and research groups, archive’s developers say they hope to be at 20,000 documents by the end of 2008. They expect to become the largest online repository of public-policy research in the world.

Among the general topics listed is "Media, telecommunications, and information" which is further divided into: Broadcasting, Communication systems, Electronic data processing, transmission, and retrieval, Film and video, Information policy, Journalism and the news, Mass media , Radio, Telecommunications, and Telephone. There is also a general topic of "Culture and Religion," which includes: Arts and arts policy, Cultural heritage and preservation, Culture and civilization, Language and languages, Museums, memorials, and monuments, and Symbols, emblems, and awards, among others.

The archive documents are free and available to all; researchers are encouraged to upload their documents to the site.