The State Library Information Center mission is to preserve and facilitate public access to state government information and provide library resources and services that support the operational needs of state government agencies and Thomas Edison State University employees and students.  Preservation and digitization are key to fulfilling our mission as the principal library of state government.

The New Jersey State Library Digital Collections include

• New Jersey State Publications Digital Library: digitized New Jersey state government publications, including NJ Session Laws and forthcoming Court of Errors and Appeals
• Digital Jerseyana: local history, digitized books, photographs and vintage New Jersey postcards
• Legislative Histories. including bills and supporting documents produced by the Legislature in the bill making process. Compiled by Law Library staff.
• Historic (Superseded) New Jersey Administrative Code

Key New Jersey Documents and Primary Sources

In addition to content we have digitized, we also compile links to key state documents in other repositories:

• Journal and Minutes of the Legislature (1682-current)
• New Jersey Legislative Documents (1848-1921)
• Manual of the Legislature of New Jersey (Fitzgerald’s) (1872-current)
• New Jersey Register (1969-current)
• additional New Jersey Legal Resources
• We use Archive IT to archive key state government websites. These sites are available via the Wayback Machine.

Digital Collections Highlights

A selection of key primary sources digitized and in some cases transcribed by the State Library Information Center.

New Jersey Black History

• Afro-Americans in New Jersey: a short history. by Giles R. Wright; Trenton, NJ, New Jersey Historical Commission, 1989.
• New Jersey African American History Curriculum by Larry A. Greene and Lenworth Gunther.
• History of the New Jersey A.M.E. Church
• See also our research guides: African-American History in New Jersey and Civil Rights in New Jersey, 1945-2020

New Jersey in the American Revolution

• Battles and Skirmishes of the American Revolution in New Jersey
• Official Register of the Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Revolutionary War
• New Jersey in the American Revolution 1763-1783: A Chronology
• New Jersey in the American Revolution 1763-1783: A Documentary History is a collection of primary sources for New Jersey in the American Revolution edited by Larry Gerlach for the Historical Commission.
• Fortunes of War: New Jersey women and the American Revolution by Linda Grant De Pauw
• New Jersey’s Revolutionary Experience

Searchable publications

Our Searchable Publications was an initiative in publishing full text documents online in the early days of the Internet. Key works were chosen for transcription before the invention of OCR and searchable PDF files, so access was provided via a search interface.

• Morgan’s History of the New Jersey Conference of the New Jersey A.M.E. Church
• Official Register of the Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Revolutionary War
• Record of Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Civil War, 1861-1865
• Searchable version of the New Jersey Constitutional Convention Proceedings 1947
• Corporations of New Jersey: List of Certificates to December 31, 1911

Digital Collections Blogs

Spotlighting key digital collections

• Municipal Documents at the New Jersey State Library
• New Jersey State Archives Van Wickle Slave Ring Free Digital Collection
• The Advance and the New Jersey State Reform School
• Historical Company Research: Directories
• The Social History of New Jersey Asylums
• Don’t judge a book by its cover: Celebrating the Fitzgerald’s Legislative Manual
• Cool Things We’ve Cataloged: Thomas A. Edison Memorabilia
• Community Conversations: New Jersey’s COVID 19 Storytelling Project
• New Jersey State Library Public Hearing Collection
• New Jersey LGBT Bars 1930s-1960s in ABC Bulletins
• New Jersey Outdoors: archive now available online
• Great Atlantic Hurricane 1944