Protecting the right to freely speak, assemble, publish, and petition the government

Freedom of the press is guaranteed in the Constitution. Legal defense groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union have the training and resources to protect vulnerable individuals and organizations from attempts to shut down or curtail the right of free speech. While many of these groups have served journalists for decades, at all levels of justice, intimidation of the press continues to rise. Knowing what these groups do and how contact them is a fundamental part of the journalist’s arsenal.

Led by the Internet Archive, a substantial number of the world's historical repositories are digital-only, and are accessed solely through the internet. Some, like Common Crawl Foundation, constrain their content to internet documents and artifacts, others have both natively-digital items, and digitized versions of physical things in their collections. The volume of digital materials available in today's virtual archive is vast. As of this writing, the Internet Archive has officially captured 1 trillion web pages.

Sample entities in this section include the IBM archive, Warner archive, DuPont archive, and the B&O Railway archive. Artifacts and documents in these collections include patents, market research, advertising art, sales contracts, union contracts, photographs, statistics, merger records, and more.

A representative sampling of official and unofficial facilities documenting service records, uniforms, weapons, photographs, propaganda posters, oral histories, diaries, news reports, battle histories, and gravesite locations.

A representative sampling of repositories cataloging the histories of game rules, athletes, fans and the culture of sports.

Features maps and atlases, and gazettes from past to present, showcasing the dynamic nature of borders, nations, and socioeconomic divisions. Entities represented, including David Rumsey Historical Map Collection (Stanford) and Austrian National Library Map Archive, manage hundreds of thousands of maps and related artifacts, categorized by period, location, cartographer, and country of origin.

This representative sample of law libraries reflects the global nature of law. Many of these entities offer access to case law, legislation, and other legal resources. Included: Harvard Law Historical & Special Collections Archive, and British and Irish Legal Information Institute.

Institutions and services listed here, including the 10 Million Names project, provide resources such as birth and death records, digitized city directories, yearbooks, military records, and maps.

Crafts, clothing, posters, documentary footage, folk art, stonework, and more.

Covering lesser-known but important histories, this catalogue includes subject matter ranging from the AIDS Memorial Quilt Records at the American Folklife Center to UNESCO's Memory of the World program.

As a record of American life, the sixteen Presidential libraries in the United States preserve crucial documents. The first U.S. president to be granted a Presidential library was Franklin D. Roosevelt. All libraries and archives are operated by the National Archives and Records Administration. Presidential libraries are uncommon in other countries, but some are in this list.

This collection offers a global overview of TV, newspaper, and radio history, featuring original artifacts, lost media, and restorations. Many of these institutions, such as the UCLA Film & Television Archive, are dedicated to preserving and showcasing rare works.

Explore the history of film, photography, audio and video from around the world, from the invention of these technologies to present-day entertainment, news, and documentary landscapes. While individual archives vary, examples of their holdings range from visual art pieces to photojournalism and audiovisual historical recordings depicting political, military, social, economic, and cultural situations.

This catalogue presents archives focused on the written world, spanning the languages and cultures of the world. The collections encompass holdings as diverse as diaries and biographies on Azerbaijan's national heroes, to National Central Library of Florence's exquisite set of renaissance manuscripts and rare books.

This section features a compilation of nonprofit repositories, such as the Rockefeller Archive Center and the Rothschild Archives, spanning a broad spectrum of historical artifacts, art, and manuscripts. Each institution offers a specialized collection containing thousands of materials, ranging from revolutionary films to documentation of propaganda.

This section contains listings for non-governmental entities, like CERN and OECD, who manage data and publication histories within the fields of pure science, math, technology, engineering, and health, along with access to online repositories of internationally recognized research. Each repository offers a specialized history in its field of study, featuring displays of artifacts and scientific documents.

The U.S. government is the world's largest publisher, generating thousands of documents daily. This section features a wide array of historical, cultural, economic, scientific, and census documents concerning the United States, including congressional bills, laws, regulations, presidential documents, census reports, and items of anthropological and archaeological interest. Other governments have similarly modeled archives, included here.

This section features institutions that collectively manage millions of artifacts collected through research and academic field work, but also including important collections bequeathed by private donors. Most facilities offer both physical and digitized collections.

This section highlights institutions, both large and small, doing important work to document the history and culture of communities. The included libraries and archives detail the lives of people, past and present, and their diverse regional experiences. Materials found at these locations include anything from writings, papers and clothing, to photographs and recordings.

This section features a representative listing of the world's museums, ranging from Presidential Libraries and Museums to the special collections of the Timorese Resistance Archive and Museum. Featured items range from rotating exhibitions on local professional sports to materials documenting subjugated and oppressed peoples.

National repositories are typically diverse in content, managing artifacts and information spanning the spectrum of a country's history, including science, culture, language, law, politics, military, and genealogy. Most contain multiple important collections, and maintain high standards of preservation.

Institutions dedicated to large-scale artifact capture and management across multiple categories

The Library of Congress, British Library, and UNESCO Digital Library are listed here. Other national repositories from around the globe are catalogued in this section, along with significant standalone entities like the Internet Archive.

Guide to Public Archives is a tool to navigate the world’s academic and cultural repositories, both physical and digital. It provides essential thumbnails on subject matter and contact information.

Backgrounder

All journalism is investigative. Facts are checked; quotes verified. However, the field known as investigative journalism is a form that requires intuition, detective skills, disciplined writing and editing, and the determination to follow a trail when the outcome is uncertain. 

Data journalism, also known as data-driven journalism, is reportage that creates a story based on information formed through analysis of data. The data can be gathered from any valid source, including statistics and data visualizations. Data journalism can bring together diverse flows of information available in the digital age to enhance a news story.

A guide to the top-12 J-schools.

A broad network of international archives, libraries, and nonprofit institutions dedicated to preserving, restoring, and providing access to film, audiovisual media, broadcasts, and cultural documentation, supporting research, education, and public engagement with global visual, audio, and historical heritage.