Digital Collections on Constitutional History of U.S. and Canada

1) The Library of Congress American Memory Project recently updated one of its main digital collections entitled Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention.

The collection brings together documents related to the work of the Continental Congress, dating from 1774 to 1789. Most items are extracts of the journals of Congress, resolutions, proclamations, treaties, and other congressional proceedings as well as early printed versions of the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

2) I wanted to see if Canada had any equivalent "official" digital collections on our constitutional history. Three would qualify:

• Industry Canada, through the SchoolNet Digital Collections program, funded the creation of the online collection Charlottetown Conference of 1864 about the major conference that led to Confederation in 1867
• The National Archives ( now part of Library and Archives Canada), created Canada’s Constitutional Evolution , an exhibit that spans 4 centuries with a focus on constitutional documents from the "Édit de création du Conseil souverain de Québec" of 1663 to the Proclamation of the Constitution Act, 1982
• Library and Archives Canada offers the Canadian Confederation website which features much rare material from the institution's historical collections. It includes documents, articles, photographs and a major bibliography