Web Resource of the Week: Get State of the State speeches and more state political information

Web Resource of the Week is our new semi-regular feature on neat and interesting reference resources that are freely available online. For our first post in this new series we are featuring Stateline.org, and we are highlighting their speech archive. In a fashion similar to the President's Annual State of the Union Address, state governors give State of the State Addresses. Those speeches usually take place early in the year. For instance, Governors Schwarzenegger (R-CA), Steve Beshear (D-KY), and David Paterson (D-NY) delivered their speeches for the previous year on January 6th. These speeches are significant because governors use them to discuss their vision and priorities for their state in these speeches. But what if you missed your governor's speech? How about if you want to review an older speech? Or you need to know when your governor is giving his/her speech? You can find these answers and more at Stateline.org. The website provides a schedule of State of the State speeches, and an archive of the state speeches going back to 2000. However, this website offers a lot more. Stateline provides "reporting on emerging trends and issues in state policy and politics" (from the About page). They are a nonprofit, non-partisan news site that's part of the Pew Center on the States. So, what else can you get from this site?

• You can browse the top state policy and politics news by state or by topics such as education, crime, health care, and taxes.
• Stateline publishes reference materials, which they make available to the public for free. Their annual "State of the States" report, for example, is released every January. You can download these reports, going back five years, from the website (note: reports available in PDF format).
• They have compiled lists state political blogs as well as political issue blogs. This is helpful for readers interested on following state government. The lists can be perused by issue or by state. Once you find a blog, you can choose to subscribe to it via RSS feed.
• And speaking of RSS, Stateline offers their own RSS feeds as well. You can subscribe to a variety of feeds by topic, or you can just get the headlines.
• You still need more state-related information? Stateline has a pretty comprehensive list of state public policy resources.

Regardless of political affiliation, readers will find very good, reliable state policy and politics information on the website. For the convenience of our patrons, I have also placed a link to Stateline.org in our Political Science Subject Guide. You will find that link under the tab for "Additional web resources." If you do take a look at this resource, feel free to let us know what you think about it in the comments. A hat tip to Resource Shelf.