Primary Sources
Provides full-text searching and instant access to all titles, volumes, issues, and articles published by the American Chemical Society (ACS). The Archives enables researchers to understand historical discoveries that led to modern chemistry and influenced such fields as biology, physics, medicine, agriculture, and engineering.
Full-text/full-image pages containing early biographies, vital statistics, editorials and advertisements. Newspapers include the Freedom's Journal, The Colored American, The North Star, The National Era, Provincial Freeman, Frederick Douglass Paper, and The Christian Recorder.
An international, collaborative initiative building an online digital library of scholarly resources from and about Africa. The Aluka website includes a wide variety of high-quality scholarly materials contributed by Aluka's partners, ranging from archival documents, periodicals, books, reports, manuscripts, and reference works, to three-dimensional models, maps, oral histories, plant specimens, photographs, and slides.
Allows researchers to search more than 1,000 U.S. historical newspapers published, including titles from all 50 states. Created by Readex through partnerships with the American Antiquarian Society, Library of Congress, Wisconsin Historical Society and others, America's Historical Newspapers enables researchers to explore virtually every aspect of America during the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. As part of the most comprehensive digital archive of historical American newspapers available, this collection currently includes the following three series: Early American Newspapers, Series I, 1690-1876, Early American Newspapers, Series II, 1758-1900, Early American Newspapers, Series III, 1829-1922.
Online genealogical research database providing information on more than 1 billion names and 3000 databases. The database includes selected census records (notably the U.S. Federal Census records between 1790 and 1930), birth, marriage and death, military, probate, and immigration and naturalization records as well as some genealogical newspapers and periodicals. Also included are guides to starting genealogical research and how to gather and organize genealogical information to compile a family history.
A comprehensive source for theory and research in international affairs, CIAO publishes a wide range of scholarship that includes working papers from university research institutes, occasional papers series from NGOs, foundation-funded research projects, proceedings from conferences, policy briefs and case studies by leading scholars.
This is a full-text, full-image collection of newspapers that includes eyewitness accounts and official reports of battles and events from the Civil War. They also include advertisements, news articles and editorials.
Focuses on rare 18th and 19th century maps of the Western Hemisphere, but covers other areas. Features innovative interfaces for searching by area and time range.
Offers a single point of access to millions of freely available digitized items—photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, maps, and more—from America’s libraries, archives, and museums. In addition to a standard search engine, the portal provides searching and access by timeline, map, format, or topic.
This website provides links to primary sources of American history, including historic documents, digital collections from universities and archives, presidential papers, photograph collections and documents from all American conflicts from the French & Indian Wars to Desert Storm.
Based on the renowned American Bibliography by Charles Evans. The definitive resource for every aspect of life in 17th- and 18th-century America, from agriculture and auctions through foreign affairs, diplomacy, literature, music, religion, the Revolutionary War, temperance, witchcraft, and just about any other topic imaginable.
With this series, research westward expansion, the development of American arts, the progression of American political thought and much more. In addition to books, broadsides and pamphlets, the collection includes published reports and the works of many European authors reprinted for the American public. Additionally, a large number of state papers and early government materials chronicle the political and geographic growth of the developing American nation.
America's Historical Newspapers allows researchers to search more than 1,000 U.S. historical newspapers, including titles from all 50 states. Created by Readex through partnerships with the American Antiquarian Society, Library of Congress, Wisconsin Historical Society and others, America's Historical Newspapers enables researchers to explore virtually every aspect of America during the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries.
Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere - from the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War.
Based on the English Short Title Catalogue, this resource provides full-text access to 150,000 English and foreign-language works published in the United Kingdom during the Eighteenth Century. Included are thousands of important works produced in the Americas. There are multiple, full-text searching options to gain access to the 33 million pages of books, sermons, pamphlets and broadsides. This truly multidisciplinary resource includes works in: history; the social sciences; the fine arts; medicine; science and technology; religion and philosophy; law; and literature and languages.
Provides descriptions and holdings information for letterpress materials printed in Great Britain or any of its dependencies in any language--as well as for materials printed in English anywhere else in the world. Coverage is from the beginnings of print to 1800 including all recorded English monographs.
A comprehensive resource for the study of human culture and behavior--more than 750 hours and 1,000 films at completion. Covers every world region and features the work of many of the most influential documentary filmmakers of the 20th century, including interviews, previously unreleased raw footage, field notes, and more.
Presents the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity. The United States Department of State Office of the Historian offers online index searching for documents by keyword as well as limited full-text searching through the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections.
The magazine was intended to entertain, inform, and educate the women of America. In addition to extensive fashion descriptions and plates, the early issues included biographical sketches, articles about mineralogy, handcrafts, female costume, the dance, equestrienne procedures, health & hygiene, recipes & remedies, etc. Each issue also contained two pages of sheet music, written essentially for the piano forte. Gradually the periodical matured into an important literary magazine and contained extensive book reviews and works by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and many other celebrated 19th century authors who regularly furnished the magazine with essays, poetry and short stories. The Lady's Book was also a vast reservoir of handsome illustrations, which included hand-colored fashion plates, mezzotints, engravings, woodcuts, and ultimately chromolithographs.
The state GIS clearinghouse for geospatial data produced by state and federal agencies and other organizations. Requires specialized software for use of datasets. Use of data requires agreement to disclaimer
A core electronic collection of books and journals in Home Economics and related disciplines. Titles were selected and ranked by teams of scholars for their great historical importance. The first phase of this project focused on books and a small number of journals. Future phases of the project will include books published between 1926 and 1950, as well as additional journals. The full text of these materials, as well as bibliographies and essays on the wide array of subjects relating to Home Economics, are all freely accessible on this site. This is the first time a collection of this scale and scope has been made available.
Believed to be the earliest extant copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and dates from soon after Chaucer's death in 1400.
Index to English-language personal narratives, including letters, diaries, memoirs, autobiographies, and oral histories by more than 18,000 individuals. Full text or descriptive records are included.
A full-text resource of more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, from the Anglo-Saxon period to the present. Contains more than 350 full-text literature journals, and other key criticism and reference resources. Provides access to both primary and secondary sources.
Materials accessible here are Cornell University Library's contributions to Making of America (MOA), a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. This site provides access to 267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints. The Making of America collection comprises the digitized pages of books and journals. This system allows you to view scanned images of the actual pages of the 19th century texts.
Making of America (MOA) is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The collection currently contains approximately 8,500 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints.
Provides digital reproductions of every page of every issue--cover to cover--all the way back to the first issue in September 1851. That means researchers can find not only news, editorials, letters to the editor, obituaries, and birth and marriage announcements but also historical photos, drawings, maps, charts, and advertisements. For printing instructions, click here.
Includes the immediate experiences of 1,325 women and 150,000 pages of diaries and letters, which can be browsed or searched in depth.
Portal to key historical map collections including British Library, Harvard University, New York Public Library and many others. Use for a broad search for historical maps.
First place to look for contemporary or recent U.S. and non-U.S. maps. World-wide coverage, arranged geographically. Notable for CIA maps and topographic maps of non-U.S. locations.
The Perseus Project is an evolving digital library of resources covering the history, literature and culture of the Greco-Roman world.
Provides comprehensive access to U.S. legislative information. Includes indexing of congressional publications and legislative histories for public laws from 1970 to the present. Also includes testimony from congressional hearings, information about members of Congress and Congressional committees, and bill tracking.
Sanborn Company's fire insurance maps of New Hampshire are valuable historical documents depicting the development of cities, towns, and neighborhoods. They show outlines of individual buildings, their use and physical characteristics.
Historic maps from over 14,000 volumes of the U.S. Congressional Serial Set. Search for maps by location, subject, personal name, issuing agency, and date. Use to find maps published by many Federal agencies on a wide variety of topics. The searching feature in the Search Hints section gives detailed screen shots of each type of search. Serial Set maps FAQ
A full-text collection of early women’s writing in English, published by the Brown University Women Writers Project. It includes full transcriptions of more than 320 texts published between 1526 and 1850, focusing on materials that are rare or inaccessible.