History Research Guide

A collection of over two million high-quality images, curated from leading museums and archives around the world. Images are rights-cleared for education and research, and include open access content and rare materials.

Includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from 1740 to 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals.

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 1473-1700 - 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.

EBSCO Publishing, in cooperation with the John Carter Brown Library, has created this resource from “European Americana: A Chronological Guide to Works Printed In Europe Relating to The Americas, 1493-1750,” the authoritative bibliography that is well-known and respected by scholars worldwide. The database contains more than 32,000 entries and is a comprehensive guide to printed records about the Americas written in Europe before 1750.

The Gerritsen curators gathered more than 4,700 publications from continental Europe, the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand, dating from 1543 through 1945.

Comprises the complete archive of the British photojournalistic magazine Picture Post from its first issue in 1938 to its last in 1957, digitized from originals in full color.

Access unique primary source material from leading archives and libraries around the world. Content spans the humanities and social sciences, from medieval manuscripts to 20th century global politics. Publisher Adam Matthew provides access to all their products through one search engine.

Focusing predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, Brooklyn, and towns and cities in North Carolina, this collection presents multiple aspects of the African American community through personal diaries and scrapbooks, pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records, and in-depth oral histories. It reveals the prevalent challenges of racism, discrimination and integration, and a unique African American culture and identity.

Explore five centuries of journeys across the globe, scientific discoveries, the expansion of European colonialism, conflict over territories and trade routes, and decades-long search and rescue attempts in this multi-archive collection dedicated to the history of exploration. The focus is on European and European-American maritime exploration, from early Portuguese and Spanish Atlantic voyages to polar exploration of the Twentieth Century.

Explore the stories of U.S. military personnel and civilians during World War II through their oral histories, correspondence, diaries, photographs, artifacts, and military records. This digital resource offers an insight into the personal experiences of those involved in the conflict, both on the United States home front and on deployment overseas in Europe, the Mediterranean, the Pacific, China, Burma, and India.

Comprised of original manuscripts, rare printed books, maps and ephemeral material from the Everett D. Graff Collection of Western Americana at the Newberry Library, Chicago, American West is a source for the study of westward U.S. expansion from the 18th to the 20th century. Including documents from 1718-1968, it has tales of frontier life, Native Americans, vigilantes and outlaws, as well as evidence of the growth of urban centres, the environmental impact of westward expansion and life in the borderlands.

This collection of Foreign Office (United Kingdom) files explores the history of Persia (Iran), Central Asia, and Afghanistan from the decline of the Silk Road in the first half of the nineteenth century to the establishment of Soviet rule over parts of the region in the early 1920s. It encompasses an era of political and diplomatic confrontation between the Russian and British Empires for influence, territory, and trade across a vast region, from the Black Sea in the west to the Pamir Mountains in the east.

Spanning three centuries (c1750-1929), this digital collection makes available for the first time extremely rare pamphlets from the Charles W. Wason Collection on East Asia, at Cornell University Library; one of the oldest and most distinctive collections of its kind, and a very rich source for research on China.

With documents encompassing events from the earliest English embassy to the birth and early years of the Peoples Republic, this resource collects sources from nine archives to give an incredible insight into the changes in China during the period of 1793-1980.

Stretching from Jamaica and the Bahamas to Trinidad and Tobago, Colonial Caribbean makes available materials from Colonial Office (United Kingdom) files from The National Archives, UK. Covering the history of the various territories under British colonial governance from 1624 to 1870, this resource includes administrative documentation, trade and shipping records, minutes of council meetings, and details of plantation life, colonial settlement, and imperial rivalries across the region.

Discover five centuries of advice literature from the mid-15th to early 20th century. Research the ideals of social conduct, power distribution within the family, consumption and leisure, education of men and women and gendered perceptions of the body to analyse and challenge the changing views and ideas surrounding traditional gender roles.

Access a vast collection of primary source documents from the India Office Records held by the British Library, the single most important archive for the study of the East India Company and the British Empire in South Asia and the Indian Ocean world. Records include royal charters, correspondence, trading diaries, minutes of council meetings, and reports of expeditions, covering the time period 1599 to 1947.

A resource for the study of American social, cultural, and popular history, providing access to rare primary source material from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History, Duke University and The New York Public Library. It comprises thousands of fully searchable images (alongside transcriptions) of monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes.

This digital archive reveals the voices and experiences of the men and women who served in the First World War and is a source for anyone studying and researching the Great War.' Material includes letters and diaries of service people, maps, photo albums, artwork, oral histories, official documents, newspapers, posters and much more, covering all aspects of the global conflict.

This resource aims to showcase the transformation of America into a modern, urban, industrial global power through business, legal, and personal papers chosen from archives and libraries across the United States. The bulk of the material ranges from 1870-1920, which most historians agree as the time span of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, with some personal collections continuing later into the twentieth century. Collections range from papers of key industrial corporations, charities, influential families, and cultural institutions, to rich visual content in the form of political cartoons, photographs, and ephemera.

Sources from the Edward E. Ayer Collection at the Newberry Library, Chicago. From early contacts between European settlers and American Indians and the subsequent political, social and cultural effects of those encounters on American Indian life, these materials tell both the historical and the personal stories of the colonization of the Americas. Continuing through to the modern era, and told against the backdrop of the nineteenth-century expansion of the United States, right through to the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century.

Edward S. Morse (1838-1925) was a polymath notable for his work in zoology, natural history, ethnography, and art history, but was perhaps most famous for his work in bringing Japan and the West closer together. Devoting much of his life to the task of documenting life in Japan before it was transformed by Western modernization, Meiji Japan offers full access to Morse's diaries, journals, and correspondence on a myriad of subjects from that time.

Consisting primarily of Spanish-language sources, this resource explores Mexico’s history from colonization, the War of Independence, the National Period, and
Reform, up to the Mexican Revolution through printed and manuscript material drawn from the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley. From Spanish contact with Indigenous communities to the onset of the Mexican Revolution, students will be able to explore key themes of religion, politics, and conflict throughout Mexico’s history.

This collection of films reveals war, history, current affairs, culture, and society as seen through a socialist lens. It spans most of the twentieth century and covers countries such as the USSR, Vietnam, China, Korea, East Germany and much of Eastern Europe, Britain, and Cuba.

Discover over 51 million images, texts, videos, and sounds digitized by libraries across the United States.

A non-profit digital library offering free universal access to books, movies, and music

Includes over seven million records describing archival materials, bringing together information about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more. With over 1,400 archival institutions represented, ArchiveGrid helps researchers looking for primary source materials held in archives, libraries, museums and historical societies.