History: Primary Materials

The database is founded on Joseph Sabin's renowned Bibliotheca Americana. Sabin touches upon the political and religious life in North America and at times South America and the Caribbean. It features American and European views of the colonization of the Americas, the American Revolution, the days of the early Republic and Jacksonian period, the antebellum period, Civil War, era of Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction, the settlement of the West and the onset of the Gilded Age. Through published pamphlets, tracts, memoirs, congressional legislation, correspondence, broadsides, biographies, histories, fiction and poetry, eulogies, sermons and innumerable other genres, Sabin opens a window onto the Americas through which few get to glimpse.

The Gilded Age brings primary documents and scholarly commentary together into a searchable collection that is the definitive electronic resource for students and scholars researching this important period in American history. In addition to an extensive selection of key treatises that reflect the social and cultural ferment of the late nineteenth century, The Gilded Age offers a wealth of rare materials, including songs, letters, photographs, cartoons, government documents, and ephemera. This primary content is enhanced by video interviews with scholars and numerous topical critical documentary essays specially commissioned for the project by Alexander Street Press. Covering such themes as race, labor, immigration, commerce, western expansion, and women’s suffrage, these essays illuminate the rapidly changing cultural landscape of America during the decades between the end of the Civil War and the election of Theodore Roosevelt.

This unrivaled online library offers instant access to the theories, practices, and consequences of economic and business activity in the West, from the last half of the 15th century to the eve of World War I. It combines the strengths of two pre-eminent collections — the Goldsmiths' Library of Economic Literature at the University of London Library and the Kress Collection of Business and Economics at the Harvard Business School — along with supplementary materials from the Seligman Collection in the Butler Library at Columbia University and from the libraries of Yale University.

The database is a joint venture of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and Stanford University. Matthew Parker (1504-75) was a powerful figure of the English Reformation who was largely responsible for the Church of England as a national institution. A benefactor to the University of Cambridge, Parker's greatest tangible legacy is library of manuscripts and early printed books entrusted to Corpus Christi College in 1574. The Parker Library's holdings of Old English texts account for a substantial portion of all extant manuscripts in Anglo-Saxon. The library also contains key Anglo-Norman and Middle English texts along with a magnificent collection of illuminated manuscripts. Scholars in a variety of disciplines - including historians of art, music, science, literature, politics and religion - will find invaluable resources in the Parker Library.

The American Founding Era collection is a gateway into one of the great conversations in history. These newly prepared digital editions of the papers of Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Washington are presented in a fully searchable and interoperable environment.

The database offers an important destination for searching historical documents, personal papers, and family histories in archives around the world.
Thousands of libraries, museums, and archives have contributed nearly a million collection descriptions to ArchiveGrid. Researchers searching ArchiveGrid can learn about the many items in each of these collections, contact archives to arrange a visit to examine materials, and order copies.

Black Abolitionist Papers--This collection offers access to a unique set of primary sources from African Americans actively involved in the movement to end slavery in the United States between 1830 and 1865. The content includes letters, speeches, editorials, articles, sermons, and essays from libraries and archives in England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, and the United States.

Black Freedom Struggle in the United States - this open access database, courtesy of ProQuest, encompasses approximately 1,600 documents focused on six different phases of Black Freedom.

At the heart of Black Studies Center is Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience. This unique database examines interdisciplinary topics on the African experience throughout the Americas via in-depth essays accompanied by detailed timelines along with important research articles, images, film clips and more. All of the resources from Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience can be cross-searched with journals from the International Index to Black Periodicals (IIBP) and newspaper articles from The Chicago Defender. IIBP includes current and retrospective bibliographic citations and abstracts from scholarly journals and newsletters from the United States, Africa and the Caribbean, and full-text coverage of core Black Studies periodicals.

The database contains 1297 primary sources with 1100 authors, covering the non-fiction published works of leading African Americans. Where possible the complete published non-fiction works are included, as well as interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamphlets, letters and other fugitive material.

Contains the collection of over 2,000 interviews conducted in seventeen states between 1936 and 1983 under the Federal Writers' Project of the Work Progress Administration, as published in 1972 in The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography edited by George P. Rawick. The site contains links to the narratives and Rawick's analysis of the collection, From Sundown to Sunup: The Making of the Black Community. Each entry links to an Adobe PDF version of the narrative as contained in the Rawick print collection, including any handwritten editorial comments made at the time.

Slavery, Abolition & Social Justice--Bringing together primary source documents from archives and libraries across the Atlantic world, this resource allows students and researchers to explore and compare unique material relating to the complex subjects of slavery, abolition and social justice. In addition to the primary source documents there is a wealth of useful secondary sources for research and teaching; including an interactive map, scholarly essays, tutorials, a visual sources gallery, chronology and bibliography.

African American Communities - offers a rich panorama of the Civil Rights Movement through the lens of a handful of Black communities—Atlanta, Brooklyn, Chicago, and the North Carolina public education system. The focus is relentlessly local; there are frequent references to Black people organizing at the street and block level to improve their lives and overcome the harsh discipline of discrimination and second-class citizenship. The micro-level examination of communities is buttressed by an extremely broad array of primary materials and documents, including letters and correspondence, pamphlets, association records, newspaper and periodical clippings, judicial records, oral histories, visual materials, and ephemera. The contents of the database make it abundantly clear that although advances in overcoming racial barriers were exceptionally dilatory, African American citizens at the community level were highly diligent and resilient in forging a distinctive culture founded on self-determination.

In the late 1800's, Dutch physician Aletta Jacobs and her husband C.V. Gerritsen began collecting books and periodicals reflecting the evolution of a feminist consciousness and women's rights. By the time their successors finished their work in 1945, The Gerritsen Collection was the greatest single source for the study of women's history in the world, with materials spanning four centuries and fifteen languages. This online resource delivers two million page images exactly as they appeared in the original printed works.

Women: Transnational Networks--including a wide array of primary source documentsserials, books, manuscripts, diaries, reports, and visuals. Women: Transnational Networks focuses on issues at the intersection of gender and class from the late-eighteenth century to the era of suffrage in the early-twentieth century, all through a transnational perspective. Source libraries include the Library of Congress, the London School of Economics and Political Science Library, and the Library of the Society of Friends.

This database includes tens of thousands of primary documents, document projects with introductory essays that interpret the documents, a definitive bibliography, related web links, a Dictionary of Social
Movements, and an enormous collection of images. The collection is not static and additions will be loaded on an ongoing basis.

North American Women's Letters and Diaries--records the immediate experiences of 1,325 women and 150,000 pages of diaries and letters. The materials have been carefully chosen using leading bibliographies, supplemented by customer requests and more than 7,000 pages of previously unpublished material. The collection also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of the sources in the database.

The database offers a wide range of images and full-text materials relating to the early exploration and settlement of North America. The collection has been compiled by consulting a number of bibliographies, including:
A Biobibliography of Native American Writers, 1772-1924 by Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr. and James W. Parins.
Sources for the ethnography of northeastern North America to 1611, by David B. Quinn. The French image of America: a chronological and subject bibliography of French books printed before 1816 relating to the British North American colonies and the United States by Durand Echeverria and Everett C. Wilkie, Jr.
Wagner & Camp's The Plains and the Rockies, a critical bibliography of exploration, adventure and travel in the American West, 1800-1865.
Robert Rogers Hubach's Early Midwestern Travel Narratives, An Annotated Bibliography, 1634-1850.
Candiana.org, (www.canadiana.org), a full-text online collection that contains documents about Canada's history from the first European contact to the nineteenth century. Bibliography of Native North Americans, Human Relations Area Files, 1976.

Indigenous Histories and Cultures in North America--the wide range of material included in Indigenous Histories and Cultures in North America presents a unique insight into interactions between American Indians and Europeans from their earliest contact, continuing through the turbulence of the American Civil War, the on-going repercussions of government legislation, right up to the civil rights movement of the mid- to late-twentieth century. This resource contains material from the Newberry Library's extensive Edward E. Ayer Collection; one of the strongest archival collections on American Indian history in the world.

This HeinOnline collection brings together a multitude of essential legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery.
Titles: 1,556 | Volumes: 9,042 | Pages: 1,001,604

Slavery, Abolition & Social Justice--Bringing together primary source documents from archives and libraries across the Atlantic world, this resource allows students and researchers to explore and compare unique material relating to the complex subjects of slavery, abolition and social justice. In addition to the primary source documents there is a wealth of useful secondary sources for research and teaching; including an interactive map, scholarly essays, tutorials, a visual sources gallery, chronology and bibliography.

The Voyages Database contains records of nearly 35,000 separate slaving voyages between 1514 and 1866, gleaned from original documents and historical publications located in archives, libraries, and other institutions throughout the world. Data from these historical records were collected over many decades and will continue to be updated as new documents are discovered. Individuals will be able to contribute their own research to this collaborative resource.

Royal Anthropological Institute, 1763-2016. History of Anthropology, Exploration and Social Sciences Across the Globe-- the world's longest-established scholarly association dedicated to the furtherance of anthropology (the study of humankind) in its broadest and most inclusive sense. The Institute is a non-profit-making registered charity and is entirely independent, with a Director and a small staff accountable to the Council, which in turn is elected annually from the Fellowship. It has a Royal Patron in the person of HRH The Duke of Gloucester KG, GCVO.

Royal Geographical Society, 1478-1953. History of Geography, Colonization and Climate Science in the British Empire--founded in 1830. The learned Society promotes the advancement of geographical science in all its aspects. The Society’s archive contains vast collections of documents, maps, photographs, expedition reports, manuscript materials and books, and span 500 years of geography, travel and exploration. The RGS holds one of the largest private map collections in the world. It includes one million sheets of maps and charts, 3000 atlases, 40 globes (as gores or mounted on stands) and 1000 gazetteers. The earliest printed cartographic item dates back to 1485.

American Anitiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection - Rich and vast collection of more than 7,500 periodicals detailing American history and culture from the late 17th century through the late 19th century.

ProQuest Congressional Historical Indexes - includes indexes for published hearings, committee prints, and Serial Set content from 1789-1969, as well as indexes for all never-published hearings that have been released by the National Archives and indexed by CIS staff.

This database offers full-text and full-image articles for newspapers dating back to the 19th century. For most titles, the collection includes digital reproductions of every page from every issue--cover to cover--in downloadable PDF® files. Coverage spans 1851 to 2001.

This database offers full-text and full-image articles for newspapers dating back to the 19th century. For most titles, the collection includes digital reproductions of every page from every issue--cover to cover--in downloadable PDF® files. When the project is complete the coverage will span from 1849 to 2001.

This database presents online access to one of the most highly regarded resources for the study of the 19th and 20th-century history and culture. The database includes the complete pages of every issue of the London Times from 1785 to 1985 forming a complete chronicle of the period.

Provides full text for 159 regional U.S. newspapers, eighteen international newspapers, six newswires, and nine newspaper columns, The Christian Science Monitor (for a total of 194 full text newspapers and other sources). Newspaper Source is part of the Ebsco family of databases.

This is a new product that substitutes scanned digital images for traditional microfilm and microfiche. NIU currently offers five publications on the new medium--Barron's, Chicago Tribune, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. The papers have a moving wall that extends from 2008 forward. Like traditional microfilm there is a three month or so lag time from initial posting to appearance as scanned image. On the other hand, digital microfilm is much more readily accessible and easier to manipulate than traditional microform images.To initiate a search use the pull down menu at the top of page and select an individual newspaper. From there select a date. The database is highly flexible in that it allows the user to crop, zoom, copy and otherwise adjust the digital image.

Robert Sengstacke Abbott founded the Defender in May 1905 and by the outbreak of the First World War it had become the most widely-read black newspaper in the country, with more than two thirds of its readership based outside Chicago. When Abbott died in 1940, his nephew John Sengstacke became editor and publisher of the Defender, which began publishing on a daily basis in 1956. Coverage 1910-1975.

An Open Access Collection of an Alternative Press - the database is comprised of periodicals produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.

The database represents the largest compilation of Spanish-language newspapers printed in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries. The distinctive online collection features hundreds of fully searchable Hispanic American newspapers, and delivers a diversity of unabridged voices, ranging from intellectuals and literary notables to politicians, union organizers and grassroots figures.

This collection provides access to more than 40 fully searchable African newspapers published between 1800 and 1922. African Newspapers features titles published in Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. Languages include English, German, French, Portuguese, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Sotho, and others.

The database produced in conjunction with the Center for Research Libraries includes more than 100 nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American newspapers, featuring titles from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela and elsewhere.

Covers the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion;construction of railroads; effects of British Colonial rule; Hindu-Muslim conflicts; life on coffee, tea and rubber plantations; Morely-Minto Reforms; formation of the Indian National Congress; start of Mahatma Gandhi's independence movement; economics,politics, the arts and much more.

Full-text of Godey's Ladys Book (1830-1880), The Pennsylvania Gazette (1728-1880), The Civil War: Newspaper Perspective (1861-1865), African American Newspapers: the 19th century. Full Text.

American Anitiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection - Rich and vast collection of more than 7,500 periodicals detailing American history and culture from the late 17th century through the late 19th century.

Features an outstanding collection of 18th and 19th century journal literature. The series offers an excellent source for primary materials.

HarpWeek is a database of images and indexing to the 19th century issues of Harper's Weekly. At present the Civil War Era: 1857-1865 is complete. HarpWeek has begun indexing Reconstruction: 1866-1877, which will be the second segment of a project that will ultimately provide users with a cumulative index from 1857 through 1900. Full Text.
Harper's Monthly began in June 1850. The database can be searched by date, indexes (Subject, Illustrations, Literature & Publishing, Advertising), Literary genre, or occupation/role.

Delivers a complete searchable copy of every issue of The Economist from 1843 to 2006. New full-color images, multiple search indexes, exportable financial tables and a gallery of front covers highlighting a key topic of each week - all combine to offer a primary source of research covering the 19th and 20th centuries.

The database features a complete searchable archive and one of the countries foremost journals devoted to political and cultural commentary.

For ninety years The New Republic has provided in-depth examination of American politics, foreign policy and culture with an uncanny ability in covering issues before reaching the mainstream. The New Republic continues to be the leading journal of opinion and covers topics from a variety of viewpoints. This database offers complete indexing & abstracting and full text for all issues back to the journals inception in 1914.

The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries knits together more than 400 sources of diaries, letters, and memoirs to provide fast access to thousands of views on almost every aspect of the war, including what was happening at home. The writings of politicians, generals, slaves, landowners, farmers, seaman, wives, and even spies are included. The letters and diaries are by the famous and the unknown, giving not only both the Northern and Southern perspectives, but those of foreign observers also. The materials originate from all regions of the country and are from people who played a variety of roles. The collection includes approximately 100,000 pages of published memoirs, letters and diaries from individuals plus 4,000 pages of previously unpublished materials. Drawn from more than 400 sources, the collection provides in-depth coverage of all aspects of the war. More than 1,000 biographies will enhance the use of the database.

North American Women's Letters and Diaries--records the immediate experiences of 1,325 women and 150,000 pages of diaries and letters. The materials have been carefully chosen using leading bibliographies, supplemented by customer requests and more than 7,000 pages of previously unpublished material. The collection also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of the sources in the database.

Hathi Trust--a repository of digitized books and serials drawn from major academic and research collections from throughout the United States. The database is immense in scope and crosses all disciplinary boundaries. It is particularly valuable in offering full text access to primary sources and materials.

Representing millions of pages this database is founded on Charles Evans renowned American Bibliography, 1639-1800. The collection encompasses virtually every book, pamphlet and broadside published in America over a 160-year span. In doing so the databases offers an unparalleled view of Colonial America and the Early Republic.

This database comprehends more than four million pages derived from over 36,000 sources. It is founded on Ralph Shaw and Richard Shoemaker's comprehensive American Bibliography, 1800-1819, and is a marvelous complement to Series I.

Early English Books Online--Following its digital launch in 1998, Early English Books Online now contains page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America, as well as works in English printed elsewhere between 1473 and 1700.

Early Modern Books Online—an extension of Early English Books (ProQuest) that spans the tumultuous years of the English Civil War, the Interregnum and the Restoration (1641-1700).

America and Great Britain: Diplomatic Relations 1775-1815. The database is made up of the diplomatic, official correspondence between America and Britain and gives an extraordinary insight into the shaping of a nation, from America being referred to as “our Colonies and Plantations in North America” by King George the Third in 1775, to its recognition as the “United States” by Britain in 1782 and the official cessation of hostilities in 1815.

Provides access to thousands of papers concerning English activities in the American, Canadian, and West Indian colonies between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.

The database--comprehending more than twelve million pages of text--offers an unparalleled view of the activities of the United States federal government from the founding of the Republic through most of the twentieth century. The Serial Set is invaluable for research in political history, social history, cultural history, military history, ethnic history, international relations, explorations, commerce, industrial development and much more. Formerly, much of the material embodied in the Serial Set was difficult to locate, and the majority was available only on microform. The Serial Set includes scores of publications along with thousands of maps, illustrations and statistical tables. Materials prior to the 1838 are included in the American State Papers, 1789-1838.

The SHAFR Guide Online : An Annotated Bibliography of U.S. Foreign Relations since 1600 (Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations)—the database offers a near comprehensive 2.1 million-word online bibliography of historical work covering the entire span of U.S. foreign relations.

Official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity. It is comprised of more than 190 titles, beginning with Abraham Lincoln's administration in 1861 and continuing to the administration of Ronald Reagan in 1988.

The database reveals the development of law and legal institutions in the British Empire between 1701 and 1800. Topics include acts, criminal and international law, appellants' cases and more.

Trial transcripts, popular printed accounts, briefs, arguments, and other documents related to notable Anglo-American trials and crimes such as those involving Dred Scott, Susan B. Anthony, Oscar Wilde, the Boston Massacre, the Bounty mutineers, the Salem witchcraft trials, and many more. The database comprehends an extremely diverse array of trials pleaded throughout the British Empire, the US and the world. The trials are of more than merely legal interest--those studying history, politics, economics and society in general will find the database furnishes a vast storehouse of primary documents.

An Archive of Printed Ephemera--This collection--originating from University of Oxford's Bodleian Library--provides access to thousands of items selected from the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, offering unique insights into the changing nature of everyday life in Britain in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Categories include Nineteenth-Century Entertainment, the Booktrade, Popular Prints, Crimes, Murders and Executions, and Advertising.

Illinois Sanborn Insurance Maps. Founded in 1867, the Sanborn Map Company was the primary American publisher of fire insurance maps for a century, with maps created every five to ten years, eventually covering 12,000 communities on over 660,000 individual sheet maps. Each map set was a large scale plan of a city or town, drawn at a scale of 50 feet to an inch, originally created to aid insurance firms in property risk assessments. Street blocks and building numbers in use at the time of publication are listed and cross-referenced to other maps in the set. Illinois Sanborn Insurance Maps offers genealogists local historians, geographers, city planners, environmentalists, architects and other researchers of city, town and neighborhood development access to those sets created for communities within the state. Browsing is by city and date, and all maps may be printed or downloaded.

Artstor - NIU was generously granted free access to this unrivaled storehouse of 3 million images and artworks until the end of June 2021.

Grove Art Online - the foremost scholarly art encyclopedia, updated regularly and covering global art and architecture from prehistory to present day. Includes peer-reviewed articles contributed by nearly 7,000 scholars from around the world, accompanied by images, bibliographies, and links to additional resources.