Historical primary sources online: Theme-based digital archives

Answers await everyone—whether professional or hobbyist, expert or novice, genealogist or historian—inside the more than 7,000 available databases. Here, you can unlock the story of you with sources like censuses, vital records, immigration records, family histories, military records, court and legal documents, directories, photos, maps, and more.

The Making of the Modern World (MOMW) had its origins in the systematic building of collections of works of "economic literature." The English economist, Herbert Somerton Foxwell (1849-1936), built the two collections that afterwards become the Goldsmiths' Library of Economic Literature and the Kress Library, and heavily influenced Edwin R. A. Seligman (1831-1939), the American economist and professor, as he assembled what would eventually become the Seligman Collection at Columbia University. Foxwell appreciated that in order to understand the way that the economy worked, one needed to know as much as possible about the world of which the economy was a part. He set a high standard. His collections and those of his successors incorporated material about every aspect of the world. So does MOMW.

The first iteration of The Making of the Modern World began with the mid-fifteenth century and ends in the mid-nineteenth century in accordance with Foxwell's protocols. The second iteration continues the collection to 1914, the start of the First World War. In effect MOMW now embraces the history of the world from the beginnings of the expansion of Europe to the end of European domination of that world.

MOMW abounds in astounding richness and diversity. Many works that are available in MOMW are digital facsimile copies of works that are unique. Multiple editions of a work permit the researcher and the teacher to trace the development of an author's thoughts and compare successive expressions of an author's ideas. The availability in one online database of translations of key works into other languages allows the researcher to understand the spread of key ideas across space and time. The multi-lingual nature of MOMW helps us comprehend the interactions among contemporaries of concepts and ideas as they developed in real time. The inclusion of important serial publications enriches our ability readily to explore a literature that expressed itself in a range of media. Clever and powerful search techniques, including the ability to full-text search across every word in the entire collection, make searches simple despite different languages, spellings, and fonts.

Air & Space and Smithsonian Magazine Archive
Air & Space and Smithsonian Magazine Archive combines Air & Space Magazine and Smithsonian Magazine for the first time in a single, fully searchable digital archive. By bringing together the full history of both of these premiere magazines, decades of in-depth and expert coverage of high-demand topics and unique insights into aviation, space, innovation, history, science, technology, the arts, and culture are accessible in an integrated, intuitive display. This interdisciplinary, cross-curricular archive will engage users whether pursuing general topical information or developing deeper knowledge in a given subject area.

Evolution of Flight, 1784-1991
Spanning more than two centuries, Evolution of Flight, 1784-1991 offers researchers a wealth of primary documents ranging from the early era of aviation to the high-tech air fleets of the twentieth century. With documents such as photographs, diaries, correspondence, scrapbooks, draft technical specifications, government documents, and other primary source material from Smithsonian libraries, including the National Air and Space Museum archives and library, this archive covers the technical and social impact of aviation with astonishing breadth and detail. The archive supports enthusiasts and researchers interested in early flight, inventions, the military, the development of the commercial airline industry, women's studies, African American studies, and more.

Women and Social Movements in the United States is a resource for students and scholars of U.S. history and U.S. women's history. Organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000, this collection seeks to advance scholarly debates and understanding about U.S. history generally at the same time that it makes the insights of women's history accessible to teachers and students at universities, colleges, and high schools. The collection currently includes 100 document projects and archives with almost 3,950 documents and 150,000 pages of additional full-text documents, written by some 2,150 primary authors. It also includes book, film, and website reviews, notes from the archives, and teaching tools.

Women and Social Movements: Basic Edition contains the following resources:

100 document projects that interpret and present documents, most of which are not otherwise available online. Each document project poses an interpretive question and provides a collection of documents that address the question. Altogether these document projects provide more than 3,950 documents, almost 1,200 images, and 900 links to other websites. They demonstrate that historical analysis is an interpretive process based on documents. Viewers of the site are encouraged to participate in that interpretive process. We usually add six new document projects or archives annually.
About 800 publications with 48,000 pages of full-text sources pertaining to Women and Social Movements in the United States. These materials have been selected by the Editors for their relevance to the focus of the website. We add 5,000 additional pages of sources annually. For a listing of full-text sources, go to Browse Bibliography and click on Full Text Primary Sources.
A dictionary of social movements and organizations.
A chronology of U.S. Women's History.
Teaching Tools with lesson ideas and document-based questions related to the website's document projects.
Book and web site reviews published twice annually.
Regularly-published news from the archives about primary sources in U.S. Women's History.

In the late 1800's, Dutch physician and feminist Aletta Jacobs and her husband C.V. Gerritsen began collecting books, pamphlets, and periodicals reflecting the revolution of a feminist consciousness and the movement for 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 15 languages.
The broad scope of the collection allows scholars to trace the evolution of feminism within a single country, as well as the impact of one country's movement on those of the others. In many cases, it also provides easy access to primary sources otherwise available only in a few rare book rooms.

The Gerritsen Collection consists of two segments: the Periodical Series and the Monograph Language Series.

Black Studies Center brings together essential historical and current material for researching the past, present and future of African-Americans, the wider African diaspora, and Africa itself. It is comprised of several cross-searchable component databases.

The American Slavery database contains two basic sections: the overview of the collection with related links, available without charge from the home page, and the collection itself. The overview includes a description of the original Library of Congress project, a history of the project, the introduction and appendices to the initial Rawick compilation, and selections from his analysis of the collection, From Sundown to Sunup: The Making of the Black Community. Follow the 'About the Collection' link to access this material.

Artstor's ever-increasing digital library includes more than 1.9 million high-quality images for education and research from a wide variety of contributors around the world. Dozens of collections from a wide variety of cultures across all major time periods have followed, including a collection of 190,000 old master drawings originally photographed at over 100 different repositories, 20 years of contemporary New York City gallery shows, archives of Islamic textiles, the restored Ghiberti "Gates of Paradise," African masks, medieval manuscripts, images of all exhibitions shown at MoMA, and many others.

Artstor facilitates research and education in numerous disciplines, including art and visual studies, architecture, religion, anthropology and archaeology, global studies, fashion and costume, classics, world history, and more. Our library is solely available for teaching, education and scholarship, with all images supported with comprehensive metadata and cleared for educational use.

Brands include Kellogg's, Kodak, Kraft, Oscar Mayer, Pan Am, French's, Scott Paper, US Marines, and White Castle.

For most people, Appalachia conjures up images of majestic mountains, old-time music, and a simpler way of life. Since its recognition as a distinctive region in the late 19th century, Appalachia has been a source of enduring myths and distortions regarding the isolation, temperament, and behavior of its inhabitants. Early 20th-century writers focused on sensationalistic aspects of the region’s culture, such as moonshining and clan feuding, and often portrayed the region’s inhabitants as uneducated and prone to impulsive acts of violence.

Interweaving social, political, environmental, economic, and popular history, this new Archives Unbound collection chronicles three and a half centuries of the Appalachian past. Along the way, it explores Appalachia’s contradictory images that have shaped perceptions of the region as both the essence of America and a place apart.

This collection begins its story in the colonial era and describes the bloody warfare as migrants from Europe and their American-born offspring fought and eventually displaced Appalachia’s Native American inhabitants. It depicts the evolution of a backwoods farm-and-forest society, its divided and unhappy fate during the Civil War, and the emergence of a new industrial order as railroads, towns, and mining industries penetrated deeper and deeper into the mountains.

Throughout the collection, a wide range of Appalachian voices enlivens the analysis and reminds us of the importance of storytelling in the ways the people of Appalachia define themselves and their region.

This new Archives Unbound consists of the diaries, journals, and narratives of explorers, emigrants, military men, Native Americans, and travelers. In addition, there are accounts of the development of farming and mining communities, family histories, and folklore. These accounts provide a view of the region, which spans three and a half centuries and provides information on the social, political, economic, scientific, religious and agricultural characteristics of the region.

Documenting the American South (DocSouth) includes fourteen thematic collections of primary sources for the study of southern history, literature, and culture.

The texts, images, and other materials come primarily from the premier Southern collections in the libraries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. These original Southern materials can be found in several library locations, including the Southern Historical Collection, one of the largest collections of Southern manuscripts in the country; the North Carolina Collection, the most complete printed documentation of a single state anywhere; the Rare Book Collection, which holds an extensive Southern pamphlet collection; and Davis Library, which offers rich holdings of printed materials on the Southeast.