Research Guides: Historical primary sources online: Historical imprints, books & public documents

Historical imprints (mostly US) and maps in full page image

Sabin Americana, 1500-1926 from Gale
America's Historical Imprints from Readex
Also known as Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800 and Series II, Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819. Contains virtually every known book, pamphlet and broadside published in America between 1640 and the first two decades of the 19th century—more than 75,000 printed items in all. Based on renowned bibliographies by Charles Evans and Roger Bristol and by Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker.
African Americans and Reconstruction: Hope and Struggle, 1865-1883 from Readex
African Americans and Jim Crow: Repression and Protest, 1883-1922 from Readex

Maps and atlases

Online Maps: Historical
Portal to some major online sources of digitized maps and atlases, most freely accessible. From the University of Georgia library.
Maps | Collections with maps (Library of Congress)
Search function has many filters for searching or browsing you way through more than 55,000 digitized maps.
Maps, globes, and plans: an ongoing census of free digital archives from AIR
Annotated directory of sources of freely accessible/downloadable cartographic document collections from around the world, in several languages. It is organized into several "episodes" each describing a handful of repositories. Organized more like a blog than a database, it can be difficult to navigate but fast to browse: find an interesting repository, then use its own search function to find maps. (AIR's search option identifies cartographic collections -- not individual maps -- and search cannot be limited to map repositories.)
Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3 | Episode 4 | Episode 5 | Episode 6

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From Atelier Ideas & Research (AIR), "an association of young researchers, by young researchers and for young researchers in social sciences & humanities," working from various European universities.

FIMo Fire Insurance Maps Online
VT has coverage for Virginia and District of Columbia only; for other states see the Library of Congress's Sanborn Maps digital collection. FIMo provides a uniform series of large-scale, full-color maps, starting in the mid-19th century, depicting the commercial, industrial, and residential sections of towns and cities. Originally used by insurance companies to represent fire risks, insurance maps are now useful to social historians, architects, geographers, genealogists, local historians, planners, and environmentalists. Often called "Sanborn maps" after the best-known publisher. Interface permits overlaying some historical maps on recent remote-sensing imagery. Data contained include the outlines of buildings; size, shape, and construction materials; functions of structures; locations of windows and doors; street names, street and sidewalk widths, property boundaries, and house and block numbers.

Collections of historical books and manuscripts

HathiTrust
The HathiTrust Digital Library contains over seven million volumes and over one billion pages of scanned books, government publications, and other materials. About 20 percent of all content is in the public domain (and accessible to you). Content is available in several image formats, text, and PDF. 1200s-present.
Because Tech is a member of Hathi Trust, you can download entire public-domain documents; in the Download box, select the Log in link, then enter "Virginia Tech" in the institution-search box.

OpenTexts.World
OpenTexts.World is an experimental portal to more than 8 million free, digitized texts from major repositories around the world. Many historical eras and languages are represented. Search is basic keyword-matching, and cataloging is sparse – so it’s most appropriate for locating facsimiles of historical texts you know about. (For discovering if books exist to fill your needs, use the "libraries worldwide option in VT Discovery Search or another flavor of WorldCat.) Search results records link back to the source repositories’ own platforms, which are much more powerful.

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As of October 2020 OpenTexts.World searches digitized content from
• HathiTrust (4,425,106 items). VT is a partner in HathiTrust, so you can download entire Hathi books via the yellow log in button in the Hathi interface.
• Internet Archive American Libraries Collection (2,956,349 items). VT has no formal relationship with IA; VT people have no more claim on items in the IA collection than anyone else in the world with internet access.
• DigitalNZ (244,376 items)
• Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford (231,088 items)
• The Wellcome Collection (182,576 items)
• National Library of Scotland (26,971 items)
• National Library of Wales (2,801 items)
• Queen’s University Belfast (186 items)

Loeb Classical Library
Loeb Classical Library provides ebooks of Latin and Greek works that show the original language and English translation on facing pages. You can search using Latin or Greek letters.
EEBO: Early English Books Online from ProQuest
Early English Books Online contains scanned page images (GIF and TIFF) of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700. Coverages includes all subject areas with strong coverage in the humanities, performing arts, and education. Each is full-text searchable.

Early European Books
Counterpart to EEBO for works printed in continental Europe, Early European Books traces the history of printing and publishing in Europe from its origins through to the close of the seventeenth century, offering full-color, high-resolution facsimile images of rare and hard-to-access printed sources.See ProQuest's guide to EEB.

Public documents (mostly US)

HeinOnline
HeinOnline offers deep archives of legal scholarship (law reviews, monographs), historical legislative and administrative documents, and a growing number of "special collections" documenting many topics public in the news. Emphasis is on US public laws and policy, with some coverage of other jurisdictions and international affairs.

Digital National Security Archive from ProQuest

PLUS D: Public Library of US Diplomacy from WikiLeaks
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1861-
Perhaps the most important collection of official primary sources to consult before beginning research on the history of US international relations, the Foreign Relations of the United States series presents the documentary historical record of major US foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity. Prepared and issued by the Department of State since 1861, "FRUS" is the official compilation of selected documents from the files of the Department of State, the White House, and other agencies. It presents a historical view of American foreign policy and now comprises hundreds of individual volumes.
- FRUS for 1861-1960 has also been digitized by the University of Wisconsin.
- The official, State Department version's full-text coverage online is fairly complete through the Carter administration but spotty from the 1980s and later.
Electronic documents not yet included in FRUS might be found at their originating agency or in compilations of presidential documents. See Status of the Foreign Relations of the United States Series (State Department) and Researching U.S. Foreign Policy: Publications and Web Sites (National Archives and Records Administration).
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The organization of FRUS is generally chronological, but the dates of the volumes do not necessarily reflect the dates of documentary history. For example, the volumes for 1900-1918 do not include the records dealing with World War I or the Russian Revolution. Each volume has a subject and author index.
Besides providing the text of important foreign policy documents, FRUS also includes source citations (printed either with the document or as footnotes) that indicate the location of the original documents. In this way, FRUS serves as a guide to the location of additional documents on the same and related subjects.