LibGuides: Research Methods: History Resources

Resources for History

History lends itself to several subjects (like literature, biography, etc.) so don't forget to explore those as you search.

Here are some of our top databases for History (y ou can see the whole list here):

America: History and Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window America: History and Life is the definitive index of literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Indexing hundreds of journals, it is an invaluable bibliographic database for history students.
American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 2 This link opens in a new window The American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection Series 2 presents over 1,000 titles dating from 1821 through 1837. The series is created from serials holdings belonging to one of the premier repositories in the United States, the American Antiquarian Society. The subject matter covered in Series 2 represents the Jacksonian Democracy era in history and is broad in scope and includes agriculture, entertainment, history, literary criticism, and politics.
American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 3 This link opens in a new window The American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 3 presents over 1,800 titles dating from 1838 through 1852. The themes presented in Series 3 reveal a rapidly growing young nation, where industrialization, the railroads, regional political differences, and life on the western frontier were daily realities. Subjects covered in the collection include science, literature, medicine, agriculture, women’s fashion, family life, and religion.
American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 4 This link opens in a new window The American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection - Series 4 presents over 1,100 titles dating from 1853 through 1865. While the Civil War is a focal point of the collection, we also find a diverse record of the continuance of daily life for many Americans—both leading up to and during the war. News from the battlefront can be found, in addition to the usual breadth of subject matter found in previous collections.
American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 5 This link opens in a new window The American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 5 presents over 2,500 titles dating from 1866 through 1877. The themes presented in Series 5 reflect a nation that persevered through a difficult set of circumstances: a bloody civil war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives; the incorporation of the recently-freed African Americans into American life; a population that rapidly expanded into the Western territories.
Cambridge Histories This link opens in a new window Cambridge Histories is a globally respected series of over 350 volumes spanning fifteen subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, with a concentration on political and cultural history, literature, philosophy, religious studies, music and the arts. The site allows instant access to the renowned texts of the Cambridge Histories series, searchable by author, title and subject.
Catalog of US Government Publications (CGP) This link opens in a new window The CGP is the finding tool for federal publications that includes descriptive information for historical and current publications as well as direct links to the full document, when available. Users can search by authoring agency, title, subject, and general keywords, or click on "Advanced Search" for more options.
eBook History Collection This link opens in a new window This collection features titles across a variety of subjects, including Medieval History, History of Music, History of Science, World History, History of the Caribbean & West Indies, History of the Holocaust, Law in History, History of Philosophy, History of Africa, Art History, History of Technology & Engineering, History of Business & Economics, History of the Middle East, History of North and Latin America, History of Asia, History of Religion, and History of Europe.
European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750 This link opens in a new window This bibliographic database is a valuable index for libraries, scholars and individuals interested in European works that relate to the Americas. European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750 contains more than 32,000 entries and is a comprehensive guide to printed records about the Americas written in Europe before 1750.
Historical Abstracts with Full Text This link opens in a new window Historical Abstracts with Full Text covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present, including world history, military history, women's history, history of education, and much more. This database provides indexing of historical articles from more than 1,800 journals in over 40 languages back to 1955 and includes over 800,000 records and access to the full text of more than 349 journals and more than 120 books.
Humanities Source This link opens in a new window Humanities Source provides full text—plus abstracts and bibliographic indexing—for the most noted scholarly sources in the humanities, including feature articles, interviews, obituaries, bibliographies, original works of fiction, drama and poetry, books review, and reviews of ballets, dance programs, motion pictures, musicals, operas, plays, radio and television programs.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window JSTOR contains the full text of core scholarly journals in a variety of disciplines. The library currently subscribes to the following collections: Arts & Sciences I through IV, the Arts & Sciences Complement, Business I and II, and the Life Sciences Collection. JSTOR is an archiving service so full text is available from the first (earliest) issue forward, but generally does not include the most recent 2-5 years.

Go into the 900s for History. You can also check out Biography and Government Documents.

900.1–.9 Standard subdivisions of history and geography
901–909 Standard subdivisions of history, collected accounts of events, world history
910 Geography and travel
920 Biography, genealogy, insignia
930 History of ancient world to ca. 499
940 History of Europe
950 History of Asia
960 History of Africa
970 History of North America
980 History of South America
990 History of Australasia, Pacific Ocean islands, Atlantic Ocean islands, Arctic islands, Antarctica, extraterrestrial worlds

Here are some great website list resources for History majors. You may also want to check out some of the English literature resources for original documents.

EdTech Teacher Best of American History Sites
EdTech Teacher Best General History Sites
The Online Books Page: over 2 million free books
HathiTrust Digital Library: millions of free books
Bartleby.com: repository for tons of classics, including Bartlett's Quotations, Shakespeare, the Holy Bible, Harvard Classics series and more.
Google Books: millions of books outside of copyright
Internet Archive Ebooks and Texts: over 15,000,000 texts - includes journals
Project Gutenberg: over 57,000 free ebooks
Digital Public Library of America: continuously growing library of thousands of original and primary source materials