History Resource Guide: Internet Resources

The Avalon Project will mount digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government. Documents span from 4000 BC to the Present.

The Internet Modern History Sourcebook hosts or links to many primary source texts from the Reformation to the 21st century.

This site has the text of original documents about and created by people in the British Isles.

EuroDocs contains links to primary source documents from various European nations from the Ancient to Modern eras. The documents have beentranscribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated, so only some are in English.

{Digitized here are] over 700 trade cards (early shop advertisements) and related items, mostly from France, but also from Germany and elsewhere on the continent. They date from the early seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries and are for suppliers as diverse as hat-makers, stationers, goldsmiths, print-sellers and confectioners. Together they offer a unique insight into the commercial and social world of the past.

The French Revolution Digital Archive (FRDA) is a multi-year collaboration of the Stanford University Libraries and the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) to produce a digital version of the key research sources of the French Revolution and make them available to the international scholarly community. The archive is based around two main resources, the Archives parlementaires and a vast corpus of images first brought together in 1989 and known as the Images de la Revolution française.

From Native Americans to the 21st c. explore many different ways of understanding history

Digital History projects present history using new multi-media and technological tools. Each project focuses on a theme. Unlike documents in the Collections section, documents here are offered with historical context or interpretation.

The Library of Congress is home to many of the most important documents in American history. This Web site provides links to materials digitized from the collections of the Library of Congress that supplement and enhance the study of these crucial documents.

Explore Primary Resources covering Civil Right, Colonial America, Native Americans and more.

These documents are accounts of the Rocky Mountain fur trade during the first half of the 19th century. Most of these are either primary or secondary historical sources; that is, either written by, or as told by those who were actually there.

Making of America is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology.

The records displayed in this exhibit document the Scotts' early struggle to gain their freedom through litigation and are the only extant records of this significant case as it was heard in the St. Louis Circuit Court. The original Dred Scott case file is located in the Office of the St. Louis Circuit Clerk.

How the media has historically shaped and informed opinion.

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the nation's record keeper. Of all documents and materials created in the course of business conducted by the United States Federal government, only 1%-3% are so important for legal or historical reasons that they are kept forever.

A nonprofit organization devoted to the improvement of history education. The Institute has developed an array of programs for schools, teachers, and students that now operate in all fifty states, including a website that features more than 60,000 unique historical documents in the Gilder Lehrman Collection.

Look for particular voyages in this database of documented slaving expeditions. Create listings, tables, charts, and maps using information from the database.

American Journeys contains more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is an all-digital library that aggregates metadata — or information describing an item — and thumbnails for millions of photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more from libraries, archives, and museums around the United States.

ART21 serves educators and their students by providing free materials and programs devoted to the exploration of contemporary art and artists, including the widely distributed Educators' Guides. It also recently launched ART21 Educators, a yearlong professional development initiative designed to cultivate and support K–12 educators interested in bringing contemporary art, artists, and ideas into their classrooms

The guide to great art online.

Museums large and small, classic and modern, world-renowned and community-based from over 40 countries have contributed more than 40,000 high-resolution images of works ranging from oil on canvas to sculpture and furniture. Some paintings are available in ‘gigapixel’ format, allowing you to zoom in at brushstroke level to examine incredible detail. Use Google Street View to explore the interiors of landmarks such as the Palace of Versailles and The White House. Or, build and share your own virtual art gallery. (You must have a Google account to use this feature).

Artsy’s mission is to make all of the world’s art accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. We are an online platform for discovering and collecting art. Our growing collection comprises 50,000+ artworks by 11,000+ artists from leading galleries, museums, foundations, and artists’ estates. Artsy provides one of the largest collections of contemporary art available online.

Search images from these museum and library collections

Smarthistory is the leading open educational resource for art history, making high-quality introductory content including images, essays, and videos freely available to anyone, anywhere. Smarthistory is a platform for the discipline where art historians contribute in their areas of expertise and learners come from across the globe.

The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia is a civic project to increase understanding of one of America’s greatest cities. Produced by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) at Rutgers-Camden, the Encyclopedia as a digital resource and print volume will offer the most comprehensive, authoritative reference source ever created for the Philadelphia region.

Explore the origins and diversity of Pennsylvania and the United States, from the colonial period and the nation's founding to the experience of contemporary life. Conduct research in the online catalogs, browse our exhibits and publications, and join us in preserving and understanding our heritage as a diverse and dynamic people.

Hidden City Philadelphia pulls back the curtain on the city’s most remarkable places and connects them to new people, functions, and resources. We celebrate the power of place and inspire social action to make our city a better place to live, work, and play.

This site contains thousands of old maps, property atlases, city directories, industrial site surveys, and other items documenting the history and development of the city from the 1600s through today.

Digital Collections site offers free worldwide access to the unique primary historical and cultural resources held by the Temple University Libraries and to selected scholarly works and other publications produced at Temple.

The Philadelphia City Archive is one of the country's largest municipal archives, with about 2 million photographs, dating from the late 1800's. Discover gorgeous images of Philadelphia, its industry, architecture, culture, and people.

PlanPhilly.com is an independent, non-partisan, news organization covering design, planning and development in Philadelphia.

A collection of sources that document the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee.

A collection of primary sources pulled together to support teachers. Scroll towards the bottom of the page for links to documents related to the process of assimilating Native Americans into the dominant culture.

The Carlisle Indian Industrial School photo collection at CCHS is one of the largest in the country consisting of over 3,000 images. Also contains newspapers and manuscripts.

The New England Indian Papers Series Database is a scholarly critical edition of New England Native American primary source materials gathered into one robust virtual collection. It offers students, educators, researchers, Native American tribal members, and the general public, visual and intellectual access to significant historical knowledge for the purposes of teaching, scholarly analysis, and research.

Edward Sheriff Curtis published The North American Indian between 1907 and 1930 with the intent to record traditional Indian cultures. The work comprises twenty volumes of narrative text and photogravure images. Each volume is accompanied by a portfolio of large photogravure plates.The entire work is presented here, supported largely by funds from the Institute for Museum and Library Services.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database contains detailed information on 35,000 transatlantic slave trading voyages that occurred between 1526 and 1866 as well as estimates of the overall size and direction of the trade.

The Digital Library offers a searchable database of detailed personal information about slaves, slaveholders, and free people of color. Designed as a tool for scholars, historians, teachers, students, genealogists, and interested citizens, the site provides access to information gathered and analyzed over an eighteen-year period from petitions to southern legislatures and country courts filed between 1775 and 1867 in the fifteen slaveholding states in the United States and the District of Columbia.

Created by amateur historian, Douglas Harper, this site references the extent of slavery in the northern states. Harper provides narratives tracing the use and eventual abolition of slavery in each state.

This database offers a digital collection of books and pamphlets that demonstrate the varying ideas and beliefs about slavery in the United States as expressed by Americans throughout the nineteenth century. The works in this collection reflect arguments on both sides of the slavery debate and include first person narratives, legal proceedings and decisions, anti-slavery tracts, religious sermons, and early secondary works.

Sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, this site "is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes fourteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs."

Emilie Davis was an African-American woman living in Philadelphia during the U.S. Civil War. This website is a transcription of Emilie’s three pocket dairies for the years 1863, 1864, and 1865. In them, she recounts black Philadelphians’ celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation, nervous excitement during the battle of Gettysburg, and their collective mourning of President Lincoln.

Created by Mississippi Civil Rights Documentation Project, a joint project by USM's Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage and the Tougaloo College Archives

Sponsored by the University Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South, and the texts and materials come primarily from its southern holding.

This site, created by the Equal Justice Initiative, seeks to bring awareness to the 4000 African American lynchings between the Civil War and WWII. Site includes a map, oral histories, films,and research

From UCLA's African Studies Center

Building upon the achievements of Stanford University’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute supports a broad range of activities illuminating the Nobel Peace laureate’s life and the movements he inspired.

This is a web-based collection of historical materials from Harvard's libraries, archives, and museums that documents voluntary immigration to the United States from the signing of the Constitution to the onset of the Great Depression. Concentrating heavily on the 19th century, Immigration to the US includes over 400,000 pages from more than 2,200 books, pamphlets, and serials, over 9,600 pages from manuscript and archival collections, and more than 7,800 photographs.

Since 1973, the Ellis Island Oral History project has been dedicated to preserving the first-hand recollections of immigrants who passed through the Ellis Island immigration station between 1892 and 1954 and the employees who worked there.

Wisconsin's workers and reformers made significant contributions to the history of labor in the United States, helping to enact legislation such as workers' compensation and unemployment insurance that served as models for similar laws in other states. The study of labor history itself also began in Wisconsin when University of Wisconsin economist John R. Commons set out to document the history of work and labor in America at the turn of the twentieth century.

An exhaustive list of primary source links and other sites exploring many angles of the Labor Movement including women, immigrants, and children from the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Union Membership and Coverage Database is an Internet data resource providing private and public sector labor union membership, coverage, and density estimates compiled from the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly household survey, using BLS methods. Economy-wide estimates are provided beginning in 1973; estimates by state, detailed industry, and detailed occupation begin in 1983; and estimates by metropolitan area begin in 1986.

A selection of downloadable documents that relate to the influence of Karl Marx and Marxist philosophy on the American political and labor movements.

American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience

Explore the origins and diversity of Pennsylvania and the United States, from the colonial period and the nation's founding to the experience of contemporary life. Conduct research in the online catalogs, browse our exhibits and publications, and join us in preserving and understanding our heritage as a diverse and dynamic people.