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Best History Websites and Resources

These great history websites help make the past and present relevant and accessible to students. There are research resources students can explore including firsthand accounts, images, videos, audio, and scholarly work. Many of these sites feature expertly curated museum and archival collections that help students step into history. Driven by their burning questions about the past, students can use these sites to analyze primary documents, artifacts, historical figures, and significant time periods. Teachers will also find a few picks on this list aimed specifically at them, featuring lesson plans and resources informed by the latest historical research.

Asian Art Museum

Inventive lessons and activities integrate Asian history, art, and more

Bottom Line : It offers an in-depth look at Asia’s influence on art and history and provides lots of creative tools for educators.

Easily accessible, kid-friendly database for the littlest researchers

Bottom Line : Delightful, safe introduction to the world of research, databases, and reporting, with interesting content and stellar supports.

National Museum of African American History and Culture

Powerful stories and media centralize African-American history

Bottom Line : While there aren't ready-to-go curricular materials, this modern, well-curated, and well-contextualized digital collection is sure to inspire compelling lessons.

Smithsonian's History Explorer

Browse and use American history artifacts and activities

Bottom Line : This is a handy resource that, with some effort, will uncover resources for kick-starting curious learning.

History's Mysteries

Scrappy, smart elementary history curriculum builds inquiry skills

Bottom Line : The free and adaptable nature of these intriguing history lessons makes them easy additions to just about any elementary history curriculum.

Library of Congress

Dig into famed library's collection of research goodies

Bottom Line : The Library of Congress delivers the best of America's past and present, and with teacher support it could be a reliable research resource for students.

PebbleGo Next

Safe nonfiction database develops students' research skills

Bottom Line : Student-centric research site gives kids a just-right amount of information to build foundational research skills.

Extensive humanities resource offers deep well of great content

Bottom Line : The National Endowment for the Humanities has put together an outstanding place for art, history, language, and literature.

Ken Burns in the Classroom

Critically acclaimed documentaries repackaged meaningfully for classrooms

Bottom Line : Top-notch documentary clips offer opportunities to expand students' perspectives, but some lesson materials might be underwhelming.

National Archives

Access U.S. history with treasure trove of docs, genealogy, and other resources

Bottom Line : NARA's website wasn't designed for kids, but they can definitely use it to research and learn about history, genealogy, and the U.S. population and government.

Digital Public Library of America

Organized digital library features piles of useful primary resources

Bottom Line : DPLA is at the top of the list of high-grade, online primary source collections if teachers make effective use of what's on offer.

Ford's Theatre

Site famous for its Lincoln assassination resources has more to offer

Bottom Line : This site can support meaningful, primary source-driven examination of some of the most important events in U.S. history, but educators will need to dig a little.

Track progress, differentiate instruction with vast content library

Bottom Line : Though it's not perfect, it's a great portal for supplementing classroom instruction and supporting personalized learning.

Students think like detectives to gather evidence, explore civics

Bottom Line : Makes the case for middle schoolers using primary sources, but this isn't gonna be a grab-and-go experience.

SweetSearch

Search engine with filtered results leaves room for critical thinking

Bottom Line : SweetSearch supplies valid, reputable websites that can help kids learn about a variety of topics.

Facing History and Ourselves

A wealth of resources explore racism, prejudice, and anti-Semitism

Bottom Line : These valuable materials empower students to understand and address difficult ethical choices -- past and present.

Google Arts & Culture

Well-curated art and history site inspires curious learning

Bottom Line : A beautifully presented one-stop shop for compellingly curated and contextualized art, history, and culture resources, but it's lacking educator supports.

Historical texts, interactive activities can promote critical thinking

Bottom Line : This text-rich app encourages students to conduct their own analysis of history, but the formats and graphics may prevent them from making a thorough analysis.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Extensive resource collection supports teaching about the Holocaust

Bottom Line : As a valuable resource for anyone teaching or learning about the Holocaust, time to explore and plan is necessary in order to make the materials effective.

Zinn Education Project

Resources, lessons help teach a more inclusive version of U.S. history

Bottom Line : Free downloadable resources encourage critical thinking and active learning in search of a more accurate picture of American history.

World History Encyclopedia

Crowd-sourced ancient history site features extensive, varied resources

Bottom Line : It's free, web-based, and regularly updated with vetted info, so classrooms can turn to this site often to kick off research projects.

The National WWII Museum - New Orleans

High-quality resources and activities offer an in-depth study

Bottom Line : Materials and activities support a thorough study of World War II, making this a valuable resource for both teachers and students.

Stanford History Education Group

High-quality, document-based lessons spark stellar historical inquiry

Bottom Line : A gold mine of cross-curricular literacy lessons that encourage sound, research-backed strategies for reading, analysis, and critical thinking.

A History of Ideas

Philosophy podcast makes heady concepts accessible

Bottom Line : These philosophy podcasts and videos offer entertaining introductions to key concepts and thinkers, but require some smart lesson planning for deeper learning.

Extensive, highly searchable collection of the world's constitutions

Bottom Line : Quickly and easily access almost any country's constitution, locate an excerpt, or compare governments.

Google Scholar

Academic search engine, an excellent source for credible research info

Bottom Line : This smart tool can help teens locate credible material for paper and report writing, general research, and other school projects.

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

History and art intersect on the Met's vast, reading-centric site

Bottom Line : This resource from the Metropolitan Museum of Art beautifully illustrates art's evolution and is great for research, but more interactivity would help balance out the text-heavy content.

OER Project

Expansive world history courses powered by great open-source materials

Bottom Line : A stellar program for exploring foundational concepts in history, humanities, critical thinking, and science with tons of support for teachers.

The Living New Deal | Still Working for America

Archival site is a treasure trove for New Deal researchers

Bottom Line : While it doesn't offer much specifically for teachers or students, it's a must-use site for primary source material if you have a unit on the New Deal or Great Depression.

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database

Deep, complex database is challenging but a peerless research tool

Bottom Line : This is a highly academic site for better and for worse; it's filled with deep, research-backed resources and primary sources but is intimidating without clear guidance.

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We know how challenging teaching history can be. We've gathered and created resources that you can trust – you can run with them as they are or easily adapt them to your students. Explore our resources below to make your teaching easier.

Search Education Materials

Link database, teaching materials, classroom posters, media library, primary sources, curated collections, institutional subscriptions.

Teaching America's Story Together

Teaching American History is a free resource that brings together primary documents, continuing education, and community for American history teachers.

Teaching American History is happy to welcome our latest volume to our core document collection on American government.

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Learning through discussion, led by a scholar.

Teaching American History programs are different from other teaching seminars you might attend. In our seminars, participants read primary sources from American history and spend their time in thoughtful discussion. They leave with a richer appreciation for broader themes in history and a better understanding of how to bring discussion-based learning to their own classrooms.

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Jfk and civil rights, america in wwii, first ladies, tr, wilson and the progressive reformers, teachers across the country are uncovering the story of our nation..

Our Teacher Partners strengthen their American history, government, and civics classes through primary document discussion. Learn more about their experience.

A strong foundation in primary documents

The core documents volumes.

Edited with commentary by leading scholars, the Core Document collections curate key primary sources that track a single theme throughout the course of American history. Available to teachers as bound paperbacks or as PDF files, they are a foundational piece to any documents-based curriculum.

The latest from our community

The 80th anniversary of d-day, june 6, 1944.

Thursday June 6, 2024 is the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the day Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy to begin the “great and noble undertaking” of liberating Europe. We commemorate the anniversary with the words of General Dwight Eisenhower, commander of the Allied forces. The introduction that follows, and the words of Eisenhower, are from World War II: Core Documents, selected and introduced by Jennifer D. Keene.

John Muir Founds the Sierra Club

On May 28, 1892, a group of university professors and interested citizens met in the San Francisco law office of Warren Olney to found the nation’s first nongovernmental wilderness protection organization, the Sierra Club. Naturalist John Muir, whose popular magazine articles had done much to bring about the 1890 Congressional act creating Yosemite National Park, was unanimously named president of the new organization.

Professional Development or Summer Camp for Teachers? MAHG is both!

Joseph postell on how congress actually works, brett van gaasbeek's students talk about preserving self-government, a pageantry of power: planning washington’s first inauguration, join your fellow teachers in exploring america's history..

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Introducing Our US History Curriculum Collection

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Identity and Storytelling

Establishing opening and closing routines, 10 questions for young changemakers, holocaust and human behavior, spanish translations from holocaust and human behavior, teaching holocaust and human behavior, my part of the story: exploring identity in the united states, community matters: a facing history & ourselves approach to advisory, identity & community: an introduction to 6th grade social studies, teaching mockingbird, climat scolaire, teaching an inspector calls, inspiration, insights, & ways to get involved.

Subject Matter

Gale offers a product portfolio of history resources, from databases, primary sources, and eBooks, designed to support researchers and students as they study and interpret history.

Biography      |      British History    |      Canadian History    |      Legal History    |      Military History    |      Native American History    |      U.S. History    |      Women’s History    |      World History  

Learn more about the subject of history, which is broadly defined as the study of past events. Due to the broad nature of the concept, most historians narrow their scope by focusing on a particular time period (e.g., the 19 th century, the Middle Ages); a particular country or region (e.g., Britain, Canada, the U.S., Latin American); a particular people, group, or individual person (e.g., Native American, women, a biography of Marilyn Monroe); a particular theme (e.g., legal, military); or any combination of those categories (e.g., the history of British soldiers serving in World War II).

A history can be told from any number of perspectives. Most works on history, including biographies, are created by professional scholars who write about events they did not personally experience by analyzing sources, both primary and secondary, related to their subjects. Primary sources of history include newspapers, books, and letters from the time period being studied as well as artifacts like artwork and tools, and generally help create the secondary sources. Secondary sources were created by someone who did  not  experience firsthand or participate in the events or conditions you’re researching. Secondary sources include books written by other historians on a related matter. Secondary sources may contain pictures, quotes, or graphics of primary sources. Many works of history, however, are written by those who lived through it, such as memoirs and autobiographies.

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History Topics

Gale provides insights and useful resources for research supporting history across a variety of topics.

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Health and medicine  resources.

Gale offers a product portfolio including  databases , primary sources , and eBooks  designed to support history students in the classroom. Resources are aligned to lesson plans for teaching and research.

Gale databases support the study of history in the classroom by providing access to full-text articles, peer-reviewed articles, and documents from must-read historical journals and more history resources. Database concepts include conflicts, politics, cultures, religions, and much more to easily guide students through research. Add these resources to your library or classroom today.

Gale In Context: U.S. History

This database provides documents that give an overview of our nation’s past, covering the most-studied events, decades, conflicts, wars, political and cultural movements, and people.

Gale In Context: World History

Get an overview of world history, covering the most-studied events, cultures, civilizations, religions, people, and more, in this database.

Smithsonian Primary Sources in U.S. History

A database that brings hand-curated, historical documents from Smithsonian experts directly to classrooms and students. Curriculum-aligned material from trusted sources easily satisfies requirements to incorporate primary source documents into U.S. history classes.

Gale OneFile: U.S. History

A library resource that provides periodical documents covering events in U.S. history as well as scholarly work established in the field.

Primary Sources

These archives from Gale Primary Sources   provide researchers with access to firsthand content, including full-text articles, peer-reviewed articles, documents, primary sources of history, secondary sources of history, and other resources. Primary sources of history are located on one platform that easily guides students through research.

Sources in U.S. History Online

Sources in U.S. History Online  is a thematically organized collection providing historical information surrounding important individuals, influential perspectives, religions, political operations, and warfare from the eras that have shaped the United States.

The Making of the Modern World

The Making of the Modern World  is extraordinary for research into the records of the dynamics of Western trade, including the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, encompassing the coal, iron, and steel industries, the railway industry, the cotton industry, banking and finance, and the emergence of the modern corporation.

China and the Modern World

Access a series of special collections sourced from preeminent libraries and archives across the world, including the Second Historical Archives of China and the British Library. 

Gale eBooks

Gale offers a variety of  eBooks   that can be added to a customized collection and cross-searched to pinpoint relevant content.  Workflow tools  enable users to access, share, save, and download materials.

American Empire: A Global History, 1 st Edition

Princeton University Press | 2019  | ISBN-13: 9781400888351

This title provides a new history of the United States that turns American exceptionalism on its head. It is a panoramic work of scholarship that presents a bold new global perspective on the history of the United States. Drawing on his expertise in economic history and the imperial histories of Britain and Europe, the author takes readers from the colonial era to today to show how, far from diverging, the United States and Western Europe followed similar trajectories throughout this long period, and how America’s dependency on Britain and Europe extended much later into the 19 th century than previously understood. The book goes beyond the myth of American exceptionalism to place the United States within the wider surroundings of the global historical forces that shaped the Western empires and the world.

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Artifacts from Modern America, 1 st Edition

Greenwood Publishing Group | 2018 | ISBN-13: 9781440846830

This intriguing book examines how material objects of the 20 th century—ranging from articles of clothing to tools and weapons, communication devices, and toys and games—reflect dominant ideas and testify to the ways social change happens.

Great Events from History: Human Rights, 2 nd Edition

Salem Press | 2019 | ISBN-13: 9781642652925

This updated reference work originally published in 1992 includes significant updates and a number of new articles that address human rights issues over the past 30 years. This four-volume work traces the path of civil liberties and natural rights throughout history, from ancient codes to modern movements, through pivotal events that have directly affected people and their freedoms. It documents the progression, regression, and overall history of human rights. Modern milestones chronicled include 2001: The U.S. Launches a War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan in Response to 9/11; 2004: The First Same-Sex Marriage Is Performed in Massachusetts; 2006: The Global Internet Consortium Is Founded; 2006: WikiLeaks Gives Whistle-blowers a New Platform; 2014: ISIS Comes to Power in Iraq and Syria; 2015: China Revokes One-Child Policy; 2017: Gay Chechens Are Purged; 2018: Peace Talks Begin on the Korean Peninsula; and 2018: Separating Immigrant Families at the Border.

Uncovering American History: A Primary Source Investigation of Reconstruction, 1 st Edition

Rosen Central | 2019 | ISBN-13: 9781508184072

The era of Reconstruction followed the long, bloody Civil War and became one of the most important in the nation’s history. It set guidelines for race relations and the federal government’s involvement in them. From black codes to voting rights for black men, Reconstruction was an active but contentious period. Articles such as amendments to the Constitution and speeches from the nation’s leaders are examined along with text that provides the necessary material to fully understand the volatile issues debated. This fully illustrated volume highlights the people and their works with a clear and authoritative voice.

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From trending social issues to classic literature, Gale resources have you covered. Explore overviews, statistics, essay topics, and more or log in through your library to find even more content.

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51 Great Online Resources for History Teachers

We are currently building this page to help history and social studies teachers, instructors and professors find useful online resources. This project will probably never end because new sites are continuously created and old sites disappear. We have already blown past 51 great online resources. If any of the resources link to a dead page or you would like to suggest a useful site please send an email to [email protected] .

DailyHistory.org has over 900 articles that cover a multitude of topics. Our study guides organize core groups of materials for specific eras, and you can look for other articles with our search function. In addition to articles, we also have book reviews and booklists. Additionally, we have the complete Federalist Papers.

United States History American Civil War World War One World War Two Ancient History Roman History Renaissance History Ancient Greek History Ancient Egypt History The History of Things Book Reviews Booklists The Federalist Papers

The American Yawp is an outstanding free online textbook that is divided into two volumes. You can also get a paper copy of the book from the Stanford University Press for $24.95 for each volume. The American Yawp is a massive "Collaboration Open U.S. History Textbook." Essentially it is an open-source textbook. Historians essentially modeled the textbook on the open-source model that has been successfully used for numerous computer programs such as Linux, MediaWiki, Wordpress, and many more. In addition to the textbook, "The American Yawp" has an excellent Sourcebook that can be used to expand on topics with primary source documents.

Besides being an excellent textbook, it is a great way to help reduce textbook costs for students because it can be accessed online for free.

"Digital History" is a free textbook and sourcebook for United States History written and created by Steven Mintz and Sara McNeil . It's a great site that has a ton of content. Additionally, "Digital History" is supported by the University of Houston. Digital History also provides quizzes, interactive history modules, timelines, and teaching resource that include lesson plans and handouts. The site does use flash and some browsers will block some of the images.

The site also has a section on Student Activities. There are over 200 different student activities that can be used in classrooms. These student activities include texts, videos, and interactive maps.

Many states have created online history websites through state historical organizations, state universities, university presses, and state humanities organizations. Some of the sites are fantastic and others are pretty underwhelming. Still, if you need your students to write about your state or a doing a state-based history project, it can be a good place to explore first. Additionally, some states have websites that can direct students to archives but most of these archives are not online. I am also concerned that some of the state resources for archives are not considered secure by google. While that is both concerning and embarrassing, it probably should not prevent students from using the websites.

The Archives has produced material that is primarily intended for middle and high school students. Here is an example of one of their Lesson Plans: Teaching Six Big Ideas in Constitution It creates several day ways to help to teach these documents.

Like the Smithsonian, the Libary of Congress is another outstanding United States government resource. The Library of Congress has multiple missions, but it has a teachers portal that allows you to browse materials and search for them more easily. It also has a search function that will help you find resources, but it isn't as good as the Smithsonian's search. It does allow you to search for content that satisfies Common Core and State materials. It also permits you to search for materials that fit organizational standards as set by the NCTE, AASL, NETS, NCSS and the NCSG.

Chronicling America is a digitized resource from the Libary of Congress and the National Endowment for the Arts. Chronicling America has a massive database of newspapers from all around the country. It is an outstanding place for students to learn how to use newspapers as a source for papers and history projects.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute is an archive based in the New York Historical Society building in New York. Instead of relying on its 70,000 piece collection on American History it has become a resource for teachers, undergraduate, and graduate students, professors and writers. Its website has a blog called History Now that has articles, videos, online timelines, and information from the Institute's exhibitions.

The 50+ Issues from History Now typically focus on a single broad historical topic. The articles in that issue will help you dive deeper into specific historical issues such as US Immigration Laws, Voting Rights, Alexander Hamilton, and Civil Rights. Each item of History Now links to relevant videos, articles, and even lesson plans.

Teaching with Historic Places is a site run by the National Park Service. The site is focused on using the National Park and sites on the National Register of Historic Places as educational tools to teach history, social studies, geography, civics, and other subjects.

The materials on the site are curated, and the selections are outstanding. That provides a ton of exceptional sources and guidance that helps teachers use the materials for discussions, assignments or essays.

The American Presidency Project, non-profit and non-partisan, is the leading source of presidential documents on the internet hosted at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The Messages and Papers of the Presidents: 1789-1929 The Public Papers of the Presidents: since 1929 The Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents: 1977-2009 The Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents: post-2009

The Voices of Democracy is a web project that focuses on great speeches from American history. There is a journal, curriculum units (based on themes, Speakers, Authors and periods) and blog with short posts focused on crucial speeches. Typically, each speech part of the site will have either a video or text of the speech, an essay, teaching materials, and additional resources. Voices on Democracy also has an Grades 8-12 Educational Resource Guide that shows teachers how to use their materials and comply with Common Core Standards.

PBS Media is a resource that includes videos, interactive content, and lesson plans. The site has resources for a ton beyond history and social studies. The critical component of PBS Media is its wealth of videos that have been drawn from PBS. It has over 6,000 videos (K-13+) on various social studies topics for students.

These resources were collected by Professor Evan Faulkenbury ( @evanfaulkenbury ) for his students. Each of these collections explores a different aspect of the American Civil Rights Movement.

Freedom Summer (1964) Collection - Wisconsin Historical Society SNCC Digital Gateway KZSU Project South Interviews - Stanford University Libraries Complete interviews from Eyes on the Prize - Washington University in St. Louis Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission Papers - Mississippi Department of MDAH Archives and History Freedom Summer Interviews - University of Florida Civil Rights Digital Library - University System of Georgia Southern Oral History Project Black Panther sources - Michigan State University Who Speaks for the Negro? - Interviews - Vanderbilt University FBI records on Civil Rights - The Federal Bureau of Investigation Malcolm X Project - Columbia University Green Book Digital Archive - New York Public Library NY Black Freedom Struggle - Rochester University Umbra - Umbra Search African American History Goin' North - West Chester University Civil Rights Movement in North Carolina - The North Carolina Digital Collections from the State Library of North Carolina and the State Archives of North Carolina

BBC History site focuses on short interactive stories that mix charts, videos, pictures, and text boxes. The interactives are useful for teaching subjects quickly, but they lack the depth of other sites on this list. Regardless, the interactives are fun and entertaining. Here's a link to an interactive on The London Blitz .

Nursing Clio - Nursing Clio describes itself as "open access, peer-reviewed, collaborative blog project that ties historical scholarship to present-day issues related to gender and medicine. Bodies, reproductive rights, and health care are often at the center of social, cultural, and political debates. We believe the issues that dominate today’s headlines and affect our daily lives reach far back into the past — that the personal is historical." Tropics of Meta - Tropics of Meta describes itself as a site dedicated to offering "a fresh perspective on history, current events, popular culture, and issues in the academic world. Founded in 2010, ToM has published over 700 essays by historians, social scientists, artists, filmmakers, and creative writers both within and outside the academy, giving voice to communities across the United States and the world." We're History - "We’re History tells the story of America and how the country became what it is today. Written by scholars, it is real history with all its triumphs, failures, twists, and ironies. Our contributors come from inside and outside of academia, but they are all committed to the idea that it is history that has made us who we are." We're History has a ton of great articles addressing different aspects of American History. The Junto - The Junto "Americanists dedicated to providing content of general interest to other early Americanists and those interested in early American history, as well as a forum for discussion of relevant historical and academic topics." Points: The Blog of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society - The Points Blog "is an academic group blog that brings together scholars with wide-ranging expertise with the goal of producing original and thoughtful reflections on the history of alcohol and drugs, the web of policy surrounding them, and their place in popular culture." Process: A Blog for American History - "Process—the blog of the Organization of American Historians, The Journal of American History, and The American Historian—strives to engage professional historians and general readers in a better understanding of U.S. history." U.S. History Scene - This site is a fantastic resource for articles, primary sources, syllabi, and reading list covering American History. It describes itself as "a multimedia education website composed of historians and educators at over fifty universities dedicated to teaching the American past in a global context. Our goal is to use innovative open source technology and live digital curriculum to democratize learning and help history lovers master United States history in a way that is entertaining, relevant, and intuitive." Balkinization - Balkinization publishes articles that address current constitutional and legal issues with a historical lens. The authors are a collection of historians and law professors. They often explain currently relevant legal questions that are in the news. If there is a legal question dominating the headlines there is a good chance there is an in Balkinization on that topic. The only downside is that the site is somewhat difficult to use but it does have a useful search function.

The Best History Sites from EdTechteacher is probably the most comprehensive listing of websites for teachers in different history fields. Despite being comprehensive, it is difficult to recommend the site because it does not appear to be updated regularly. If you start going through the site, you will find numerous dead or misdirected links. It is especially frustrating when you are looking for sources on World, Latin American, European, Asian, and African history courses. Still, it may be useful if you are willing to poke around the site.

Free online college-level history courses are an excellent resource for teachers and instructors. They can be used as a refresher for material that you haven't studied in years or at all. Many of the sites also include portals for educators. Most of the online courses break them up into individually sub-titled lectures. Instead of taking an entire course you can watch a specific lecture on a single topic or use the resources from the class (such as lecture slides, images readings, and assignments) in your class. The number of history courses available has grown dramatically.

edX.org - edX.org has several history classes available from multiple universities across the including Columbia, Harvard, Purdue, Peking, and others. They have one of the widest selections of course. Future Learn History Courses - Future Learn has a focus on European and British History, and the courses are fairly eclectic (i.e., Hadrian's Wall, The Fall of the Roman Republic, and Why Opera Matters). As of January 2019, the site had 29 different courses available. They also have paid online degree programs for students. Coursera.org - Coursera.org is one of the largest providers of online courses in the world. It has 182 universities and organizations partnering with it. This feature allows Cousera to offer over 100 history or history-related courses. The courses offered are incredibly diverse. The courses include videos, readings, and quizzes. Some classes can be completed for free, but others are behind paywalls. You can either pay for courses individually or buy a monthly subscription. Udemy - Udemy is the largest online course provider in the world. They offer free courses, but most of them cost $9.99 or more. Their history section is relatively limited. Additionally, more than half of the classes are not in taught in English. MIT Open Courseware - MIT Open Courseware has numerous history courses, but they have not added any new courses since 2017. The courses are structured more like classes and are less user-friendly. The courses also do not appear to have videotaped lectures available after the course has finished. Still, the courses do have lecture slides and additional information for educators. Open Yale Courses History Courses - The Open Yale Courses offer free complete courses taught by Yale History professors, but it only has four history courses available.

Reacting to the Past is a teaching technique that instead of relying on lectures and notes, uses elaborate role-playing games based on classic texts that require students to play historical characters. Instead of observing a lecture, students are actively working within the confines of the philosophical and intellectual beliefs of the historical figures they are portraying. Reacting to the Past requires students to explore the complicated historical situations that people lived through. As part of the game, students prepare speeches, write papers, and other public presentations to try and win the game.

Genealogy Explained has an excellent Guide for researching military records. While the guide focuses on searching military records for genealogical purposes, these records could be used for a number of different types of historical research projects. The article explains how to use the free FamilySearch.org service. The links on the guide go directly to the section on United States veterans.

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Please check back here as we update our classroom resources page with additional educational materials!

Becoming US

Case studies and lesson plans for secondary teachers and students to support United States history curricula and teach a more accurate and inclusive migration and immigration narrative.

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A collection of our many resources thoughtfully and intentionally created based on social studies themes and topics.

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AP®︎/College US History

Meet one of our ap®︎ us history content creators, unit 1: period 1: 1491-1607, unit 2: period 2: 1607-1754, unit 3: period 3: 1754-1800, unit 4: period 4: 1800-1848, unit 5: period 5: 1844-1877, unit 6: period 6: 1865-1898, unit 7: period 7: 1890-1945, unit 8: period 8: 1945-1980, unit 9: period 9: 1980-present, unit 10: ap®︎ us history exam skills and strategies, unit 11: ap®︎ us history standards mappings.

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Resources in American History ranging from general sites to specific event information.

• General Resources

Histories of Government Agencies

• Selected Specific Events

Photographs & Audio Recordings

This Day in History

Digital Documents

General History Resources

Selected Specific Topics

• America from the Great Depression to World War II : Photographs from the FSA-OWI, 1935-1945
• American Variety Stage : Vaudeville & Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920
• Built in America : Historic American Building Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey
• The Evolution of the Conservation Movement : 1850-1920
• The New Deal Stage : Selections from the Federal Theater Project, 1935-1939
• American Leaders Speak : Recordings from World War I and the Election of 1920

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Databases for history and culture research.

• General History andCulture Resources

Historic Newspaper Resources

• Biography and Genealogy Resources

This list highlights some of the history and culture databases available to researchers from the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. A complete listing of electronic resources is located on the Libraries and Archives'  E-journals, E-books, and Databases . Databases that require SI network for access are indicated by "SI staff." For information about remote access see  Off-Site Access to Electronic Resources​ .

General History and Culture Resources

• Archives Unbound  (SI Staff): Presents topically-focused digital collections of historical documents that cover a broad range of topics from the Middle Ages to the 20th century.
• American Civil War: Letters and Diaries  (SI Staff): Contains  over 2,000 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of diaries, letters and memoirs, presenting viewpoints and first-hand accounts from people on both sides of the conflict.
• Gale Cengage Databases  (SI Staff): Search across more than 30 Gale databases at the same time, including American and foreign newspapers (some historical, some current), as well as a variety of U.S. and international history sources.
• JSTOR  (SI Staff): Full-text searchable articles from more than 500 scholarly journals in the arts and humanities, economics and politics, mathematics and other fields of study. 
• North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories  (SI Staff):  Includes over 2,100 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of information, providing a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada between 1800 and 1950.
• North American Women's Letters and Diaries  (SI Staff):  I ncludes the immediate experiences of 1,325 women and 150,000 pages of diaries and letters. The collection also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of the sources in the database.
• Project Muse  (SI Staff): Provides full-text access to hundreds of high quality, peer-reviewed journals from non-profit scholarly publishers, including university presses and societies, covering a wide variety of disciplines.
• ProQuest  (SI Staff): Search across all available ProQuest different databases at once or select specific ones to search, including American Periodicals, Ethnic NewsWatch, Women's Magazine Archive, and historical newspapers such as the Washington Post, New York Times , Los Angeles Times , and Chicago Defender .
• Smithsonian Collections Online (Gale Cengage) (SI Staff):  Online archive of  Smithsonian  and Air & Space Magazine  issues, as well as online access to selected trade catalogs and World's Fair materials from Smithsonian collections.
• African American Newspapers (1827-1998)   (SI Staff) :  Covers life in the Antebellum South through the Civil Rights movement and more.
• Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers :  This resource from the Library of Congress lets you search America's historic newspaper pages from 1789-1924 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
• Ethnic NewsWatch   (SI Staff) :  Coverage: 1959-present. Included are journals, magazines, and newspapers from ethnic and minority presses. Ethnicities include: African American/Caribbean/African; Arab/Middle Eastern; Asian/Pacific Islander; European/Eastern European; Hispanic; Jewish; Native People.
• Google News Archive :  A list of U.S. and foreign digitized newspapers, arranged alphabetically by title. Coverage varies widely.
• Harper's Weekly 1857-1912   (SI Staff) :  America's leading 19th century illustrated newspaper.
• Atlanta Constitution   (SI Staff) :  Coverage: 1868- 1984
• Atlanta Daily World   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1931- 2010
• Baltimore Afro-American   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1893- 1988
• Boston Globe   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1872- 1989
• Chicago Defender   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1909- 2010
• Chicago Tribune   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1849- 1997
• Hartford Courant   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1764- 1995
• Los Angeles Times   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1881- 1996
• New York Amsterdam News   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1922- 1993
• New York Times   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1851- 2017
• New York Tribune   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1841- 1922
• Pittsburgh Courier   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1911- 2010
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1874- 1922
• Washington Post   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1877-2004 (Smithsonian employees can register for a free current digital subscription at  https://wapo.st/34iLbRs )
• Wikipedia List of Online Newspaper Archives :   A listing of both free and pay wall blocked digital newspaper archives from the U.S. and foreign countries.

Biography and Genealogy Resources

• Ancestry Library Edition  (SI Staff): Powered by Ancestry.com, this resource offers access to billions of records for genealogical research.
• American National Biography Online  (SI Staff): Offers portraits of more than 19,000 men and women, from all eras and walks of life, whose lives have shaped the nation. 
• Biography and Genealogy Master Index  (SI Staff):   Indexes current, easily accessible references sources to help find biographical material on people from all time periods, geographic locations, and fields of endeavor.
•   FamilySearch : For over 100 years, FamilySearch has been actively gathering, preserving, and sharing genealogical records worldwide.
•   Fold3  (SI Staff): Provides access to military records, including the stories, photos, and personal documents of the men and women who served. Also includes some census records and selected other non-military materials.

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In This Section

• Why Study History?
• Teaching Resources for Historians
• Mapping the Landscape of Secondary US History Education
• Regional Conferences on Introductory History Courses
• Online Teaching Resources
• History Gateways
• Globalizing the US History Survey
• Tuning the History Discipline
• Future of the African American Past

Digital History Resources

• Extending the Reach of Scholarly Society Work to HBCU Faculty
• AHA Online Teacher Institute in World History

Digital technologies have expanded the reach of scholarship in the way scholars communicate their research to an audience and present findings, as well as influencing the questions they ask in planning a research project. Text analysis, data and text mining, mapping, data visualization, and a variety of other digital methods and tools make forms of research beyond the traditional text-based article or monograph possible, while also encouraging scholars to consider questions of data storage, visual presentation, and user engagement. Here, you can find resources on getting started in digital history, articles on doing digital history, and projects of interest. 

New Digital History Resources!

The AHA has added two new pages to our collection of Digital History Resources:

• Digital History Glossary
• Project Roles and a Consideration of Process and Product

Guidelines for the Professional Evaluation of Digital Scholarship in History

The AHA Council has approved the Guidelines for the Professional Evaluation of Digital Scholarship in History. Read the guidelines, and get in touch if you need to consult the new Digital History Working Group about implementing these guidelines.

Resources for Getting Started in Digital History

Beginning in 2014, the AHA has hosted a Getting Started in Digital History Workshop at its annual meeting. The workshop offers various tracks, from beginner to advanced, according to the kinds of skills attendees wish to develop. View resources and lineups from the workshops here.

Digital History Lightning Rounds

Since the 2015 annual meeting, each meeting has featured digital projects lightning rounds with impressive lineups of digital projects. Participants usually speak for three minutes each. See the wide range of methodologies, time periods, and geographical regions represented in this archive.

• 2018 Digital Projects
• 2017 Digital Projects
• 2016 Digital Projects
• 2016 Digital Pedagogy
• 2015 Digital Projects

Teaching with #DigHist

Follow Teaching with #DigHist , a new Perspectives Daily series geared toward instructors at every level who are thinking about using digital history projects in their classrooms. Each month, John Rosinbum, a high school and college instructor in Arizona, will review a digital history project, explore what sorts of historical questions it could help students answer, and provide learning-outcome driven, ready-to-use assignments.

• Harvard Library
• Research Guides
• Faculty of Arts & Sciences Libraries

Library Research Guide for History

• Finding Primary Sources Online
• Newsletter February 2024
• Exploring Your Topic
• HOLLIS (and other) Catalogs
• Document Collections/Microfilm
• Outline of Primary Sources for History

Finding Primary Sources Online: Contents

General Digital Libraries

Is This Book Available Open Access?

Finding primary sources on the open web.

Finding the Right Subscription Database

Museum Objects

Local online sources, digitized harvard collections, digital libraries/collections by region or language.

• Finding Online Sources: Detailed Instructions
• Religious Periodicals
• Personal Writings/Speeches
• Oral History and Interviews
• News Sources
• Archives and Manuscripts
• Government Archives (U.S.)
• U.S. Government Documents
• Foreign Government & International Organization Documents
• French Legislative Debates/Documents
• State and City Documents
• Historical Statistics/Data
• GIS Mapping
• Public Opinion
• City Directories
• Policy Literature, Working Papers, Think Tank Reports (Grey Literature)
• Technical Reports (Grey Literature)
• Country Information
• Corporate Annual Reports
• US Elections
• Travel Writing/Guidebooks
• Missionary Records
• Reference Sources
• Harvard Museums
• Boston-Area Repositories
• Citing Sources & Organizing Research
• Newsletter January 2011
• Newsletter June 2012
• Newsletter August 2012
• Newsletter December 2012
• Newsletter June 2013
• Newsletter August 2013
• Newsletter January 2014
• Newsletter June 2014
• Newsletter August 2014
• Newsletter January 2015
• Newsletter June 2015
• Newsletter August 2015
• Newsletter January 2016
• Newsletter June 2016
• Newsletter August 2016
• Newsletter January 2017
• Newsletter June 2017
• Newsletter August 2017
• Newsletter January 2018
• Newsletter June 2018
• Newsletter August 2018
• Newsletter August 2019
• Newsletter December 2019
• Newsletter March 2021
• Newsletter October 2021
• Newsletter June 2019
• Newsletter May 2022
• Newsletter February2023
• Newsletter October 2023
• Exploring Special Collections at Harvard

This page lists resources for digitized historical primary sources. Resources containing books, archives/manuscripts and mixed collections are included. Databases for particular primary source types, newspapers, periodicals, personal writings, images, films, etc., are listed on their own pages in this guide. A list of primary sources types with links is given at Outline of Primary Sources for History . We have a list of digital collections, both Harvard subscription databases and free Web collections at Online Primary Source Collections for History . It is still in an early stage of development.

General resources are listed first, then the same categories of resources, where needed, are listed by region or language.

• General Full Text Searchable Digital Libraries  offer full text searches of books and periodicals.  Sometimes include archival/manuscript material, films, etc.
• Finding Primary Sources on the Open Web .  There is no one method for finding all digitized material.  Several methods are listed here - mainly item and collection-level searches
• Finding the Right Subscription Database . Subcollections, individual items (books, manuscripts, images), and full text in the hundreds of subscription (commercial) databases are generally not findable on open web searches, so it is difficult to know which databases may be useful. Methods of solving this problem are given here.

 HathiTrust Digital Library, Internet Archive, Google Book Search offer books and periodicals digitized from numerous libraries.  Each of these three digital libraries allows searching full text over their entire collections.

HathiTrust Digital Library  is a huge collection of digitized books and periodicals. Each full text item is linked to a standard library catalog record, thus providing good metadata and subject terms. Most items pre-1925 will be full text viewable.  After 1925, a much smaller number will be full text viewable.  You can search within non-full text viewable works and obtain the pages numbers where your search terms occur.   Most US, and some state, government documents will be full text viewable.

There is also a separate full text search for US government documents .

Advanced Full Text Search

In the first (Full Text) Advanced Full Text Search field, you can put terms for a full text search.  Phrases and proper names work best (exact phrase).  If you search two or more separate keywords, when you search within particular volumes, those pages containing all the keywords will sort first.

In the second search field, you can limit your full text search by:

• Title, searching the contents of a particular work, including periodical titles
• Author, searching the works of a particular author, including names of organizations and government entities.
• Subject, searching the Subject terms (same Subject terms as those used in HOLLIS) for a particular topic

Internet Archive  .

• Full text for a variety of digitized print materials and archived web pages (Wayback Machine), as well as manuscripts (a few), digitized microfilm, films, audio files, TV News, and more.  Many recent books are full text viewable if you set up a free account. You can use a Google password.
• Unlike Google and Hathitrust, IA usually offers multiple download options including e-readers.

Full Text Search Options. You can search  Internet Archive  for texts bearing a specified Subject term, Title, or Author (Creator). Shift from Search metadata to Search text contents.

• subject:Calcutta AND cholera [Use lower case for subject, title, creator]
• For a periodical: title:American Machinist AND "Spring breakage has been eliminated"
• creator:Parker, T. Jeffery AND "oosperm or unicellular embryo" [note: The correct form of the name must be used. Find this by trying out the name in Advanced Search: Creator. When you find the right name, shift from Search metadata to Search text contents ]

Much of the Internet Archive content is organized into full text searchable Collections. Thus, if you search “Civil rights” you retrieve 104,660 items which are partially organized into 178 collections (see under Media Type in the left hand column). Some of the collections are topical (Kent State Shootings) or they include issues of a particular periodical or podcast. Collections are often nested. For example:

• Medical Officer of Health reports  (British and Colonial) within  The Medical Heritage Library
• Army Times 1940-2015  within  Periodicals

By no means are all periodical issues and other items included in collections. In these cases periodical titles can be full text searched using the title:American Machinist AND "Spring breakage has been eliminated" method.

Browse text collections    ---   Browse movie collections     Adjust Media Type to Collections. You can then limit by Subject.  There are 243 collections of commercials in Movies.

Periodicals in Internet Archive

Many are available full text in the  Internet Archive ,  including  numerous trade periodicals . Search: collection:(Periodicals) AND Railroads. Select Media Type: Collections

In Advanced search:

Any field: Your topic Collection is: Periodicals

You can search full text within a particular volume, over the whole Internet Archive, or within a particular Collection. 

• Periodicals https://archive.org/details/periodicals
• Serials in Microfilm https://archive.org/details/sim_microfilm

Omit colons (:) and other punctuation in titles

These searches yield individual issues and whole runs.  Isolate whole runs by choosing Collections under Media Type.

• Medical Heritage Library which is also separately searchable  and the  Biodiversity Heritage Library which is separately searchable
• Much South Asian material
• 28 million  documents and texts , including 4.6 million digitized books
• 6 million  television news programs  and  other videos
• 14 million audio items ( Audio Archive ), including  live concerts ,  vinyl recordings ,  audiobooks ,  radio shows , and  podcasts
• 3.5 million  images
• 580,000  games  and other software titles
• 475 billion web pages stored in the  Wayback Machine

In Advanced search you can search say Description: "South Asia", and at the top left of the results page choose Media type: Collection.  When on a Collection page, you can search within by metadata or full text

The Internet Archive is so large and various that it can be difficult to navigate.  These partial lists of contents are useful:

• Lists of Internet Archive's collections
• Lists of Internet Archive's collections: External Collections
• Additional Collections

Google Book Search offers full text of:

• Largely, pre-1924 books and periodicals scanned from libraries,
• Post-1924 books and periodicals digitized in libraries. Full text searchable and snippet views displayed
• "Previews" of books submitted by publishers. Some pages are hidden.  Some, but not all, of the hidden pages are searchable.

Internet History Sourcebooks Project

World Digital Library  offers primary source materials.

The Making of the Modern World offers full text searching of works on economics and business published from 1450-1914 from the Kress Collection of Business and Economics at the Baker Library, Harvard Business School and the Goldsmiths' Library of Economic Literature at the University of London Library. Includes material on commerce, finance, social conditions, politics, public health, trade and transport. A great deal of more recently acquired material in the Kress Collection is not included in The Making of the Modern World .

There are several sources for finding free, open access, books online.

Try HathiTrust , Internet Archive , and Google Books as described above. Harvard members should be sure to log into HathiTrust to see the Covid Temporary Access material.

Internet Archive  offers numerous in-copyright books for one-hour (renewable) loan.  Free registration needed.

WorldCat  Open Access searches for open access material. Adjust Search in database : from WorldCat to OpenAccessContent

The Online Books Page arranges electronic texts by Library of Congress call numbers and is searchable (but not full text searchable).  Includes books not in Google Books, HathiTrust, or Internet Archive. Has many other useful features.

The Open Library , although its books reside in the Internet Archive, includes many books not findable by searching the Internet Archive directly

OAPEN: Open Access Publishing in European Networks

OpenEdition - the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB). Good for non-US imprints

The Digital Public Library of America’s Open Bookshelf offers numerous open access books.

WorldCat (Public version) allows limiting a search to open access material. Use Advanced Search. Check Open Access . Select Format: Book if desired.

Check your local public library ebook collection. 

There is no one way to find digitized primary sources on the Internet. The following offers methods for finding online historical resources which are more focused than a simple Google search. Most find items within digital collections. A few search the full text.

In most one cannot effectively limit to archival/manuscript sources.  Specific searches usually work better than broad topical searches.  Searches for proper names often yield good results.

The Digital Public Library of America

The Digital Public Library of America offers textual, visual, and sound resources contributed by numerous libraries, archives, and museums.  Searches catalog records, not full text, and links to the items on the contributors' websites.  Contains many individual items, such as letters and photographs, from digital collections.

Advanced Google Searches

General Google searches may yield very many results, and it may take much sifting through the results in order to find relevant items. Using  Google Advanced Search  with specific search terms can help yield more focused results.​ Detailed instructions for searching Google Advanced Search .

Bielefeld Academic Search Engine

Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) searches metadata and some full text, from over 2000 sources of academic open access documents.  About 60% of the documents indexed are available full text.  The metadata searched is provided by the source and tagging is often inexact.  This is a vast collection of documents and has much not available elsewhere. Use Browsing to narrow your search to subject area (e.g., Literature) or Document type (e.g., Manuscript, broadly construed).  Open Browsing and choose-Dewey Decimal (for Subject), choose major subject to see next finer level, twice.  After choosing View Records add a search term to the Subject Term or Document Type:

EROMM: European Register of Microform and Digital Masters searches its own database of records of printed and handwritten material in digital form or on microfilm from institutions worldwide and offers web search for such material.

WorldCat (the OCLC Union Catalog)

Numerous digitized collections of primary sources have records in  WorldCat .  These collections of primary sources are often swamped by ebooks on the same subject. There is no one perfect method for finding them, but the following may be tried for any topic.  Always find the proper  Subject terms for your topic  and search using those as well as any keywords.  Use Advanced search.  Detailed instructions for searching WorldCat .

OAISTER  is a subset of WorldCat for open access online academic material. It can be useful in separating digitized primary sources from the numerous ebooks in WolrldCat.  It includes digitized books and journal articles, open access publications, manuscript/archival material, photographic images, audio and visual files, data sets, and theses. It includes such a vast range of resources that digitized archival and other primary sources are lost in the abundant results if a broad topical term is used.  So it is best to use a narrow term or proper name. Thus "Act-Up" yields archival letters. It is possible to limit a search to Archival Material, but I have not found this to be useful.

To find databases available via Harvard Library by subject, go to HOLLIS Databases , scroll down to Best Databases for… and open History, or other topic.  Refine your results set on the right.  For example, for historical resources relating to women, go to Subject Category, open Show More, open Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies.  Also look for research guides on your subject among the Harvard Library research guides (Open Guides by Subject).

Because there are so many subscription databases, and because each database often includes numerous subcollections, it is difficult to know which databases may contain the sources you want.  For example, Vietnam War and American Foreign Policy, 1960-1975 (ProQuest History Vault) includes U.S. State Department Office of the Executive Secretariat Crisis Files. Part 1, the Berlin Crisis, 1957-1963.  Detailed instructions for finding these subcollections .

The Ultimate Guide to Virtual Museum Resources, E-Learning, and Online Collections (Museum Computer Network)

68 Cultural, Historical and Scientific Collections you can Explore Online (Smithsonian)

Digital Artifacts and Images for Ethnography and Archaeology (University of Michigan)

HOLLIS Search for objects in Houghton (incomplete)

Many sources digitized by local public libraries, historical societies and other institutions may be found via the Digital Public Library of America , the state/regional portals , and worldwide, via the tools listed below .  But some will not be findable. For local sources one may visit the websites of nearby institutions.

Library Directories

• LibWeb State Libraries
• LibWeb Public Libraries

Library Resources outside the U.S. (Brown University) offers overviews of library resources worldwide

Archival Directories

Historical Society Directories

• Preservation Directory.com
• Society Hill Directories lists historical societies for the US, Canada, and Australia.  Very comprehensive but not recently updated.  Google society names for their web pages.

Harvard Digital Collections  offers item level access to digitized resources.

CURIOSity Digital Collections   offers collection level access to digitized resources.

Harvard Law School Library Digital Collections

More information in  Finding Harvard's Unique or Distinctive Primary Sources: Original and Digital

International

Asia, South

Asia, Southeast

• Australia and Pacific

Czech Republic

• France/French
• Netherlands

Russia/Eastern Europe

Switzerland

United Kingdom/English Language

• Indian Ocean Islands

Latin America/Caribbean

• Middle East/North Africa

United States

Endangered Archives Programme  offers digitized material (manuscripts, rare printed books, documents, newspapers, periodicals, photographs and sound recordings) (largely pre -mid-20th century) at risk of loss or decay in countries worldwide.  When looking fo.r material on a country, use Search all endangered archives. Do not rely on Related places or Project country (on the left).

Digital Library for International Research (DLIR) offers printed and manuscript material from numerous countries worldwide. Search/browse level: Collection, Item

Lists of Digital Collections

Other Libraries' Research Guides are often contains Lists of Digital Collections

In Google Advanced Search

• all these words: library [your topic keywords]
• any of these words: guides research resources
• List of country domain names .
• Digital collections: Rechtshistorie  offers valuable lists of  national digital libraries  and of  digitized archival material by country .

BlackPast offers resources on the history of African America and people of African ancestry worldwide.

• Bodleian History Faculty Library Bookmarks
• Digital Library Directory is a searchable collection of links to digital collections.
• ECHO: Cultural Heritage Online
• PSM-Data: Geschichte is a collection of primary (P) and secondary (S) sources, many in English.
• Internet History Sourcebooks  is a collection of digital primary source documents, largely in English.
• Internet Sites with Primary Sources for History (BGSU)
• History (University of Washington)  The Primary Sources pages of the History guides list numerous primary source collections
• Guide to Online Primary Sources (UC San Diego)
• Online Books Page Archives and Indexes
• Voice of the Shuttle: History . This is the history page of a huge collection of links to humanities (broadly conceived) resources,
• World History: Primary Source Collections Online
• WWW Virtual Library

Periodicals and Newspapers

Sources for Newspapers: Guide to Newspapers and Newspaper Indexes

Union List of Digitized Jewish Historic Newspapers, Periodicals and e-Journals

African Activist Archive  (1950s-1990s) includes: pamphlets, newsletters, leaflets, buttons, posters, photographs, and audio/video recordings relating to social justice activism in supporting Africans.  Offers an international directory of non-digitized collections in repositories worldwide.

African Online Digital Library   (AODL) (Michigan State Univ) offers photographs, videos, archival documents, maps, interviews and oral histories in numerous African languages.

Aluka Digital Library  images and full text concerning:  World Heritage Sites: Africa  and  Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa .

Digital Innovation South Africa is a digital library on the socio-political history of South Africa.

The  Liberated Africans Project  contains information on Africans liberated by international efforts, 1808-1896, to abolish the Atlantic slave trade. Includes material in the British National Archives and the Sierra Leone National Archives

OurLagosHistory.com  offers pamphlets, newspaper articles and other material on the history of Lagos.

Akkasah Photographic Archive  at NYU Abu Dhabi offers over 9000 photographs of the Middle East and North Africa 

Africana Library Catalogs & Archives   (Columbia)

African Studies Internet Resources  (Columbia) 

Primary Source Collections Online: Africa

History: Africa: Primary Sources (Univ. of Wisc.)

The AsiaPortal e-resources collection  "focuses primarily on resources for  studies of modern and contemporary Asia defined as Central Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia and Oceania. There are databases, information rich websites, e-books and journals. Most resources are freely available, but some are licensed only for use by students and staff at Nordic NIAS Council"

Japan Search digital archive search tool

Lahore University of Management Sciences Digital Library

National Digital Library of India

University of Tubingen Hermann Gundert Portal  (Indian Language Printed Material and Manuscript Collections)

University of Wisconsin Bhopal Disaster Archive

National Archives of India Digital Collections

Gokhale Library (Maharashtra, India) Printed Reports

Asiatic Society of Mumbai Digital Collections

West Bengal Public Library Network

South Asia Open Archive  extensive archive of South Asian materials including several collections in the English language

South Asian Culture: South Asian Cultural Archives and Resources for Study Resources

Short Guide to Online Archives for Students (Archives of Economic Life in South and Southeast Asia)

Harvard University Stuart Cary Welch Islamic and South Asian Photograph Collection

Cornell South East Asia Collections

Kerala Sahitya Akademi Portal (Malayalam Language)

National Archives of Singapore Digital Collections

Neliti: Indonesia's Research Repository offers 300,000 books, datasets and journal articles from Southeast Asia.

Shiju Alex Kerala History Archive  (mainly consisting of printed texts in Malayalam but also including several English language Missionary papers)

Southeast Asia Digital Library

Australia/Pacific

Trove: Online Research Portal

Pacific Digital Library

digitalpasifik.org offers digitized records of Pacific cultural heritage, held worldwide, so that people in and of Pacific can connect with their stories.

Pacific digital resources (National Library of Australia)

History: Australia, New Zealand & Oceania: Primary Sources (U. Washington)

Canadian National Digital Heritage Index

The Glenbow Archives  online collections (1860s-1990s) offers archival records relating to Calgary, southern Alberta and Western Canada.  Special focus:  indigenous history, Mounted Police, pioneer life, ranching and agriculture, the petroleum industry, politics (especially the farmers movement), labour and unions, women, the arts (especially theatre), and business.

PORT (University of London) offers descriptions of European libraries, archives, and cultural institutions.

CERL Resources (Consortium of European Research Libraries)

      Includes link to Online Manuscripts Databases and Projects

General digital libraries

Early European Books  offers full text of books published on the Continent, beginnings to 1701. Not full text searchable.  Overview of contents .

Central and Eastern European Online Library   is an online archive which provides access to full text PDF articles from 441 humanities and social science journals and re-digitized documents pertaining to Central, Eastern and South-Eastern European topics.

Virtual Library Eastern Europe  (ViFaOst)

Digital Scriptorium is an image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts from many American institutions

TEMPO: Early Modern Pamphlets Online (1486-1853) currently includes about 47,000 pamphlets largely in Dutch, German and Latin.

Post-Reformation Digital Library (PRDL) offers digitized works Reformation and Post-Reformation/Early Modern theology and philosophy. “Late medieval and patristic works printed and referenced in the early modern era are also included”.

Tools for Finding Digitized Material

Europeana: Cultural collections of Europe  is the largest European search engine for digitized books, images, manuscripts, etc. Searches catalogs records of material contributed by numerous repositories.  Not full text searchable; links to full text.  Similar to the Digital Library of America.  Search tips .

European Navigator documents the development of a united Europe from 1945 on.

Lists of Digital Libraries and Collections

European History Primary Sources  is an index of scholarly websites providing access to primary sources. Offers collection level search.

EuroDocs: Online Sources for European History: Selected Transcriptions, Facsimiles and Translations . List of digitized documents by country

History: Europe: Primary Sources (Berkeley)

Medieval Digital Resources (Medieval Academy of America)

MICHAEL: Multilingual Inventory of Cultural Heritage in Europe  searches digital collections at the collection rather than the item level from European museums, archives and libraries.  Contains material not in Base, Europeana or EROMM

Open Access in Central and Eastern Europe  contains scientific and secondary source open access as well as historical primary sources.

Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia: A Research Guide: Digital Libraries and Web Resources  (Princeton)

Selected Internet Resources for History  (Western Europe)

WessWeb  (Western European Studies Section, Association of College and Research Libraries)

Judaica Europeana: a network of museums, libraries and archives

Sources for periodicals: Finding Articles in General and Popular Periodicals (North America and Western Europe)

Kulturpool  – a portal for cultural institutions in Austria with a search interface for their digital collections

Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Digital Reading Room

Bildarchiv Austria : Historic photographs

Kramerius - Digital Library of Czech Books and Periodicals . 19th - early 20th centuries.

Czech web archive  

France/Francophone

ARTFL Project (American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language)

Classiques Garnier Numérique  offers the Bibliographie de la littérature française, together with collections of French language primary texts and reference works, including French and francophone literature (Europe, Africa, Indian Ocean, Americas, Asia) and dictionaries and grammars from the 9th to the 20th century.

Gallica  includes the full-text for more than 100,000 volumes and 300,000 images covering the Middle Ages to the beginning of the twentieth century, with an emphasis on nineteenth-century material. Included are dictionaries and encyclopedias, journals, manuscripts, recordings and images.

French and Francophone Digital Humanities Projects  (ACRL)

History: Europe: France (Berkeley)

Paris: Bibliotheques patrimoniales . Catalog of Paris libraries with links to digitized material.

Réseau francophone numérique contains digitized historical material from French-speaking countries worldwide.

Patrimoine numérique. Catalogue des collections  numérisées

Bibliothèque Francophone Numérique .  Scroll down for Découvrez les Collections par Zones Géographiques.

Digital Humanities Database . A searchable database of French and Francophone Studies digital projects. Collection/project level search.

Clio Guide. Ein Handbuch zu digitalen Ressourcen für die Geschichtswissenschaften

Digital Libraries

Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek  offers textual and visual resources contributed by numerous libraries, archives, and museums.  Searches catalog records, not full text, and links to the items on the contributors' websites.  Contains many individual items, such as letters and photographs, from digital collections.

Deutsches Textarchiv  (1650-1900) includes texts from numerous subject areas.  Description .

Göttinger Digitalisierungs-Zentrum  hosts a large collection of mainly, but not exclusively, German books in several subject areas.

Zentrales Verzeichnis Digitalisierter Drucke  (ZVDD) is the German national portal for digitized scholarly imprints. Searches easily limited by century of publication.

Bayerische Landesbibliothek Online

Münchener Digitalisierungszentrum : Open-access collection of digitized books and other content held by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (München).

DocumentArchiv.de: Historischen Dokumenten- und Quellensammlung zur deutschen Geschichte ab 1800 (1800- ) is a large collection of full text German primary documents.

Datenbank Schrift und Bild 1900-1960 offers German language texts and photographs

Digitised Fonds : Direct access to the Federal Archives' files available online

German Studies: Digital Collections (ACRL)

The German Studies Collaboratory

Germanistik im Netz : Catalog search

Kulturerbe Digital   offers links to search engines for German digitized material, together with a searchable and browsable list of digitization projects.

Clio-online: Fachportal für die Geschichtswissenschaften  (Largely German)

Inventory of Digital Projects in German Studies or From German-Speaking Countries .  History page (Link dead in site)

Digitale Sammlungen: Liste digitaler Sammlungen mit deutschsprachigen gemeinfreien Büchern

Academy of Athens Digital Repository  (for manuscripts) and  Digital Library  (for the Academy's works and for their rare books collection)

Anemi - Digital Library of Modern Greek Studies

Hungarian Electronic Library . 

Digital Repository of Ireland

Internet Culturale: cataloghi e collezioni digitali delle biblioteche Italiane/Biblioteca Digitale Italiana

Storia Digitale: Contenuti Online per la Storia

The Netherlands

History: Europe: Netherlands & Low Countries (Berkeley)

Dutch National Library offers digitized works

Early Dutch Books Online (1781-1800) contains 10,000 books from the Dutch-speaking region.

Historici.nl (-2000) contains full text of numerous secondary and primary books and periodicals in Dutch history

Polona: Poland  Virtual archive

National Digital Library Polona . Middle Ages - mid-20th century.

Polish digital libraries federation offers online collections of Polish cultural and scientific institutions.

University Library in Poznan: Digital Libraries

Polish History and Culture

National Digital Library (Russia)

FEB-web - Fundamental Digital Library of Russian Literature . Middle Ages to present.

Digital Resources for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies describes online resources available via Harvard digital platforms or produced and freely accessible outside the Harvard system --Note the Open Access link on the Archives page. At Please find our list of open access resources for research in Soviet History there is a large list of resources.

International and Area Studies Library (Univ. of Illinois)

Slavic Studies: Resources for the study of Slavic cultures, literatures, and languages.

Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia: A Research Guide: Digital Libraries and Web Resources (Princeton)

History: Europe: Russia (Berkeley)

History: Europe: Other Eastern Europe (Berkeley)

Digital National Library of Serbia

Digital Library of Slovenia

Biblioteca Digital Hispánica

Biblioteca Virtual del Patrimonio Bibliográfico  offers digitized manuscripts and early printed books from Spanish libraries and archives.

Digital Memory of Instituto Cervantes

Hispana: directorio y recolector de recursos digitales  is a central index of over 4 million digital objects from 195 repositories and 326 different projects throughout Spain.

ALVIN: Platform for digital collections and digitized cultural heritage

E-Codices, Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland

e-rara.ch, the platform for digitized rare books from Swiss libraries: https://www.e-rara.ch

Searching Early English Books Online (EEBO), Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) and Early American Imprints. Since spelling in early books is variable and the long s (which looks like an f) is often used, it is important to try variant spellings and the wild card feature. ECCO offers fuzzy searching in Advanced Search

Both Early English Books Online (EEBO) and Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) contain full text of most books published 1475-1800 in Great Britain and North America and books published in English anywhere.

Early English Books Online  (EEBO) offers full text for works, including much ephemera and many periodicals, dated 1475-1700. Uses Library of Congress Subject Headings.

EEBO uses page images and OCR text. Although searchable by words and phrases, there are character recognition errors and full Boolean searching is not possible.  Early English Books Online Text Creation  Partnership  has input over 25,000 works and offers corrected text and full Boolean and other search capabilities for this subset of EEBO. Periodicals included in EEBO include corantos, newsbooks and periodicals included in the  Thomason Tracts .  Periodicals Search guide . Search Guide: Early English Books Online  (EEBO)

Eighteenth Century Collections Online  (ECCO) offers full text for English language works dated 1700-1800. Uses Library of Congress Subject Headings. Searchable by words and phrases based on the OCR text. Many 18th century American imprints are not included in ECCO because they are available in Early American Imprints (EAI) (next).

Both EEBO and ECCO are based on the  English Short Title Catalog  (ESTC) which has over 470,000 catalog (no full text) entries listing books, periodicals, newspapers and some ephemera printed before 1801. Works published in Britain, Ireland, British colonies, and the US are included, together with items printed elsewhere which contain significant text in English, Welsh, Irish or Gaelic. Books falsely claiming London publication are included. Items omitted from ECCO because they are available in EAI are represented in the ESTC. Reprints (reissues of original works) are not usually included in ECCO; they are fully represented in the ESTC.

NINES (Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship)  (1770-1920) searches (full text search available) selected digital scholarship and primary source databases related to the British and American long 19th century. Where fee-based material is found, you will have to go through Harvard Library E-Resources; no automatic link to Harvard resources is available.

British History Online  (11th-19th cent.) offers printed primary and secondary sources for the history of the British Isles. These resources cover ecclesiastical and religious history, intellectual and cultural history, local history, urban development, economic history, parliamentary history, and administrative and legal matters.

• Archives Hub : British digital collections
• Online Resources  (Institute of Historical Research)
• Research guides: Online collections  (UK National Archives)

Culture Grid is a UK national aggregator for museum collections information.  Culture Grid contributes records to Europeana .

Connected Histories: British History Sources, 1500-1900  provides federated searching for several databases of British primary historical sources, including the primary source content of  British History Online  for 1500-1900.

Manuscripts Online  (1000 to 1500) searches a variety of online resources on manuscript and early printed culture in Britain. Includes literary manuscripts, historical documents and early printed books on websites of libraries, archives, universities and publishers. Some of the resources searched are only accessible via subscription. These resources allow free snippet results but do not provide full access. Project blog .

Connected Histories and Manuscripts Online are not integrated into the Try Harvard Library system. When you find something in a licensed/subscription database only a snippet view will display, and you will need to go to the same resource in the Harvard system (if we have it) and redo the search.

Connected Histories and Manuscripts Online (above) include both free and subscription databases.

British Library Images Online

Images of Empire  (British Empire & Commonwealth Museum)

John Johnson Collection: an archive of printed ephemera (18th-20th centuries). Collection, housed in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, documents everyday life in Britain.

Science & Society Picture Library offers over 50,000 images from the Science Museum (London), the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television and the National Railway Museum.

Visual Arts Data Service  (VADS) offers images of art, design, and posters.

Indian Ocean

Bibliothéque numérique contains a collection of digitized Mauritian rare books, journals, annual reports and government documents.

Biblioteca Digital del Patrimonio Iberoamericano Contains manuscripts, sound recordings, newspapers, maps, drawings, and other primary source materials from the national libraries of Latin American countries,

Caribbean Memory Project

Catálogo Colectivo de Impresos Latinoamericanos (1539-1850) offers a union catalog of Spanish/Portuguese letterpress material printed in Latin America, Caribbean, United States and Philippines.

Digital Library of the Caribbean Digitized archival materials originating in the Caribbean and also Latin American beyond the Caribbean.  Collections, subjects covered, and types of materials included .

Early Caribbean Digital Archive

Gale World Scholar Latin America & the Caribbean Archive includes primary source documents, academic journals and news feeds, reference sources, maps, statistics, audio and video

Manioc: Bibliothèque numérique Caraïbe, Amazonie, Plateau des Guyanes

Sabin Americana Digital Archive  (1500-1926) searchable full text of European writings on the Americas.  Description .  On Joseph Sabin .

Mexico Digital Library

Latin American & Caribbean Digital Primary Sources (Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials) A listing of freely available digitized collections of various types of primary source materials from many Latin American countries.

History: Latin America: Primary Sources  (University of Washington guide)

History: Latin America (Berkeley)

Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC) Guide to Latin American material on the Web, with links to primary sources.

Middle East

Discovering the Treasures of the National Library (Israel)

Qatar Digital Library

Shamela Free Digital Collection of Arabic Books

Waqfeya Arabic books with a focus on Islamic Religious Sciences

Duke University Libraries, Ottoman-Turkish Literature

IRCICA FARABİ digital library (Turkey)

American University in Cairo Digital Collections

University of Hamburg, Islamic Printed Page project

Hebrew Books

Digital Library of the Middle East

Akkasah – Digitised Photographs from the Middle East and North Africa

American Centre for Oriental Resources Library Photo Archive

Arab Image Foundation Archive  (Non Profit archive of Middle Eastern images based in Beirut) 

ArchNet archive of Middle Eastern Built Environments , curated by the Aga Khan Documentation Centre at MIT

Das Bild des Orients . Searchable in German and English

Levantine Heritage Foundation

Middle East Photograph Archive  (University of Chicago)

Palestine Poster Project Archives

Saudi Aramco World Digital Archive  (1964- ) Aramco World magazine, published/unpublished images

Field Guide to Islamic Law Online Archives & Library Collections

Manuscripts | Digital Resources and Projects in Islamic Studies

Online Archives, Digitized Collections and Resources for Middle East, North African, and Islamic(ate) Studies (Hazine)

Orient-Institut Istanbul: Databases, portals, and virtual libraries

Access to Middle East and Islamic Resources  (AMIR). Blog with links to numerous online resources on Teaching and Learning in this region

Middle East & Islamic Studies Collection Digital Collections

The Digital Public Library of America  offers textual, visual, and sound resources contributed by numerous libraries, archives, and museums.  Searches catalog records, not full text, and links to the items on the contributors' websites.  Contains many individual items, such as letters and photographs, from digital collections.

Digital Libraries by State

These websites list hundreds of local, state, and regional resources. Each is different and some are better designed than others.  Very useful when your topic has a regional focus.

• State Archives and Collaborative (NARA)
• 250+ Killer Digital Libraries and Archives
• 71 Digital Portals to State History

American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series 1, 1760-1900

Early American Imprints, Series 1 (1639-1800)  and  Early American Imprints, Series 2 (1801-1819)  are based on the microform collection of books, pamphlets and broadsides issued in America recorded in Charles Evans' American Bibliography and Roger P. Bristol's Supplement to Charles Evans' American Bibliography, and in American Bibliography: A Preliminary Checklist for 1801-1819 by Ralph Shaw and Richard Shoemaker.

For the colonial era, overlaps with Early English Books Online and Eighteenth Century Collections Online .

Sabin Americana Digital Archive  (1500-1926) searchable full text of writings on the Americas, including many European works.  Description .  On Joseph Sabin .

NINES (Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship)  (1770-1920) searches (full text search available) selected digital scholarship and primary source databases related to the British and American long 19th century. Where fee-based material is found, you will have to go through Harvard Library E-Resources; no automatic link to Harvard resources is available.

American Pamphlets, Series 1, 1820-1922  offers pamphlets held at the New York Historical Society.

Nineteenth Century in Print: The Making of America in Books and Periodicals

American Memory  (Library of Congress)

National Archives (US) Catalog  - Can be limited to archival materials online

Microfilm Publications and Original Records Digitized by Our Digitization Partners :  Ancestry ,  Fold3 ,  FamilySearch . National Archives.

Electronic Reading Rooms of US government departments are listed on the FOIA site . Scroll down to View the full list of agencies and choose your agency. Under Select an Office, choose the office of the Secretary or equivalent central office.

AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History: Online documents arranged by year

Umbra Search African American History

Discovering American Women's History Online . Offers collection level search.  Another version .

MEAD: The Magazine of Early American Datasets is an online repository of datasets on early North America. Datasets are in original format and as comma-separated-value files (.csv). Each dataset accompanied by codebook.

U.S. History: Primary Source Collections Online  (SHSU)

Primary Sources for United States History  (RUSA)

Images of America: a history of American life in images and texts  is the online version of thousands of books in the Arcadia US local history series. The histories Includes photographs from archives, historical societies and private collections. Images and text are fully searchable. Searchable by location, person, event, date, ethic group and organization. Search HOLLIS+ HOLLIS tab Advanced search as Series (exact phrase) Images of America for the print books.

American Landscape and Architectural Design, 1850-1920 contains about 2,800 lantern slide views of American buildings and landscapes.

Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920  (Library of Congress) photograph collection includes over 25,000 items, mostly of the eastern U.S., with subject index and keyword searchable.

History of the American West (1860-1920) offers over 30,000 photographs from the Denver Public Library.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog

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History of A.A.

Since its beginnings in 1935, the success of Alcoholics Anonymous has sparked interest. A.A. members, professionals and the general public want to learn more about A.A. and how it works to help alcoholics. Here we have collected historical information thanks to the General Service Office Archives. You can explore online exhibits and also find resources for more learning here.

85+ Years of Helping Alcoholics

How did a meeting between a New York stockbroker and an Akron surgeon lead to a global movement? How did the A.A. Fellowship get started in the U.S.? Who were some of the people important to the growth of A.A.? If you are looking for a short write-up of the history of Alcoholics Anonymous, start here.

Visit the online A.A. timeline and learn about our long history

Go back to the origins of A.A. or see what happened in a particular decade or year. You’ll find lots of rich detail in the A.A. timeline, which includes both text and images.

GSO Archives

The General Service Office Archives is dedicated to exploring A.A. history. Since formally opening in 1975, it has served both members of the A.A. Fellowship and the general public. The GSO Archives helps individuals with an interest in discovering A.A.’s roots and its growth around the world.

Individuals and interested professionals can visit the GSO Archives in New York City. We also offer online exhibits and a timeline of A.A. history here on our website.

At the Archives, you can explore items including:

• published materials such as books, newsletters, reports and more
• unpublished materials such as correspondence, meeting minutes, manuscripts and more
• images marking our long history
• sound and video recordings of our founders and others

Visit the GSO Archives page to learn more.  

Online Archives Exhibits

We have online historical exhibits for you to explore. 

They emphasize some of the events, individuals and works that shaped our beginnings. We hope this material will inspire interest and spread further understanding of A.A.

Resources on A.A. History

A.A.'s Conference-approved books are a wonderful resource for learning about Alcoholics Anonymous. Our books explain how A.A. started and how the Steps and Traditions evolved. Also covered is how the A.A. Fellowship grew and spread overseas. Other historical resources are available in the A.A. Literature area of our website also.

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Publications, special projects, teaching tools, media and marketing, conferences, get involved, additional information, awards and prizes, online learning.

Naked: A Cultural History of American Nudism

What initially drew you to studying nudism?

I was originally drawn to the history of nudism as a way to explore why Americans have so strongly associated nakedness and the naked body with shame. I grew up in a fairly unconventional household. My parents very much identified with the counterculture of the late 1960s (even though I grew-up in the 80s) and spent weekends in the backyard in various stages of undress. Block parties were definitely clothing-optional events, dips in the swimming pool did not require a bathing suit, and the photo album was replete with naked pictures of virtually everyone in the family. This was my normal. As I grew into adolescence, however, I quickly realized that most other families preferred to remain clothed on sunny Sunday afternoons. The contrasting attitudes toward nakedness in the United States fascinated me. Why was it that my family’s network of friends had no problem going naked while many of the girls I went to high school with were being yelled at by their parents for wearing skimpy clothes? This contradiction cried out for historical analysis and the nudist movement—beginning in the late 1920s and continuing to the present—provided an excellent case study to probe the conflicting ways Americans have understood the body over most of the twentieth century.

Although the focus of my project was on an eccentric and obscure group, Naked required a great deal of old fashioned archival research. My research began in the University of Illinois stacks where I found Maurice Parmelee’s Nudism in Modern Life (1931). This led me to other nudist treatises, an important obscenity case, newspaper articles, congressional records, and the American Civil Liberties Union Archives. I would later find the Maurice Parmelee’s Papers held in the Sterling Library at Yale University. I also spent a great deal of time in Law Libraries attempting to locate important legal documents related to anti-nudity laws, nudist obscenity cases and raids on nudist camps. As I developed an archive for this project, I took great satisfaction every time I found references to nudism in completely unexpected places—mainstream magazines like Literary Digest or Time profiling the emergence of the movement , an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) explaining the therapeutic benefits soldiers gained from the sun, or a debate about nudism in the Congressional Record.  It was amazing how the weird and quirky can be found in the most ordinary places.

The American nudist movement left behind an enormous amount of rich sources that were not always located in the typical archive or library. In order to document nudist voices, experiences and perspectives, I turned to the American Nudist Research Library (ANRL) located on the Cypress Cove Nudist Resort in Kissimmee, Florida (minutes from Walt Disney World). While most archives require you to place your bags in a locker or to wear gloves while touching delicate materials, the ANRL asks its patrons to bring their own towel to use when they sit at the reading table. The small climate controlled building expertly maintained by Helen Fisher contains full runs of numerous nudist magazines dating back to the 1930s, it has personal papers of several nudist leaders, legal documents, rare nudist books, and club newsletters. Despite the naked patrons sitting next to me, I was also allowed to use my digital camera to capture entire runs of critical magazines like The Nudist (1933 to 1940) and Sunshine and Health (1940 to 1963). Whenever possible I attempted to digitize my sources and organize them electronically so that they were fully searchable and could be easily reviewed and annotated outside of the archive—in this case a nudist resort.

Research Room at the ANRL (Photo courtesy of American Nudist Research Library)

What was the strangest/most interesting thing you found in the archives/while doing research?

One of the strangest experiences I had researching this project involved a missing picture of a nude female javelin thrower and the Congressional Record.  Over the years, many of the older nudist books from the 1930s, despite often being held in special collections, frequently had images removed by library patrons. To make matters worse, it was often difficult to discern if a picture had been ripped out. I stumbled across this problem as I researched the House Un-American Activities Committee’s (HUAC) persecution of Maurice Parmelee. When Martin Dies (R. Texas) attacked the Roosevelt administration for appointing Parmelee to the Post War Economic Planning Board there was an extensive debate around his book, Nudism in Modern Life . Several Congressmen objected to the full frontal nudity displayed in a picture of a woman throwing a javelin. Even though I knew almost every page of Parmelee’s treatise, I had never seen the picture that the Congressmen thought belonged in a “saloon.” It was obvious the image had been removed so I put in an inter-library loan request for another edition of Parmelee’s book, only to discover that the same picture had again been removed! I was now more determined than ever to see this javelin thrower! Only a special note in World Cat eventually (after almost two weeks) yielded an unmutilated edition of Parmelee’s Nudism in Modern Life . While most of the images in Parmelee’s book were far from arousing, the Javelin thrower was apparently a very desirable image for many library patrons (and a few Congressmen)!

The Javelin Thrower in Maurice Parmelee, Nudism in Modern Life (Knopf, 1931)

What surprised you while writing this book?

I did not anticipate that a case study of an eccentric marginal social movement would require me to develop expertise in so many different sub-fields of American history. In addition to drawing on the history of gender, sexuality, and the body, I found myself making substantial connections to legal history, the history of health and healing, political history, literary studies, religious studies, art history, the history of race relations, film studies, and the history of rural America. I learned quite a bit about a variety of areas of American History and really enjoyed the opportunity to present papers at a variety of disciplinary specific conferences.  And I now have the ability to offer some really unique courses and seminars on a number of topics that appeal to students with a variety of interests.

Your study incorporates both rural and urban histories into its larger structure. Do you see this as an important corrective to more traditional histories of sexuality that are centered on the city?

One of the distinguishing features of American nudism was that it largely developed off the beaten path far away from the major urban metropolis that many historians of sexuality have made the focus of their studies. This allowed me to analyze how the meaning of nakedness shifted according to particular spaces, settings, or environments. The intimate relationship between sexual expression and the city that so many historians have documented made it difficult for nudists to convince neighbors, police, judges, and local politicians that exposing the body to the fresh air yielded therapeutic benefits. Yet, in the American countryside nakedness lost its association with commercial eroticism and– under the right circumstances—the naked body was linked with nature, skinny dipping, and the religious imagery of the Garden of Eden before the fall. Incorporating rurality into the history of sexuality challenges the assumption that only urban spaces allowed for sexual expression and deviance and demonstrates the complex ways that sex, eroticism and the body were socially constructed according to specific environments and spaces.

Many nudist images used a wide-angled perspective to recall a pastoral ideal of nakedness associated with the tradition of skinny-dipping. (Nudist, November 1936 9; courtesy of the Sunshine and Health Publishing Company)

Your study touches on a number of topics (religion, morality, politics, the law), but it seems that sexuality and eroticism is at the center. Do you see this study as primarily an exploration of how race, gender and the body shape our understanding of sexuality?

The complex relationship between nakedness and shame in the United States required an analysis that fully integrated race, gender, eroticism, sexuality and the body (both old and young).  The challenges made against nudism and public nudity often stemmed from broader social and cultural anxieties that defined the body as illicit. In the 1930s, for example, local police, moral reformers, and politicians associated nudism with an underworld of commercial sexuality. During the Second World War, these fears abated as the public accepted the erotic desires of servicemen serving far away from home and the covers of nudist magazines took on the appearance of pinups and full-frontal nudity began to sneak into the pages of the magazine. The nudist movement, yet again, adjusted to changing anxieties in the post-war period. Nudists guarded against fears of homoeroticism and interracial sexuality by promoting an ideology of domesticity at nudist resorts that excluded single men and people of color while celebrating family, nature and recreation. In the late 1960s, a new generation of youthful activists interested in going naked as a way to advocate for the politics of sexual liberation challenged the “respectable” character of many nudist organizations and welcomed gay men and women, people of color, and casual eroticism. My analysis of the way the American nudist movement negotiated the shifting anxieties around nakedness “uncovered”—pun intended—the critical role that race, gender, and the body played in shaping our understanding of sexuality, public nudity, and shame.

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