Library guides: History and cultural heritage: Primary sources

Primary sources

What are primary sources?

Created by witnesses or recorders who experience first-hand the events or conditions being documented, primary sources are first-hand testimonies that provide direct evidence from a particular period of history. Primary sources may be everyday items produced whilst an event or phase is occurring, such as photographs, letters, periodicals and manuscripts, but can also include artefacts compiled later, such as memoirs and oral histories.

Key primary source databases

Gale Primary Sources
An interface that allows searching across any combination, or all, of Griffith University's Gale Primary Sources holdings. These 27 primary source databases can be searched individually or using this interface: Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Nineteenth Century Collections Online, The Making of Modern Law, Archives of Sexuality and Gender, British Library Newspapers, Women's Studies Archive, Refugees, Relief and Resettlement, American Civil Liberties Union Papers, The Times Digital Archive, Archives Unbound, China and the Modern World, Financial Times Historical Archive, Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals, Slavery and Anti-slavery, The Times Literary Supplement, Brazilian and Portuguese History and Culture, Crime Punishment and Popular Culture, Indigenous Peoples of North America, Political Extremism and Radicalism, The Economist Historical Archive and the Making of the Modern World.

Access the GALE Primary Sources and Tools self paced tutorial to learn how to search the Gale Primary Sources collections and how to use Gale's digital humanities tools to analyse text.

Adam Matthew Digital
Griffith University's Adam Matthew Digital holdings including China : Culture and Society, China : Trade, Politics & Culture, 1793-1980, China, America and the Pacific, Eighteenth Century Journals, Empire Online, Foreign Office files for China, 1919-1980, Foreign Office files for India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, 1947-1980, Gender : Identity and Social Change, Global commodities : trade, exploration, & cultural exchange, India, Raj and Empire, London Low Life, Market Research and American Business 1935-1965, Mass Observation Online, Mass Observation Project, 1981-2009, Migration to new worlds, Romanticism: Life, Literature and Landscape, Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007 and Socialism on film.

Asia and the West : diplomacy and cultural exchange (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
A collection of manuscript collections consisting of British Foreign Office and United States consular and diplomatic service records relating to Asian countries during the nineteenth century. A selection of Asian missionary correspondence and journals is also included.
China, America and the Pacific (Adam Matthew Digital)
China, America and the Pacific explores the cultural and trading relationships that emerged between America, China and the Pacific region between the 18th and early 20th centuries. Manuscripts, rare printed sources, visual images, objects and maps from international libraries and archives document this fascinating history.
China : Culture and Society (Adam Matthew Digital)
Spanning three centuries (c1750-1929), this resource makes available for the first time extremely rare pamphlets from Cornell University Library's Charles W. Wason Collection on East Asia. The resource is full-text searchable, allowing for the collection to be comprehensively explored and studied. In addition, China: Culture and Society features a host of secondary resources, including scholarly essays, an interactive chronology, mini guides, and editors' choices from the collection.

Summary of licence
China : Trade, Politics & Culture, 1793-1980
This collection contains a wide range of materials documenting western interaction with China from the first embassy by Lord Macartney to trade negotiations for military aircraft in the 1970s. It includes papers regarding the Macartney and Amherst Embassies, the Opium War, Arrow War, Boxer Rebellion, Taiping Rebellion, the opening of treaty ports, the creation and running of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service and the birth of the People's Republic, and strong collections relating to missionaries and their experiences. It contains maps, drawings and photographs, and personal accounts of life and work in China throughout the period.

Summary of licence
China and the Modern World
China and the Modern World is a series of digital archive collections sourced from preeminent libraries and archives across the world, including the Second Historical Archives of China and the British Library. The series covers a period of about 180 years (1800s to 1980s) when China experienced radical and often traumatic transformations from an inward-looking imperial dynasty into a globally engaged republic.

Consisting of monographs, manuscripts, periodicals, correspondence and letters, historical photos, ephemera, and other kinds of historical documents, these collections provide excellent primary source materials for the understanding and research of the various aspects of China during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as diplomacy/international relations, economy/trade, politics, Christianity, sinology, education, science and technology, imperialism, and globalization.
Foreign Office files for China, 1919-1980 (Adam Matthew Digital)
This resource, published in six parts, makes available the complete British Foreign Office files dealing with China, Hong Kong and Taiwan during the period 1919-1980. The archival materials in the database consist of diplomatic dispatches, letters, newspaper cuttings, maps, reports of court cases, biographies of leading personalities, summaries of events and diverse other materials.

Summary of licence
Foreign Office files for India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, 1947-1980 (Adam Matthew Digital)
This collection covers the years from 1947 to 1980, encompassing files on all the countries of South Asia: principally India and Pakistan, but also Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Ceylon/Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim and the Maldives. The collection is split into three, chronologically based parts: Section I: Independence, Partition and the Nehru Era, 1947-64; Section II: South Asian Conflicts and Independence for Bangladesh, 1965-71; Section III: Afghanistan and the Cold War, Emergency Rule in India, and the Resumption of Civilian Rule in Pakistan, 1972-80

Summary of licence

Brazilian and Portuguese history and culture: the Oliveira Lima Library (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
A digitized collection of about 4000 pamphlets (of 50 pages or less) held at the Oliveira Lima Library at the Catholic University of America, published chiefly in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The pamphlets cover Brazilian and Portuguese history, politics, literature, and other important subject areas in the form of speeches, flyers, official decrees, sermons, poems, plays, concert and theater programs, and more.
China, America and the Pacific (Adam Matthew Digital)
China, America and the Pacific explores the cultural and trading relationships that emerged between America, China and the Pacific region between the 18th and early 20th centuries. Manuscripts, rare printed sources, visual images, objects and maps from international libraries and archives document this fascinating history.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online
A digital edition of The Eighteenth Century microfilm set, which has aimed to include every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas, between 1701 and 1800.

Consists of books, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera. Subject categories include history and geography; fine arts and social sciences; medicine, science, and technology; literature and language; religion and philosophy; law; general reference. Also included are significant collections of women writers of the eighteenth century, collections on the French Revolution, and numerous eighteenth-century editions of the works of Shakespeare. Where they add scholarly value or contain important differences, multiple editions of each individual work are offered.
Indigenous Peoples: North America
Indigenous Peoples: North America provides users with an informative source that will enhance research and increase understanding of the historical experiences, cultural traditions and innovations, and political status of Indigenous Peoples in the United States and Canada.

Researchers can explore the impact of invasion and colonization on Indigenous Peoples in North America, and the intersection of Indigenous and European histories and systems of knowledge through the use of manuscripts, monographs, newspapers, photographs, motion pictures, images of artwork, and more.
Making of modern law. American Civil Liberties Union papers, 1912-1990.
he American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has throughout its history consistently stood at the center of controversies involving the rights of Americans. Its records offer researchers a unique view of the inner workings of the organization and the hundreds of groups with which the ACLU interacted.

Covering the years from before the ACLU’s official founding in 1920 through the 20th century, this archive offers an array of primary source materials on some of the most important issues that affected the United States.
Making of modern law. Landmark records and briefs of the U.S. Courts of Appeals, 1950-1980.
Expands dramatically the range of legal primary source documents available to researchers. This collection significantly deepens critical understanding of social, economic, political, and historical issues by surfacing over half a million pages of briefs from appellants, appellees, and supporters (amicus briefs), with their respective replies, as well as appendices, memoranda, petitions, plaintiff statements, transcripts, and more from the various circuits of the U.S. Courts of Appeals.
Making of modern law. Primary sources
Part I, 1620-1926: Contains more than 1,300 individual titles sourced chiefly from the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale University, with additional materials provided by the Law Library of Congress. Its 1.8 million pages span over 300 years of legal primary sources, such as early U.S. state codes, municipal codes, constitutional conventions and compilations, and other documents. -- Part II, 1763-1979: Extends this acclaimed archive into the second half of the twentieth century with more than 1.6 million scanned pages drawn from the three world-class American law libraries: the Harvard Law School Library, the Yale Law Library, and the Law Library of Congress.
Making of modern law. Trials 1600-1926
This archive contains unofficially published accounts of trials, official trial documents, briefs, and arguments as well as official records of legislative proceedings, administrative proceedings, and arbitrations from England and America.
Mapping the world : maps and travel literature (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
A collection of English and American nineteenth-century maps and travel literature

The Mapping the World: Maps and Travel Literature archive includes a myriad of maps representing the long nineteenth century. Selections have been culled from the vast map repositories of the British Library and the National Archives at Kew. In addition to these large map collections, maps representing the Americas, and in particular America's westward expansion, have been provided by the American Antiquarian Society. Maps depicting Canada and the polar regions have been generously provided by the University of Alberta. Bryn Mawr's extensive collection of European Travel accounts provides a sweeping glance of the travel narrative genre. In addition to the Bryn Mawr Collection, selected travel narratives have been included from the collections of the American Antiquarian Society and the British Library.
Political Extremism & Radicalism in the Twentieth Century
Political Extremism and Radicalism in the Twentieth Century is a compilation of rare and unique archival collections covering a wide range of fringe political movements.

It has been sourced from distinguished libraries and archives across the world but also premiers some previously hidden treasure troves. With an extensive scope of content focused on political extremism and radical thought, this archive covers a broad assortment of both far-right and left political groups. It offers a diverse mixture of materials, including periodicals, campaign propaganda, government records, oral histories, and various ephemera, which allow researchers to explore unorthodox social and political movements in new and innovative ways and to understand what impact they have had on today's society.The collections cover a period of just over a century (1900s to 2010s) when the world saw the formation of several civil rights movements for the rights of minorities, women's rights, and gay rights. It also encompasses the rise and fall of a number of peripheral groups deemed 'extreme' or 'radical' by contemporaries, such as anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-war, communist or socialist, creationist, environmentalist, hate, holocaust denial, new left, survivalist, white supremacist, and white nationalist. Global in scope, although the archive presents materials largely from the US and Britain, it also showcases important factions from Europe and Australia, such as the Norwegian Nazi Party and the Australian National Socialist Party. By spanning multiple geographic regions, the resource shows both the cultural impact of radical groups at a national level as well as the international networking and cross-border exchanges of extreme political movements. Extremist literature has always been difficult to find because its authors intend the material for a limited number of true believers. Consequently, print runs tend to be small and erratic or materials are intentionally ephemeral in nature, for instance stickers, leaflets, or pamphlets. In most instances it has taken a dedicated effort to amass and organize collections of this type. These records provide a unique, behind-the-scenes view of often inaccessible groups, such as the John Birch Society or the Black Panther Party.

Public domain primary sources:

Digital Library on American Slavery
The University of North Carolina Libraries provide access to digital collections of primary resources concerning slavery. These include metadata and digital copies of the original documents. The Digital Library on American Slavery is well organized, includes several collections such as the Race and Slavery Petitions Project, and offers access to additional collections provided by other institutions. The resource continues to add collections, such as the North Carolina Slave Deeds now in development, and metadata are available for libraries to link to digital artifacts.
Documenting the American South
Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes sixteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.
KKK Newspapers / Hate in America: The Rise and Fall of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s
When the re-formed Ku Klux Klan reached its peak of influence in the mid-1920s, more than four million members were exposed to reactionary rhetoric through widely distributed newspapers produced by local, state, and national branches of the KKK, as well as affiliated publishers. Few libraries at the time collected the newspapers, however, making it difficult for later researchers to access these scattered titles. Reveal Digital, using a “crowdfunding” financial model, is digitizing and making available via open access a growing number of Klan newspapers.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database has information on almost 36,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The actual number is estimated to have been as high as 12.5 million. The database and the separate estimates interface offer researchers, students and the general public a chance to rediscover the reality of one of the largest forced movements of peoples in world history.

Empire Online
A collection of original documents relating to Empire Studies, sourced from libraries and archives around the world. Each section features thematic essays by leading scholars relating directly to the source material covered by the online publication with links to documentary evidence. The essays introduce students to the material, suggest possible approaches, and place the documents within a broad historical, literary and cultural context.

Summary of licence

Public domain primary sources:

ABS Statistics
The Statistics section of the Australian Bureau of Statistics website gives you access to the full range of the Bureau's statistical and reference information, including census data from 1996 onwards.

Australian Digital Collections
University of Sydney Library's collection of Australian Literary and Historical Texts. The texts are encoded according to the Text Encoding Initiative's guidelines for text encoding and interchange. The collection has been growing since 1997 with funding from a number of national grants and institutional collaborations.
Australian War Memorial
Includes photographs, text, art, private records, film, sound and official records.
Convict transportation registers database
The British Convict transportation registers 1787-1867 database has been compiled from the British Home Office (HO) records which are available on microfilm at all Australian State Libraries. You can find details for over 123 000 of the estimated 160 000 convicts transported to Australia in the 18th and 19th centuries - names, term of years, transport ships and more.
National Archives of Australia
"The National Archives of Australia holds the memory of our nation and keeps vital Australian Government records safe"
National Library of Australia
The National Library has an extensive collection of primary source material relating to the history and culture of Australia. These records give first-hand evidence of historical events or experiences.

Trove
Trove is a free discovery service focussed on Australia, Australians and items found in Australian memory institutions. Trove provides integrated access to over 45 million items from a range of the National Library of Australia's collaborative services and from elsewhere.

Europe and Africa: commerce, Christianity, civilization, and conquest (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
Europe and Africa: Commerce, Christianity, Civilization, and Conquest delivers monographs, manuscripts, and newspaper accounts covering key issues of economics, world politics, and international strategy relating to the colonial conquest of Africa.
European literature, 1790-1840 : The Corvey Collection (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
The Corvey Collection includes the full-text of more than 9,500 English, French and German titles. The collection is sourced from the library of Victor Amadeus, Landgrave of Hesse-Rotenberg. The Collection comprises one of the pre-eminent archives of the Romantic era, including fiction, short prose, dramatic works, poetry and more, with a focus on difficult-to-find works by lesser-known, historically neglected writers.
Making of the Modern World
The Making of the Modern World documents the dynamics of Western trade and wealth that shaped the world from the last half of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century.

It assists in understanding the competition for empire and the projection of European power from 1500 to the early twentieth century, and the historical underpinnings integral to the study of economics and European imperialism. Four modules may be searched individually or together: Part 1, The Goldsmith's-Kress Collection 1450-1850; Part 2, 1851-1914; Part 3, 1890-1945; and Part 4, (1800-1890).
Mapping the world : maps and travel literature (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
A collection of English and American nineteenth-century maps and travel literature

The Mapping the World: Maps and Travel Literature archive includes a myriad of maps representing the long nineteenth century. Selections have been culled from the vast map repositories of the British Library and the National Archives at Kew. In addition to these large map collections, maps representing the Americas, and in particular America's westward expansion, have been provided by the American Antiquarian Society. Maps depicting Canada and the polar regions have been generously provided by the University of Alberta. Bryn Mawr's extensive collection of European Travel accounts provides a sweeping glance of the travel narrative genre. In addition to the Bryn Mawr Collection, selected travel narratives have been included from the collections of the American Antiquarian Society and the British Library.
Refugees, relief and resettlement: forced migration & World War II
Current refugee crises figure prominently in world media. However, the history of refugee crises throughout the twentieth century remains largely untold through primary sources. With Refugees, Relief and Resettlement: Forced Migration and World War II, Gale chronicles the plight of refugees and displaced persons across Europe, North Africa, and Asia from 1935 to 1950, bringing together over 650,000 pages of pamphlets, ephemera, government documents, relief organization publications, and refugee reports that recount the causes, effects and responses to refugee crises before, during and shortly after World War II

Public domain primary sources:

European History Primary Sources
The purpose of European History Primary Sources (EHPS) is to provide an easily searchable index of scholarly digital repositories that contain primary sources for the history of Europe. As the number of digital archives on the internet continues to grow, finding and selecting repositories becomes increasingly difficult. EHPS strives to fill that gap by listing the most important collections of digital primary sources for the history of Europe, either as a whole or for single countries.
Europeana
Images, text, audio and video from European libraries, galleries, museums and archives.

19th century UK periodicals
19th Century UK Periodicals is a multi-part series which covers the events, lives, values and themes that shaped the 19th century world.

Series 1, New Readerships, provides insight into the evolving life of British culture, at a time when reading for leisure, women’s rights, children’s entertainment, and sports increased alongside the growth of publishing. Titles like Hearth and Home; Good Works for the Young; Punch; and Baily’s Monthly Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, and Racing Register, track the expansion of humour, education, and hobbies. Series 2: Empire: Travel and Anthology, Economics, Missionary and Colonial, addresses expansionism, perspectives on power, governmental theory, and cultural transmission, while providing students, researchers, and enthusiasts with unprecedented online access to both the economic and non-mercantile aspects of the Romantic and Victorian eras.
British Library Newspapers
British Library Newspapers consists of collections from the British Library which span three hundred years of newspaper publishing in the U.K.

For decades, even hundreds of years after publication, researchers of all kinds, all over the world, turn to newspapers for information relating to a widest variety of research needs. The rise of newspapers in Britain was a phenomenon which characterized a new age. The newspaper was increasingly a medium for information required by the commercially minded societies of major cities and regional centers. Taken as a whole, the huge production of newspapers in Britain provides an enormous resource for research on all subjects for all of the U.K., both urban and rural. The bulk of advertising, particularly for new books and theatrical performances, has proved especially useful to historians. Cultural trends, political currents and social problems are reflected in the newspapers and give new freshness and immediacy to the historic events.
British politics and society (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
The British Politics and Society archive of Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO) contains primary source documentation that enhances a greater understanding and analysis of the development of urban centers and of the major restructuring of society that took place during the Industrial Revolution. The archive is composed of a number of individual collections, drawn together from a variety of sources.
British theatre, music and literature : high and popular culture (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture features a wide range of primary sources related to the arts in the Victorian era, from playbills and scripts to operas and complete scores.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online
A digital edition of The Eighteenth Century microfilm set, which has aimed to include every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas, between 1701 and 1800.

Consists of books, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera. Subject categories include history and geography; fine arts and social sciences; medicine, science, and technology; literature and language; religion and philosophy; law; general reference. Also included are significant collections of women writers of the eighteenth century, collections on the French Revolution, and numerous eighteenth-century editions of the works of Shakespeare. Where they add scholarly value or contain important differences, multiple editions of each individual work are offered.
London Low Life
Full-text searchable resource, containing colour digital images of rare books, ephemera, maps and other materials relating to 19th and early 20th century London; designed for both teaching and study, from undergraduate to research students and beyond. Will be of interest to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including literature, cultural studies, urban studies, social history and the study of leisure and tourism. There is a strong emphasis on rare or unique material, particularly in the range of ephemera and street literature available. There is also an emphasis on visual material. The documents are drawn from the holdings of the Lilly Library, the rare books, manuscripts, and special collections library of the Indiana University Libraries, Bloomington.

Summary of licence

Making of modern law. Trials 1600-1926
This archive contains unofficially published accounts of trials, official trial documents, briefs, and arguments as well as official records of legislative proceedings, administrative proceedings, and arbitrations from England and America.
Mapping the world : maps and travel literature (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
A collection of English and American nineteenth-century maps and travel literature

The Mapping the World: Maps and Travel Literature archive includes a myriad of maps representing the long nineteenth century. Selections have been culled from the vast map repositories of the British Library and the National Archives at Kew. In addition to these large map collections, maps representing the Americas, and in particular America's westward expansion, have been provided by the American Antiquarian Society. Maps depicting Canada and the polar regions have been generously provided by the University of Alberta. Bryn Mawr's extensive collection of European Travel accounts provides a sweeping glance of the travel narrative genre. In addition to the Bryn Mawr Collection, selected travel narratives have been included from the collections of the American Antiquarian Society and the British Library.
Mass Observation Online
Mass Observation Online offers revolutionary access to one of the most important archives for the study of social history in the modern era.

Summary of licence - Mass Observation Online
Summary of licence - Mass Observation I
Summary of licence - Mass Observation II
Summary of licence - Mass Observation III
Summary of licence - Mass Observation IV
Mass Observation Project, 1981-2009
The Mass Observation Project was launched in 1981 by the University of Sussex as a rebirth of the original 1937 Mass Observation, its founders' aim was to document the social history of Britain by recruiting volunteers to write about their lives and opinions. Still growing, it is one of the most important sources available for qualitative social data in the UK. This collection consists of the directives (questionnaires) sent out by Mass Observation in the 1980s and the thousands of responses to them from the hundreds of Mass Observers. The directives and responses from the 1990s and 2000s will follow in 2021 and 2022.

Summary of licence
Political Extremism & Radicalism in the Twentieth Century
Political Extremism and Radicalism in the Twentieth Century is a compilation of rare and unique archival collections covering a wide range of fringe political movements.

It has been sourced from distinguished libraries and archives across the world but also premiers some previously hidden treasure troves. With an extensive scope of content focused on political extremism and radical thought, this archive covers a broad assortment of both far-right and left political groups. It offers a diverse mixture of materials, including periodicals, campaign propaganda, government records, oral histories, and various ephemera, which allow researchers to explore unorthodox social and political movements in new and innovative ways and to understand what impact they have had on today's society.The collections cover a period of just over a century (1900s to 2010s) when the world saw the formation of several civil rights movements for the rights of minorities, women's rights, and gay rights. It also encompasses the rise and fall of a number of peripheral groups deemed 'extreme' or 'radical' by contemporaries, such as anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-war, communist or socialist, creationist, environmentalist, hate, holocaust denial, new left, survivalist, white supremacist, and white nationalist. Global in scope, although the archive presents materials largely from the US and Britain, it also showcases important factions from Europe and Australia, such as the Norwegian Nazi Party and the Australian National Socialist Party. By spanning multiple geographic regions, the resource shows both the cultural impact of radical groups at a national level as well as the international networking and cross-border exchanges of extreme political movements. Extremist literature has always been difficult to find because its authors intend the material for a limited number of true believers. Consequently, print runs tend to be small and erratic or materials are intentionally ephemeral in nature, for instance stickers, leaflets, or pamphlets. In most instances it has taken a dedicated effort to amass and organize collections of this type. These records provide a unique, behind-the-scenes view of often inaccessible groups, such as the John Birch Society or the Black Panther Party.

Public domain primary sources:

British Cartoon Archive
A library, archive, and exhibition gallery, and dedicated to the history of British cartooning over the last two hundred years. The BCA holds the artwork for more than 150,000 British editorial, socio-political, and pocket cartoons, supported by large collections of comic strips, newspaper cuttings, books and magazines. The collection dates back to 1904
British History Online
A digital library containing some of the core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles.
London Lives, 1690 to 1800 - Crime, Poverty and Social Policy in the Metropolis
London Lives makes available, in a fully digitised and searchable form, a wide range of primary sources about eighteenth-century London, with a particular focus on plebeian Londoners. This resource includes over 240,000 manuscript and printed pages created by other projects.
UK Data Archive
The UK Data Service provides access to over 6,000 digital data collections for research and teaching purposes covering an extensive range of key economic and social data, both quantitative and qualitative, and spanning many disciplines and themes.
A Vision of Britain Through Time
A vision of Britain through time brings together primary source material from between 1801 and 2001. Includes maps, statistical trends and historical descriptions.

Archives Unbound
Archives Unbound presents topically-focused digital collections of historical documents that support the research and study needs of scholars and students at the college and university level. Collections in Archives Unbound cover a broad range of topics from the Middle Ages forward-from Witchcraft to World War II to twentieth-century political history.
British Library Newspapers
British Library Newspapers consists of collections from the British Library which span three hundred years of newspaper publishing in the U.K.

For decades, even hundreds of years after publication, researchers of all kinds, all over the world, turn to newspapers for information relating to a widest variety of research needs. The rise of newspapers in Britain was a phenomenon which characterized a new age. The newspaper was increasingly a medium for information required by the commercially minded societies of major cities and regional centers. Taken as a whole, the huge production of newspapers in Britain provides an enormous resource for research on all subjects for all of the U.K., both urban and rural. The bulk of advertising, particularly for new books and theatrical performances, has proved especially useful to historians. Cultural trends, political currents and social problems are reflected in the newspapers and give new freshness and immediacy to the historic events.
China, America and the Pacific (Adam Matthew Digital)
China, America and the Pacific explores the cultural and trading relationships that emerged between America, China and the Pacific region between the 18th and early 20th centuries. Manuscripts, rare printed sources, visual images, objects and maps from international libraries and archives document this fascinating history.
China : Culture and Society (Adam Matthew Digital)
Spanning three centuries (c1750-1929), this resource makes available for the first time extremely rare pamphlets from Cornell University Library's Charles W. Wason Collection on East Asia. The resource is full-text searchable, allowing for the collection to be comprehensively explored and studied. In addition, China: Culture and Society features a host of secondary resources, including scholarly essays, an interactive chronology, mini guides, and editors' choices from the collection.

Summary of licence
Eighteenth Century Collections Online
A digital edition of The Eighteenth Century microfilm set, which has aimed to include every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas, between 1701 and 1800.

Consists of books, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera. Subject categories include history and geography; fine arts and social sciences; medicine, science, and technology; literature and language; religion and philosophy; law; general reference. Also included are significant collections of women writers of the eighteenth century, collections on the French Revolution, and numerous eighteenth-century editions of the works of Shakespeare. Where they add scholarly value or contain important differences, multiple editions of each individual work are offered.
Eighteenth Century Journals
Portal to newspapers and periodicals c1685-1835 offers integrated access to the Hope Collection at the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Eighteenth Century Journals I), the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center University of Texas (Eighteenth Century Journals II), the British Newspaper Library at Colindale, London and the Cambridge University Library (Eighteenth Century Journals III), Chetham's Library, Manchester and Brotherton Library, University of Leeds (Eighteenth Century Journals IV), and Birmingham Central Library, British Library, Cambridge University Library, and Liverpool John Moores University Library (Eighteenth Century Journals V). It brings together rare journals printed between c1685 and 1835, illuminating all aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life. Topics include: the writings of Sir Isaac Newton; the French and American Revolutions; colonial life, provincial and rural affairs, reviews of literature, the theater, and fashion throughout Europe; the origins and rise of Romanticism; political debates; gender, religion, influence of the press, and coffee house gossip and discussion.

Summary of licence - Eighteenth Century Journals I
Summary of licence - Eighteenth Century Journals I I
Summary of licence - Eighteenth Century Journals III
Summary of licence - Eighteenth Century Journals IV
Summary of licence - Eighteenth Century Journals V
Romanticism: Life, Literature and Landscape
This powerful resource offers unparalleled access to the single largest collection of working notebooks, verse manuscripts and correspondence of William Wordsworth and his fellow writers anywhere in the world, all digitized in full colour. With access to the annotated full manuscripts of such notable works as The Prelude and Michael, or Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Dejection: An Ode this project is unrivalled in its content and scope. Researchers and students can trace the interactions of key literary and political figures of the eighteenth and nineteenth century through the mass of personal correspondence and witness the close circles in which contemporary authors and artists moved and how they influenced each other’s work. Other materials include diaries, travel journals, scrapbooks, autograph books, financial records and receipts, each with detailed meta-data enabling in-depth analysis.

Summary of licence

Times Digital Archive 1785-2014
The Times Digital Archive makes 230 years of this highly regarded resource available for students and researchers of 19th and 20th-century history. Every complete page of every issue is full-text searchable - every headline, article, editorial, announcement, image and advertisement.

Summary of licence

Public domain primary sources:

London Lives, 1690 to 1800 - Crime, Poverty and Social Policy in the Metropolis
London Lives makes available, in a fully digitised and searchable form, a wide range of primary sources about eighteenth-century London, with a particular focus on plebeian Londoners. This resource includes over 240,000 manuscript and printed pages created by other projects.

19th century UK periodicals
19th Century UK Periodicals is a multi-part series which covers the events, lives, values and themes that shaped the 19th century world.

Series 1, New Readerships, provides insight into the evolving life of British culture, at a time when reading for leisure, women’s rights, children’s entertainment, and sports increased alongside the growth of publishing. Titles like Hearth and Home; Good Works for the Young; Punch; and Baily’s Monthly Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, and Racing Register, track the expansion of humour, education, and hobbies. Series 2: Empire: Travel and Anthology, Economics, Missionary and Colonial, addresses expansionism, perspectives on power, governmental theory, and cultural transmission, while providing students, researchers, and enthusiasts with unprecedented online access to both the economic and non-mercantile aspects of the Romantic and Victorian eras.
Archives Unbound
Archives Unbound presents topically-focused digital collections of historical documents that support the research and study needs of scholars and students at the college and university level. Collections in Archives Unbound cover a broad range of topics from the Middle Ages forward-from Witchcraft to World War II to twentieth-century political history.
Asia and the West : diplomacy and cultural exchange (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
A collection of manuscript collections consisting of British Foreign Office and United States consular and diplomatic service records relating to Asian countries during the nineteenth century. A selection of Asian missionary correspondence and journals is also included.
Brazilian and Portuguese history and culture: the Oliveira Lima Library (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
A digitized collection of about 4000 pamphlets (of 50 pages or less) held at the Oliveira Lima Library at the Catholic University of America, published chiefly in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The pamphlets cover Brazilian and Portuguese history, politics, literature, and other important subject areas in the form of speeches, flyers, official decrees, sermons, poems, plays, concert and theater programs, and more.
British Library Newspapers
British Library Newspapers consists of collections from the British Library which span three hundred years of newspaper publishing in the U.K.

For decades, even hundreds of years after publication, researchers of all kinds, all over the world, turn to newspapers for information relating to a widest variety of research needs. The rise of newspapers in Britain was a phenomenon which characterized a new age. The newspaper was increasingly a medium for information required by the commercially minded societies of major cities and regional centers. Taken as a whole, the huge production of newspapers in Britain provides an enormous resource for research on all subjects for all of the U.K., both urban and rural. The bulk of advertising, particularly for new books and theatrical performances, has proved especially useful to historians. Cultural trends, political currents and social problems are reflected in the newspapers and give new freshness and immediacy to the historic events.
British politics and society (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
The British Politics and Society archive of Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO) contains primary source documentation that enhances a greater understanding and analysis of the development of urban centers and of the major restructuring of society that took place during the Industrial Revolution. The archive is composed of a number of individual collections, drawn together from a variety of sources.
British theatre, music and literature : high and popular culture (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture features a wide range of primary sources related to the arts in the Victorian era, from playbills and scripts to operas and complete scores.
Children's literature and childhood (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
Children's Literature and Childhood provides a range of primary sources related to the experience of childhood in the long nineteenth century. Included in the archive are books and periodicals for children, primers and other material related to education, pamphlets produced by child welfare groups, documents and photos related to children and crime, newspapers produced by youths, and more.

Curated by experts in the field of children's literature, this unique assemblage of material is sourced from such renowned institutions as the University of Florida's Baldwin Library Collection of Historical Children's Literature, the National Archives (UK), and the British Library, among others.
China, America and the Pacific (Adam Matthew Digital)
China, America and the Pacific explores the cultural and trading relationships that emerged between America, China and the Pacific region between the 18th and early 20th centuries. Manuscripts, rare printed sources, visual images, objects and maps from international libraries and archives document this fascinating history.
China and the Modern World
China and the Modern World is a series of digital archive collections sourced from preeminent libraries and archives across the world, including the Second Historical Archives of China and the British Library. The series covers a period of about 180 years (1800s to 1980s) when China experienced radical and often traumatic transformations from an inward-looking imperial dynasty into a globally engaged republic.

Consisting of monographs, manuscripts, periodicals, correspondence and letters, historical photos, ephemera, and other kinds of historical documents, these collections provide excellent primary source materials for the understanding and research of the various aspects of China during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as diplomacy/international relations, economy/trade, politics, Christianity, sinology, education, science and technology, imperialism, and globalization.
China : Culture and Society (Adam Matthew Digital)
Spanning three centuries (c1750-1929), this resource makes available for the first time extremely rare pamphlets from Cornell University Library's Charles W. Wason Collection on East Asia. The resource is full-text searchable, allowing for the collection to be comprehensively explored and studied. In addition, China: Culture and Society features a host of secondary resources, including scholarly essays, an interactive chronology, mini guides, and editors' choices from the collection.

Summary of licence
China : Trade, Politics & Culture, 1793-1980
This collection contains a wide range of materials documenting western interaction with China from the first embassy by Lord Macartney to trade negotiations for military aircraft in the 1970s. It includes papers regarding the Macartney and Amherst Embassies, the Opium War, Arrow War, Boxer Rebellion, Taiping Rebellion, the opening of treaty ports, the creation and running of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service and the birth of the People's Republic, and strong collections relating to missionaries and their experiences. It contains maps, drawings and photographs, and personal accounts of life and work in China throughout the period.

Summary of licence
Crime, punishment and popular culture
Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture, 1790-1920 is an archive comprising more than 2 million pages. It contains manuscripts, books, broadsheets, and periodicals, some of the printed matter very scarce. The archive unites a number of geographic areas, reflecting the widespread impact of the changes in crime and its policing during the long nineteenth century.

The collection covers Europe, North America, India, and the Antipodes and includes material in English, Spanish, French, Italian, and German. Using this archive, it is possible to trace the influence of a legal judgement or development of a penal methodology through various different jurisdictions. The archive also unites a number of disciplines, from law, criminology, and history to studies of popular culture and fiction.
Economist Historical Archive 1843-2015
The Economist Historical Archive delivers a complete searchable copy of every issue of The Economist from 1843 to 2015. New full-colour images, multiple search indexes, exportable financial tables and a gallery of front covers highlighting a key topic of each week - all combine to offer a primary source of research covering the 19th and 20th centuries.

Summary of licence
Europe and Africa: commerce, Christianity, civilization, and conquest (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
Europe and Africa: Commerce, Christianity, Civilization, and Conquest delivers monographs, manuscripts, and newspaper accounts covering key issues of economics, world politics, and international strategy relating to the colonial conquest of Africa.
European literature, 1790-1840 : The Corvey Collection (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
The Corvey Collection includes the full-text of more than 9,500 English, French and German titles. The collection is sourced from the library of Victor Amadeus, Landgrave of Hesse-Rotenberg. The Collection comprises one of the pre-eminent archives of the Romantic era, including fiction, short prose, dramatic works, poetry and more, with a focus on difficult-to-find works by lesser-known, historically neglected writers.
Financial Times Historical Archive 1888-2010
Delivers the complete searchable run of the world’s most authoritative daily business newspaper. Every item ever printed in the paper, from 1888-2010, can be searched and browsed article by article and page by page.

Summary of licence
London Low Life
Full-text searchable resource, containing colour digital images of rare books, ephemera, maps and other materials relating to 19th and early 20th century London; designed for both teaching and study, from undergraduate to research students and beyond. Will be of interest to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including literature, cultural studies, urban studies, social history and the study of leisure and tourism. There is a strong emphasis on rare or unique material, particularly in the range of ephemera and street literature available. There is also an emphasis on visual material. The documents are drawn from the holdings of the Lilly Library, the rare books, manuscripts, and special collections library of the Indiana University Libraries, Bloomington.

Summary of licence

Mapping the world : maps and travel literature (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
A collection of English and American nineteenth-century maps and travel literature

The Mapping the World: Maps and Travel Literature archive includes a myriad of maps representing the long nineteenth century. Selections have been culled from the vast map repositories of the British Library and the National Archives at Kew. In addition to these large map collections, maps representing the Americas, and in particular America's westward expansion, have been provided by the American Antiquarian Society. Maps depicting Canada and the polar regions have been generously provided by the University of Alberta. Bryn Mawr's extensive collection of European Travel accounts provides a sweeping glance of the travel narrative genre. In addition to the Bryn Mawr Collection, selected travel narratives have been included from the collections of the American Antiquarian Society and the British Library.
Photography, the world through the lens (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
Photography: The World through the Lens assembles collections of photographs, photograph albums, photographically illustrated books and texts on the early history of photography from libraries and archives from across the globe.
Religion, society, spirituality, and reform (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
This resource brings together monograph and manuscript collections into a single, searchable environment to help scholars examine religion’s influences on the shaping of politics, law, economics, and social mores. Religion, Spirituality, Reform, and Society highlights social science scholarship that helps students, faculty, and researchers better understand the relationship between religion and society.

Researchers can explore religious and philosophical movements that resulted in reaction to the dramatic changes in culture and society brought on by the Industrial Revolution and modern advancements. Topics covered include positivism, freethought, alternative Christianity, and the application of social principles of Christianity to everyday life by a variety of denominations.
Romanticism: Life, Literature and Landscape
This powerful resource offers unparalleled access to the single largest collection of working notebooks, verse manuscripts and correspondence of William Wordsworth and his fellow writers anywhere in the world, all digitized in full colour. With access to the annotated full manuscripts of such notable works as The Prelude and Michael, or Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Dejection: An Ode this project is unrivalled in its content and scope. Researchers and students can trace the interactions of key literary and political figures of the eighteenth and nineteenth century through the mass of personal correspondence and witness the close circles in which contemporary authors and artists moved and how they influenced each other’s work. Other materials include diaries, travel journals, scrapbooks, autograph books, financial records and receipts, each with detailed meta-data enabling in-depth analysis.

Summary of licence

Science, technology, and medicine: 1780-1925, Part II (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
This second part of the Science, Technology, and Medicine archive includes some three million pages of scientific material from the late seventeenth century through the first quarter of the twentieth century, with a primary focus on the nineteenth century. The collection is divided into four major parts: academies of science publications, natural history, public health, and entomology.

Taken together, the documents in this collection offer students and scholars a rare window onto the development of modern science and its methods. Of particular utility to all scientific researchers is the unique collection Academies of Science Publications, which runs from 1665 to 1925.
Science, technology and medicine: 1780-1925, Part I (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
This archive of documents covers one of the most vibrant and creative periods in scientific research and discovery, the long nineteenth century. The modern researcher can exploit the more than 3.5 million pages of journal, books, reports, and personal documents to explore the rapid acceleration of scientific, technical, and medical knowledge.

Changes can be traced from the Newtonian world to that of Einstein, from the horse to the automobile, from medical treatments based on humors and bloodletting to antiseptics and epidemiology. This archive covers every aspect of nineteenth-century science. The documents collected represent the most theoretical pursuits as well as practical applications and popular science.
Times Digital Archive 1785-2014
The Times Digital Archive makes 230 years of this highly regarded resource available for students and researchers of 19th and 20th-century history. Every complete page of every issue is full-text searchable - every headline, article, editorial, announcement, image and advertisement.

Summary of licence
Women: transnational networks (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
Using a wide array of primary source documents—serials, books, manuscripts, diaries, reports, and visuals—Women: Transnational Networks focuses on issues at the intersection of gender and class from the late-eighteenth century to the era of suffrage in the early-twentieth century, all through a transnational perspective.

Crime, punishment and popular culture
Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture, 1790-1920 is an archive comprising more than 2 million pages. It contains manuscripts, books, broadsheets, and periodicals, some of the printed matter very scarce. The archive unites a number of geographic areas, reflecting the widespread impact of the changes in crime and its policing during the long nineteenth century.

The collection covers Europe, North America, India, and the Antipodes and includes material in English, Spanish, French, Italian, and German. Using this archive, it is possible to trace the influence of a legal judgement or development of a penal methodology through various different jurisdictions. The archive also unites a number of disciplines, from law, criminology, and history to studies of popular culture and fiction.
Making of modern law. American Civil Liberties Union papers, 1912-1990.
he American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has throughout its history consistently stood at the center of controversies involving the rights of Americans. Its records offer researchers a unique view of the inner workings of the organization and the hundreds of groups with which the ACLU interacted.

Covering the years from before the ACLU’s official founding in 1920 through the 20th century, this archive offers an array of primary source materials on some of the most important issues that affected the United States.
Making of modern law. Foreign, comparative and international law, 1600-1926.
This resource includes pre-1926 treatises and similar monographs on foreign, comparative and international law, sourced from the collections of the law libraries at Yale, George Washington University, and Columbia University.

nternational Law constitutes the largest category in the archive. It corresponds mainly to the period of Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, with classics since the sixteenth century, including works by Gentili, Grotius, Selden, Zouche, Pufendorf, Bijnkershoek, Wolff, Vattel, Martens, Mackintosh, Wheaton, among many others. Foreign Law encompasses foreign legal treatises of a variety of countries. Because the term "treatise" is more of a common-law category, the equivalent works in civil-law systems may have other names such as commentaries, encyclopedias, textbooks, monographs, or festschriften. Comparative Law compares more than one legal system and includes Ancient, Roman, Jewish Law, and Islamic Law. The collection recognizes that the roots of English common law will be found in the deep recesses of European history.
Making of modern law. Foreign primary sources
This archive, which complements the collection of treatises found in Foreign, Comparative and International Law 1600-1926, provides an interpretive analysis with books on codes, the "primary sources" of law.

Part I focuses on Europe, including regulations, session laws, journals, and codes and commentaries. Included codes fall into several categories, such as Administration of Justice, Civil Law, Commercial Law, Military Law, and others. Part II covers United States state and territorial codes, municipal codes, and constitutional conventions and compilations. The collection also includes commentaries on codes, drawn from Spain, Portugal, Italy, Latin America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and Asia.
Making of modern law. Landmark records and briefs of the U.S. Courts of Appeals, 1950-1980.
Expands dramatically the range of legal primary source documents available to researchers. This collection significantly deepens critical understanding of social, economic, political, and historical issues by surfacing over half a million pages of briefs from appellants, appellees, and supporters (amicus briefs), with their respective replies, as well as appendices, memoranda, petitions, plaintiff statements, transcripts, and more from the various circuits of the U.S. Courts of Appeals.
Making of modern law. Legal treatises 1800-1926
Originally derived from two essential reference collections for historical legal studies, the Nineteenth Century and Twentieth Century Legal Treatises microfilm collections. Provides digital images on every page of 22,000 legal treatises on US and British law published from 1800 through 1926.

Full-text searching on more than 10 million pages provides researchers access to critical legal history, including casebooks, local practice manuals, form books, works for lay readers, pamphlets, letters, speeches and more.
Making of modern law. Primary sources
Part I, 1620-1926: Contains more than 1,300 individual titles sourced chiefly from the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale University, with additional materials provided by the Law Library of Congress. Its 1.8 million pages span over 300 years of legal primary sources, such as early U.S. state codes, municipal codes, constitutional conventions and compilations, and other documents. -- Part II, 1763-1979: Extends this acclaimed archive into the second half of the twentieth century with more than 1.6 million scanned pages drawn from the three world-class American law libraries: the Harvard Law School Library, the Yale Law Library, and the Law Library of Congress.
Making of modern law. Trials 1600-1926
This archive contains unofficially published accounts of trials, official trial documents, briefs, and arguments as well as official records of legislative proceedings, administrative proceedings, and arbitrations from England and America.
Political Extremism & Radicalism in the Twentieth Century
Political Extremism and Radicalism in the Twentieth Century is a compilation of rare and unique archival collections covering a wide range of fringe political movements.

It has been sourced from distinguished libraries and archives across the world but also premiers some previously hidden treasure troves. With an extensive scope of content focused on political extremism and radical thought, this archive covers a broad assortment of both far-right and left political groups. It offers a diverse mixture of materials, including periodicals, campaign propaganda, government records, oral histories, and various ephemera, which allow researchers to explore unorthodox social and political movements in new and innovative ways and to understand what impact they have had on today's society.The collections cover a period of just over a century (1900s to 2010s) when the world saw the formation of several civil rights movements for the rights of minorities, women's rights, and gay rights. It also encompasses the rise and fall of a number of peripheral groups deemed 'extreme' or 'radical' by contemporaries, such as anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-war, communist or socialist, creationist, environmentalist, hate, holocaust denial, new left, survivalist, white supremacist, and white nationalist. Global in scope, although the archive presents materials largely from the US and Britain, it also showcases important factions from Europe and Australia, such as the Norwegian Nazi Party and the Australian National Socialist Party. By spanning multiple geographic regions, the resource shows both the cultural impact of radical groups at a national level as well as the international networking and cross-border exchanges of extreme political movements. Extremist literature has always been difficult to find because its authors intend the material for a limited number of true believers. Consequently, print runs tend to be small and erratic or materials are intentionally ephemeral in nature, for instance stickers, leaflets, or pamphlets. In most instances it has taken a dedicated effort to amass and organize collections of this type. These records provide a unique, behind-the-scenes view of often inaccessible groups, such as the John Birch Society or the Black Panther Party.

European literature, 1790-1840 : The Corvey Collection (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
The Corvey Collection includes the full-text of more than 9,500 English, French and German titles. The collection is sourced from the library of Victor Amadeus, Landgrave of Hesse-Rotenberg. The Collection comprises one of the pre-eminent archives of the Romantic era, including fiction, short prose, dramatic works, poetry and more, with a focus on difficult-to-find works by lesser-known, historically neglected writers.
Romanticism: Life, Literature and Landscape
This powerful resource offers unparalleled access to the single largest collection of working notebooks, verse manuscripts and correspondence of William Wordsworth and his fellow writers anywhere in the world, all digitized in full colour. With access to the annotated full manuscripts of such notable works as The Prelude and Michael, or Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Dejection: An Ode this project is unrivalled in its content and scope. Researchers and students can trace the interactions of key literary and political figures of the eighteenth and nineteenth century through the mass of personal correspondence and witness the close circles in which contemporary authors and artists moved and how they influenced each other’s work. Other materials include diaries, travel journals, scrapbooks, autograph books, financial records and receipts, each with detailed meta-data enabling in-depth analysis.

Summary of licence

19th century UK periodicals
19th Century UK Periodicals is a multi-part series which covers the events, lives, values and themes that shaped the 19th century world.

Series 1, New Readerships, provides insight into the evolving life of British culture, at a time when reading for leisure, women’s rights, children’s entertainment, and sports increased alongside the growth of publishing. Titles like Hearth and Home; Good Works for the Young; Punch; and Baily’s Monthly Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, and Racing Register, track the expansion of humour, education, and hobbies. Series 2: Empire: Travel and Anthology, Economics, Missionary and Colonial, addresses expansionism, perspectives on power, governmental theory, and cultural transmission, while providing students, researchers, and enthusiasts with unprecedented online access to both the economic and non-mercantile aspects of the Romantic and Victorian eras.
British Library Newspapers
British Library Newspapers consists of collections from the British Library which span three hundred years of newspaper publishing in the U.K.

For decades, even hundreds of years after publication, researchers of all kinds, all over the world, turn to newspapers for information relating to a widest variety of research needs. The rise of newspapers in Britain was a phenomenon which characterized a new age. The newspaper was increasingly a medium for information required by the commercially minded societies of major cities and regional centers. Taken as a whole, the huge production of newspapers in Britain provides an enormous resource for research on all subjects for all of the U.K., both urban and rural. The bulk of advertising, particularly for new books and theatrical performances, has proved especially useful to historians. Cultural trends, political currents and social problems are reflected in the newspapers and give new freshness and immediacy to the historic events.
Economist Historical Archive 1843-2015
The Economist Historical Archive delivers a complete searchable copy of every issue of The Economist from 1843 to 2015. New full-colour images, multiple search indexes, exportable financial tables and a gallery of front covers highlighting a key topic of each week - all combine to offer a primary source of research covering the 19th and 20th centuries.

Summary of licence
Eighteenth Century Journals
Portal to newspapers and periodicals c1685-1835 offers integrated access to the Hope Collection at the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Eighteenth Century Journals I), the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center University of Texas (Eighteenth Century Journals II), the British Newspaper Library at Colindale, London and the Cambridge University Library (Eighteenth Century Journals III), Chetham's Library, Manchester and Brotherton Library, University of Leeds (Eighteenth Century Journals IV), and Birmingham Central Library, British Library, Cambridge University Library, and Liverpool John Moores University Library (Eighteenth Century Journals V). It brings together rare journals printed between c1685 and 1835, illuminating all aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life. Topics include: the writings of Sir Isaac Newton; the French and American Revolutions; colonial life, provincial and rural affairs, reviews of literature, the theater, and fashion throughout Europe; the origins and rise of Romanticism; political debates; gender, religion, influence of the press, and coffee house gossip and discussion.

Summary of licence - Eighteenth Century Journals I
Summary of licence - Eighteenth Century Journals I I
Summary of licence - Eighteenth Century Journals III
Summary of licence - Eighteenth Century Journals IV
Summary of licence - Eighteenth Century Journals V
Financial Times Historical Archive 1888-2010
Delivers the complete searchable run of the world’s most authoritative daily business newspaper. Every item ever printed in the paper, from 1888-2010, can be searched and browsed article by article and page by page.

Summary of licence
Times Digital Archive 1785-2014
The Times Digital Archive makes 230 years of this highly regarded resource available for students and researchers of 19th and 20th-century history. Every complete page of every issue is full-text searchable - every headline, article, editorial, announcement, image and advertisement.

Summary of licence
Times Literary Supplement 1902-2014
The complete run of the Times Literary Supplement from 1902 to 2014, on the Gale Primary Sources platform.

KKK Newspapers / Hate in America: The Rise and Fall of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s
When the re-formed Ku Klux Klan reached its peak of influence in the mid-1920s, more than four million members were exposed to reactionary rhetoric through widely distributed newspapers produced by local, state, and national branches of the KKK, as well as affiliated publishers. Few libraries at the time collected the newspapers, however, making it difficult for later researchers to access these scattered titles. Reveal Digital, using a “crowdfunding” financial model, is digitizing and making available via open access a growing number of Klan newspapers.

Archives of Sexuality & Gender.
The Archives of Sexuality & Gender program provides a robust and significant collection of primary sources for the historical study of sex, sexuality, and gender.

With material dating back to the sixteenth century, researchers and scholars can examine how sexual norms have changed over time, health and hygiene, the development of sex education, the rise of sexology, changing gender roles, social movements and activism, erotica, and many other interesting topical areas. This growing archival program offers rich research opportunities across a wide span of human history.

To search only on one, two or three of the four subcollections, go to Advanced Search and select the subcollection(s) in the 'By Archive' dropdown menu.

Women: transnational networks (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
Using a wide array of primary source documents—serials, books, manuscripts, diaries, reports, and visuals—Women: Transnational Networks focuses on issues at the intersection of gender and class from the late-eighteenth century to the era of suffrage in the early-twentieth century, all through a transnational perspective.
Women's Studies Archive
Bringing women’s stories to light, the Women’s Studies Archive connects archival collections concerning women’s history from across the globe and from a wide range of sources. Focusing on the evolution of feminism throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the archive provides materials on women’s political activism, such as suffrage, birth control, pacifism, civil rights, and socialism, and on women’s voices, from female-authored literature to women’s periodicals.

The first module in the Women’s Studies Archive, Issues and Identities traces the path of women’s issues from past to present, pulling primary sources from manuscripts, newspapers, periodicals, and more. It captures the foundation of women’s movements, struggles and triumphs, and focuses on the social, political, and professional achievements of women throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century. Module 2, Voice and Vision, builds on the platform started with Issues and Identities and brings yet more female voices to the forefront. Particular attention has been paid to the mediums through which women have created a voice for themselves, with female-authored literature, journals and magazines that were produced by women, not just for women. Looking beyond simply women’s suffrage, the archive covers multiple areas that are of key importance to the study of women’s history from a diverse and global perspective, from the abolition of slavery, alcohol and temperance movements, pacifism, and political activism, to domestic service, education, health and hygiene, divorce, and social reform. Module 3, Rare Titles from the American Antiquarian Society, 1820-1922, brings together over one million pages of women-authored works from the American Antiquarian Society, the pre-eminent collector of pre-20th century Americana, covering over a century of female writing. This unique corpus of female-authored literature centres on the American female experience in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The database not only provides women’s perspective of history but is an essential resource for researchers wanting to undertake in-depth analysis into women’s authorship enabling researchers to track the development of female language, literature, and ideas. Module 4, Female Forerunners Worldwide, concerns women trailblazers, both individuals and organisations, who have impacted society through social reform, popular culture, healthcare and more.

Public domain primary sources:

The Australian's Women's Register
Biographical information about Australian women and their organisations.

Archives Unbound
Archives Unbound presents topically-focused digital collections of historical documents that support the research and study needs of scholars and students at the college and university level. Collections in Archives Unbound cover a broad range of topics from the Middle Ages forward-from Witchcraft to World War II to twentieth-century political history.
Chatham House Online Archive
Chatham House Online Archive provides a searchable, browseable research environment that enables users to explore approximately half a million pages and over 90 years of research, analysis and commentary originating from the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

Subject-indexed briefing papers, special reports, pamphlets, conference papers and monographs will allow users to quickly retrieve and analyze material relevant to their own research or study. Users will also have access to the full-text of Chatham House's publications and audio recordings of Chatham House lectures and their fully searchable transcripts.
Empire Online
A collection of original documents relating to Empire Studies, sourced from libraries and archives around the world. Each section features thematic essays by leading scholars relating directly to the source material covered by the online publication with links to documentary evidence. The essays introduce students to the material, suggest possible approaches, and place the documents within a broad historical, literary and cultural context.

Summary of licence
Global commodities : trade, exploration, & cultural exchange (Adam Matthew Digital)
This resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of global commodities in world history. The commodities featured in this resource have been transported, exchanged and consumed around the world for hundreds of years. They helped transform societies, global trading operations, habits of consumption and social practices.

Summary of licence
Making of the Modern World
The Making of the Modern World documents the dynamics of Western trade and wealth that shaped the world from the last half of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century.

It assists in understanding the competition for empire and the projection of European power from 1500 to the early twentieth century, and the historical underpinnings integral to the study of economics and European imperialism. Four modules may be searched individually or together: Part 1, The Goldsmith's-Kress Collection 1450-1850; Part 2, 1851-1914; Part 3, 1890-1945; and Part 4, (1800-1890).
Mapping the world : maps and travel literature (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
A collection of English and American nineteenth-century maps and travel literature

The Mapping the World: Maps and Travel Literature archive includes a myriad of maps representing the long nineteenth century. Selections have been culled from the vast map repositories of the British Library and the National Archives at Kew. In addition to these large map collections, maps representing the Americas, and in particular America's westward expansion, have been provided by the American Antiquarian Society. Maps depicting Canada and the polar regions have been generously provided by the University of Alberta. Bryn Mawr's extensive collection of European Travel accounts provides a sweeping glance of the travel narrative genre. In addition to the Bryn Mawr Collection, selected travel narratives have been included from the collections of the American Antiquarian Society and the British Library.
Photography, the world through the lens (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
Photography: The World through the Lens assembles collections of photographs, photograph albums, photographically illustrated books and texts on the early history of photography from libraries and archives from across the globe.
Refugees, relief and resettlement: forced migration & World War II
Current refugee crises figure prominently in world media. However, the history of refugee crises throughout the twentieth century remains largely untold through primary sources. With Refugees, Relief and Resettlement: Forced Migration and World War II, Gale chronicles the plight of refugees and displaced persons across Europe, North Africa, and Asia from 1935 to 1950, bringing together over 650,000 pages of pamphlets, ephemera, government documents, relief organization publications, and refugee reports that recount the causes, effects and responses to refugee crises before, during and shortly after World War II
Romanticism: Life, Literature and Landscape
This powerful resource offers unparalleled access to the single largest collection of working notebooks, verse manuscripts and correspondence of William Wordsworth and his fellow writers anywhere in the world, all digitized in full colour. With access to the annotated full manuscripts of such notable works as The Prelude and Michael, or Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Dejection: An Ode this project is unrivalled in its content and scope. Researchers and students can trace the interactions of key literary and political figures of the eighteenth and nineteenth century through the mass of personal correspondence and witness the close circles in which contemporary authors and artists moved and how they influenced each other’s work. Other materials include diaries, travel journals, scrapbooks, autograph books, financial records and receipts, each with detailed meta-data enabling in-depth analysis.

Summary of licence

Slavery and Anti-Slavery
It consists of more than five million cross-searchable pages sourced from books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, legal documents, court records, monographs, manuscripts, and maps from many different countries covering slave trade history. The archive is not just valuable to researchers in African history, but the wider scope of African studies and African-American studies, making it an unprecedented collection developed under the guidance of a board of scholars, it offers never-before-available research opportunities and endless teaching possibilities.

It consists of more than five million cross-searchable pages sourced from books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, legal documents, court records, monographs, manuscripts, and maps from many different countries covering slave trade history. The archive is not just valuable to researchers in African history, but the wider scope of African studies and African-American studies, making it an unprecedented collection developed under the guidance of a board of scholars, it offers never-before-available research opportunities and endless teaching possibilities.
Times Digital Archive 1785-2014
The Times Digital Archive makes 230 years of this highly regarded resource available for students and researchers of 19th and 20th-century history. Every complete page of every issue is full-text searchable - every headline, article, editorial, announcement, image and advertisement.

Summary of licence
Times Literary Supplement 1902-2014
The complete run of the Times Literary Supplement from 1902 to 2014, on the Gale Primary Sources platform.

Public domain primary sources:

Harvard Digital Collections
Harvard University Library has a number of digital collections that cover important historical primary sources from around the world.

Griffith Archive

Griffith Archive
The Griffith Archive is a repository for historical artefacts relating to Griffith University since its conception. The Archive records Griffith’s story by collecting and digitally/physically preserving relevant documents, photographs, oral histories, memorabilia and other artefacts. It also details significant aspects of the organisation’s history and changes through the years.