What is Microfilm?
When you can't find published primary sources, you may be able to get ahold of electronic or microfilm copies
Much archival primary source material has been filmed over the years, but using it will take some getting used to. Ask for help with microfilm, microfiche, or microcards at a reference desk!
A sense of what it is and how you use it: Using Microfilm
News Resources
A very thorough guide to finding news articles, including historical news, in print, in microfilm &/or online.
- News Research: Finding the NewsA chronological overview of the major resources for finding the news, both historical and recent, with advice for the news researcher.
US Government
The U.S. government commissions and publishes a number of images.
U.S Congressional Serial Set (Readex)
This is the database of digitized texts from the bound, sequentially numbered volumes of all the reports, documents, and journals of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Upon completion, the digital version of the Serial set will consist of over 12 million pages. Database searchable by subject, publication category, standing committee author, and other parameters. Cornell also holds print versions of the entire run. As of February 2009, the following years are covered online:
15th Congress - 89th Congress, 2nd session through Serial Set no. 12749, 1817 - 1966
Serial Set Volumes: 1 - 12749
You can limit searches to results that contain tables, maps, and/or illustrations. The list of search results should indicate which results contain maps, color maps, tables, and/or illustrations.
Images may be downloaded as pdf, bi-tonal (black & white) pdf, or tiff. Some jpg downloads are also offered.
Examples of material found in the Serial Set include reports of geological surveys, agricultural reports, portraits, disaster reports, contested election materials, and much, much more.
Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections
Housed on the lowest level of Kroch Library, the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections is open for research Monday-Friday and some Saturdays during the academic year. Please consult their website for specific hours. This is Cornell's largest collection of archival and rare book materials. While books are listed in the library catalog, archival collections are described on the collection (rather than at the item) level. Notable collections are described here.
Please note the following policy: before using the collections, you must set up a research account and present photo identification. Set up your account online first--you can request materials in advance of your visit--then when you visit the Reference Room (level 2B Kroch), present photo identification. Be sure to check their web site for specific hours of operation.
You may also be interested in the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives and its archival collections.
Electronic resources
This is just a sampling of the many, many primary resources available in electronic form. Also see the "primary sources" section of the main library web site.
- Archives of American Art: Terra Foundation Center for Digital CollectionsOver 125 archival collections available in their entirety and more than 12,000 additional individual documents.
- Accessible archivesA site devoted to primary source material in American history. Information archived is from leading historical periodicals and books, and includes eyewitness accounts of historical events, vivid descriptions of daily life, editorial observations, commerce as seen through advertisements, and genealogical records. Databases are encyclopedic in scope and allow full Boolean, group, name, string, and truncated searches. Transcribed individual entries are complete with full bibliographic citations and are organized chronologically. Titles will continue to be added covering important topics and time periods for scholars and students of all academic levels.
- Nineteenth Century Masterfile19th century masterfile/Poole's is a reference service for scholars, bibliographers, and students of the Nineteenth Century. It is a scholarly tool for mining the riches of this extraordinary period. A continually expanding resource for the study of Nineteenth-Century cultural and intellectual life.
- Hathi Trust Digital LibraryAs a digital repository for the nation's great research libraries, HathiTrust brings together the immense collections of partner institutions. It was initially conceived as a collaboration of the thirteen universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, the University of California system, and the University of Virginia to establish a repository for those universities to archive and share their digitized collections, and quickly expanded to include additional partners with fast growing treasure of digitized collections.
Internet Archive (archive.org)"The Internet Archive "was founded [in 1996] to build an 'Internet library,' with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format," such as Internet sites and other cultural digital artifacts (i.e. movies, interviews, images, etc.). Using the Internet Archive's "Wayback Machine," users can look at their own Web site and track how it has evolved. Plug-ins are made available as needed. "Special Wayback Collections" provide a sense of how events such as September 11, 2001, were recorded digitally. This site is appropriate for anyone doing research on the history of the Internet and for those who want to see how the Internet has changed over the years." "Best Free Reference Web Sites 2002." RUSA Quarterly, Fall 2002; reviewed Feb. 19, 2002.
- America's Historical ImprintsSearchable monographs, pamphlets, broadsides, government documents and ephemera enable researchers to explore America's distant and not so distant past--Archive of Americana, collections."
- America's Historical NewspapersSer.1, 1690-1876. This collection provides images and full-text content access to historic newspapers listed in Clarence Brigham's authoritative bibliography, History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820, and in additional subsequent bibliographies. -- Ser. 2, 1758-1900. This collection focuses on the 18th- and 19th-century newspapers. -- Ser. 3, 1829-1922. This collection focuses on the 19th- and 20th-century newspapers including Civil War, Reconstruction, the Progressive Era and beyond. -- Ser. 4, 1756 - 1922. This collection includes 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century newspapers from all 50 present states. -- Ser. 5, 1777-1922. This collection presents 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century newspapers from all 50 present states, including the North Star, the famous anti-slavery newspaper founded by Frederick Douglass. -- Ser. 6 includes more than 160 significant 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century newspapers, including titles of unique historical significance, regional weeklies and big-city dailies. -- Ser. 7. includes many new titles of singular importance, including New Orleans' Times-Picayune, established in 1837 and one of the South's most prominent newspapers, and The Oregonian, founded in 1850 in Portland and still the state's largest daily. -- Hispanic American newspapers, 1808-1980, represents the single largest compilation of Spanish-language newspapers printed in the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries. The distinctive collection features hundreds of titles, including many published bilingually in Spanish and English. -- African American Newspapers, 1827-1998, includes newspapers published in the 19th and 20th centuries. -- African American Periodicals, 1825-1995 features more than 170 wide-ranging periodicals by and about African Americans. --Texas Historical Newspapers Archive, 1836-1977.
- American journeysA digital library and learning center. Eyewitness accounts of North American exploration and settlement, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies.
American Memory by Provides information on, and access to, the digitized version of the Library of Congress primary-source collections on American history and culture, including photographs, documents, sound recordings, and motion pictures. Broad topics covered include: agriculture, arts and architecture, history, performing arts, social sciences, etc. Particular collections include: African-American perspectives, Alexander Graham Bell papers, Baseball cards, Civil War photographs, Early motion pictures, and Voices from the Dust Bowl.
- American PeriodicalsAmerican Periodicals includes two full text resources: American Periodicals Series Online (APS Online) and American Periodicals from the Center for Research Libraries. Both contain digitized images of American special interest and general magazines, labor and trade publications, scientific and literary journals, and photographic periodicals, as well as other historically significant titles, from the 19th century through the dawn of the 20th century. Because the database contains digitized images of periodical pages, researchers can see all of the original typography, drawings, graphic elements, and article layouts exactly as they were originally published.
- Immigration to the United States, 1789–1930Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930, is a web-based collection of selected historical materials from Harvard's libraries, archives, and museums that documents voluntary immigration to the US from the signing of the Constitution to the onset of the Great Depression.
- North American Slave NarrativesDocuments the individual and collective story of the African American struggle for freedom and human rights in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When completed, it will include all the narratives of fugitive and former slaves published in broadsides, pamphlets, or book form in English up to 1920 and many of the biographies of fugitive and former slaves published in English before 1920.
- Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures & the Environment1534 to 1850. The collection focuses on personal accounts and provides unique perspectives from all of the protagonists, including traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials, both men and women.
- Early English Books Online (EEBO)From the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War, Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475 - 1640), Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700), and the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661).
Eighteenth-Century Collections OnlineAlso includes many pamphlets, broadsides, monographs, and more. Many treat the subject of art, some were printed to accompany art sales, and all were published in 18th-century UK & the Americas.- HarpWeek: the Civil War era (1857-1865)12 computer discs. Images from Harper’s Weekly, 1857-1865, with index. Olin Library Reference (Non-Circulating) Disk E461 .H29 1997 (12 discs), shelved next to the Electronic Text Center, by the first floor printer room behind the reference desk in Olin Library. Use the ETC computer to access.
HarpWeek is also available online (1857-1912; contains browsable full text of Harper's Weekly, but not necessarily all images). Entire original Harper's Weekly available in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections in Kroch Library. Call 255-3530 to request in advance with specific volume and issue number. Harper's Monthly available via the Making of America collection, above.
- Victorian Popular CultureAn essential resource for the study of popular entertainment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Consists of four components: Spiritualism, Sensation and Magic; Circuses, Sideshows and Freaks; Music Hall, Theatre and Popular Entertainment; and Moving pictures, optical entertainments & the advent of cinema. Includes full-text, full-color reproductions of books, ephemera, handbills, pamphlets, photos, posters, programs, scripts, and other types of materials. Coverage is most extensive for Great Britain; but there is also a fair range of materials for the U.S.A.
- JSTORJSTOR is a fully-searchable database containing the back issues of several hundred scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, mathematics, music, ecology and botany, business, and other fields. It includes the following collections: Arts & sciences I, II and III, General science, Ecology and botany, Business, Language and literature.
- North American women's letters and diaries : Colonial to 1950Full-text database of letters and diaries of women who lived in North America before 1950. Browsing and searching of both the bibliographic and full-text elements provided by PhiloLogic software.
- Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery CollectionSearchable digital collection of pamphlets and leaflets donated to Cornell University by abolitionist and humanitarian Samuel J. May. Covers the anti-slavery struggle at local, regional, national, and international levels during the ante-bellum and Civil War periods in America. Includes essays, sermons, speeches, court proceedings and decisions, etc. Most pamphlets are anti-slavery, but some are pro-slavery. Topics include arguments for and against slavery; the relation of slavery to Biblical teachings; history of slavery around the world, and especially in the United States; the question of whether new American states should be required to give up slavery before joining the Union; the status of fugitive slaves, and whether states harboring them should be required to return them to their former owners; the slave trade and its economic supports, such as the sugar trade; and the organization, principles, and functioning of anti-slavery societies. Activities of churches and women's societies in opposing slavery are heavily documented. Contributors include Gerrit Smith, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Lydia Maria Child, Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, the American Anti-Slavery Society, the New England Anti-Slavery Convention, the Edinburgh Ladies' Emancipation Society, and many others.
- Everyday Life & Women in AmericaThis digital collection provides access to rare primary source material on American social, cultural, and popular history from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History, Duke University and The New York Public Library. It comprises thousands of fully searchable images (alongside transcriptions) of monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes, emphasizing conduct of life and domestic management literature, the daily lives of women and men, and contrasts in regional, urban and rural cultures.
- North American women's letters and diaries : Colonial to 1950.Full-text database of letters and diaries of women who lived in North America before 1950.
- World's fairs and expositions : visions of tomorrowIncludes primary source documents from exhibits between 1840 to 1940. The collection includes photos, newspapers, periodicals, books, general histories, exhibition catalogs, official histories, commemorative accounts, exposition publications, visitors' guides, lectures, technical reports, and promotional publications.