Primary Source Databases in US Literature and History
The Library provides networked access to many more full-text, primary source databases than can be listed here. Others may be located through the Library Catalog and Databases, which contains an alphabetical list of online resources related to Linguistics, Language and Literature as well as the History: Primary Sources list.
- 19th Century NewspapersSearchable database containing digital facsimile images of newspapers; presented as full page layout as well as single articles; advertisements and illustrations included. This collection includes numerous newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S.; and it encompasses the entire 19th century.
- Eight CenturiesFormerly known as 19th Century Masterfile. Searchable index to a variety of 19th century Anglo-American periodical articles, documents and other primary and secondary sources published before 1930. Many links to full text. Aggregates indexes to books, periodicals, newspapers, government documents and patents into a single resource.
- America's Historical NewspapersA cross-searchable collection that includes -- Ser.1, 1690-1876: Newspapers listed in Clarence Brigham's authoritative bibliography, History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820, and in subsequent bibliographies. -- Ser. 2, 1758-1900: 18th- and 19th-century newspapers. -- Ser. 3, 1829-1922: 19th- and 20th-century newspapers including the Civil War Era, Reconstruction, the Progressive Era and beyond. -- Ser. 6: More than 160 significant 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century newspapers, including titles of unique historical significance, regional weeklies and big-city dailies. -- African American Newspapers, 1827-1998: Newspapers published in the 19th and 20th centuries. -- Caribbean Newspapers, 1718-1876: More than 140 newspapers from 22 islands in English; some also in Spanish, French, and Danish. Digitized from the American Antiquarian Society's collections.
- 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.
- Early Encounters in North AmericaAssembled from hundreds of primary sources, documents the relationships among peoples and with the environment in North America from 1534 to 1850, this 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. It includes works by American Indians as well as a wide range of Europeans. It captures first impressions, records hundreds of years of observations of flora and fauna, describes encounters with native peoples presents a new literature with words and metaphors created in response to new places, and much more. The database includes prints, drawings, paintings, maps, bibliographies, letters, photographs, and original facsimile pages all searchable by standardized vocabulary.
- Making of America (MOA)Digital versions of selections from Cornell University Library's collection. Features monograph volumes and journal articles published in the nineteenth century. Focuses on the major journal literature of the period, ranging from general interest publications to those with more targeted audiences such as agriculture.
- North American Slave NarrativesContains full text of "books and articles that document the individual and collective story of African Americans struggling for freedom and human rights in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. This collection includes all the existing autobiographical narratives of fugitive and former slaves published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books in English up to 1920. Also included are many of the biographies of fugitive and former slaves and some significant fictionalized slave narratives published in English before 1920."
Digital Book Archives
Google BooksFull text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition, and stored in its digital database.
HathiTrustCollection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world
Internet ArchiveA digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts (print, film, etc.) in digital form. Freely accessible to the public. Contains raw OCR.
Project GutenbergA source of free, downloadable ebooks. Fairly clean plain text.
Rare Books & Mss.
That book you're reading doesn't end with the last page. It may have a long and fascinating history. The Library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections (RMC) includes 400,000 printed volumes, more than 70 million manuscripts, and another million photographs, paintings, prints, and other visual media that may be a part of that history. Deepen your appreciation of the text and take your research to the next level -- find out what RMC has to offer.