LibGuides: Databases &amp; Resources by Subject: History

Best Databases for History

America: History & Life This link opens in a new window
Indexes and abstracts the world's scholarly literature in the history of the United States and Canada from prehistoric times to the present.
Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Historical Abstracts covers modern world history (excluding the United States and Canada which are covered in America: History and Life) from 1450 to the present.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources. Coverage includes history, economics, political science, demography, mathematics, humanities and social sciences. Some current issues are available now.

Additional Databases for History

Arts & Humanities Citation Index This link opens in a new window
Index of arts and humanities journals. With link to full text journal articles.
Bloomsbury Cultural History This link opens in a new window
Bloomsbury Cultural History is a digital resource that engages with culture throughout the ages from antiquity to modernity. Provides access to articles about a wide range of subjects throughout history. Each subject is looked at in Antiquity, the Medieval Age, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Age of Empire and the Modern Age.
CIAO Columbia International Affairs Online This link opens in a new window
CIAO is the world's largest full-text online resource for political science, diplomatic history, international law and business, policy formation, and country analysis.
Handbook of Latin American Studies This link opens in a new window
The Handbook is a bibliography on Latin America consisting of works selected and annotated by scholars. Edited by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress, the multidisciplinary Handbook alternates annually between the social sciences and the humanities.
Each year, more than 130 academics from around the world choose over 5,000 works for inclusion in the Handbook. Continuously published since 1936, the Handbook offers Latin Americanists an essential guide to available resources.
Hein Online Law Library This link opens in a new window
Law review journals including the United Nations Law Collection and United States Code.
Hispanic American Periodicals Index This link opens in a new window
Authoritative, worldwide information about Central and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean basin, the United States-Mexico border region, and Hispanics in the United States.
Humanities International Complete This link opens in a new window
Literature & the literary arts, philosophy, the arts, history, culture, and creative thought. Journal articles, books, and other sources from around the world.
LGBT Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Historically significant LGBT journals, magazines and regional newspapers, as well as dozens of full text monographs.
MasterFile Premier This link opens in a new window
A database of full-text magazines, journals, and reference books, as well as photo, map, and flag files dating back to 1917. Titles include popular magazines like Consumer Reports, Car and Driver, Country Living, Elle, Essence, Good Housekeeping, Harper’s Bazaar, and Popular Mechanics alongside an expansive list of scholarly and trade publications.
Military & Government Collection This link opens in a new window
Current news pertaining to all branches of the military, trade publications, and news weeklies.
Military Database This link opens in a new window
This database covers topics across all government and military branches. It includes over 550 titles dating back to the early 1990's.
Project Muse This link opens in a new window
Is a leading provider of digital humanities and social science content for the scholarly community. Includes books and journals.
Reader's Guide Retrospective This link opens in a new window
Indexes general-interest American magazines. Covers 1892-1983. Some content will be online in other databases. Use Journal Finder to check for full text access.
Social Sciences Citation Index This link opens in a new window
The world’s leading citation database with multidisciplinary coverage of over 10,000 journals in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities.

Historical Newspapers

19th Century US Newspaper Archive This link opens in a new window
Access to 1.7 million pages of primary source newspaper content from the 19th century.
AAASS Newsnet Archive & CDPSP Archive This link opens in a new window
Primary source documents of the Russian and Soviet press and the Current Digest of the Russian Press from 1949 to present. Site also includes historical Mexican, Chinese, and Middle Eastern/North African newspapers.
Accessible Archives This link opens in a new window
A collection of primary source materials reflecting broad views across American history and culture, including Civil War materials and early African American newspapers.
Access World News This link opens in a new window
This comprehensive news collection cover events at the local, regional, national and international level. This source includes print and online-only newspapers, blogs, newswires, journals, broadcast transcripts and videos. Also includes news articles from 1970-1991, including firsthand reports and varying regional perspectives. (Primary source)
African-American Newspapers: The 19th Century This link opens in a new window
African-American newspapers from the 19th century. Go to Collections to search for African-American newspapers
America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
American newspapers published across three centuries. Includes thousands of titles from all 50 states. Historic newspapers 1690- recent past.
Black Life in America This link opens in a new window
Black Life in America offers comprehensive coverage of the experience and impact of African Americans as recorded by the news media from 1976 to the present.
Canadian Newsstream This link opens in a new window
Over 300 Canadian newspapers from Canada's leading publishers, including the complete available electronic backfile for most newspapers, providing full access to the articles, columns, editorials and features.
Chronicling America Historic American Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Historic Newspapers from around the country, 1789-1963
Elon University Student Newspaper This link opens in a new window
Includes the Elon Edge, The Campus Crier, Veritas Liberated Press, The Pendulum, Dimensions Today, Broadside Today, Maroon and Gold, and the Elon College Weekly from 1910-2012
Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
Search Gale newspaper archives in one single interface, includes 19th Century U.S. Newspapers, Financial Times Historical Archive, and the
Times Digital Archive
Historical African American Newspapers Online This link opens in a new window
Links to hundreds of newspapers that have been digitized, collected by our colleagues at Marist College.
Historic North Carolina Digital Newspaper Collection This link opens in a new window
Historic newspapers for and about north Carolina. Papers from 1741 to 2008. 3.5 million pages of digitized content from over 1,000 NC county newspapers.
Newspaper Archive This link opens in a new window
Historical newspapers from across the United States and beyond. Obituaries. Photos. Access 575+ million pages. Articles. From the 1700's to 2000's. Great for history and genealogy research.
North Carolina Newspapers Digital NC This link opens in a new window
This collection includes a selection of student and community newspapers from schools and towns around North Carolina.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times with Index This link opens in a new window
Access to the archives of The New York Times (1851-2019)
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Washington Post This link opens in a new window
Access to the archives of The Washington Post (1877-2007)
The Times Digital Archive (London) This link opens in a new window
The Times Digital Archive is an online, full-text facsimile of more than 200 years of the Times, one of the most highly regarded resources for eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century news coverage, with every page of every issue from 1785 to 2012. (Primary Source)
U.S. Newsstream This link opens in a new window
News content from many national and international newspapers, newswires and selected news magazines. Includes CBS News 60 Minutes transcripts and video from 1997-2014.

History Databases with Primary Source Content

AAASS Newsnet Archive & CDPSP Archive This link opens in a new window
Primary source documents of the Russian and Soviet press and the Current Digest of the Russian Press from 1949 to present. Site also includes historical Mexican, Chinese, and Middle Eastern/North African newspapers.
American Slavery: A Composite Autobiography This link opens in a new window
Collection of autobiographies of former slaves in the United States.
Ancestry Library This link opens in a new window
Contains coverage of the U.S. and the U.K., including census, vital, church, court, and immigration records, as well as record collections from Canada and other areas. A collection of more than 4,000 databases and 1.5 billion names including U.S. federal census images and indexes from 1790 to 1940 and more
Archives Unbound This link opens in a new window
Primary source collection of historical documents that include: Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984; Confederate Newspapers: A Collection from Florida Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and Alabama and more.
Mountain People: Life and culture in Appalachia; America in Protest: Record of Anti-Vietnam War organizations, We Were Prepared for the possibility of Death: Freedom Riders in the South, 1961, American Relocation Camp Newspapers, Correspondence from German Concentration Camps and Prisons, 1936-1945, Jewish Underground Resistance, Fight for Racial Justice and the Civil Rights Congress, Holocaust and Record of Concentration Camp Trials, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin: Beyond the Daughters of Bilitis, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin and the Daughters of Bilitis and more...
Congressional Publications This link opens in a new window
Full range of legislative and public policy resources. Includes the Congressional Serial Set. 1789 - present.
CQ Press Historic Documents This link opens in a new window
Primary sources covering the most significant political events of the year. 1972-2009.
Digital Library on American Slavery This link opens in a new window
Digital Library on American Slavery (DLAS) is a freely available and searchable database focused on bringing to light the names of enslaved individuals from court petitions, historical newspapers, and deed records held by Register of Deeds offices across North Carolina.
Digital Sanborn Maps (1869 -1970) for North Carolina This link opens in a new window
Digital Sanborn Maps (1867-1970) for North Carolina delivers detailed property and land-use records that depict the grid of everyday life in 158 North Carolina towns and cities across a century of change.
Early English Books Online This link opens in a new window
Digital images of books printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700.
European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750 This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive guide to printed records about the Americas written in Europe before 1750.
HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new window
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world. Includes Primary Source books and documents
HeritageQuest This link opens in a new window
Research materials for tracing family history and American culture. Includes city directories, 1850 and 1860 Slave Schedules, U.S. Indian Census Rolls, Agricultural and Industrial Rolls and more
Homeland Security Digital Library Law Library This link opens in a new window
Homeland Security related documents from a variety of sources including, federal, state and non-government.
Making of Modern Law This link opens in a new window
Legal Treatises 1800-1926, digital images on 22,000 legal treatises on US and British law published.
MasterFile Premier This link opens in a new window
A database of full-text magazines, journals, and reference books, as well as photo, map, and flag files dating back to 1917. Titles include popular magazines like Consumer Reports, Car and Driver, Country Living, Elle, Essence, Good Housekeeping, Harper’s Bazaar, and Popular Mechanics alongside an expansive list of scholarly and trade publications.
North American Women's Letters & Diaries This link opens in a new window
Published letters and diaries depicting the personal experiences of hundreds of women. Colonial times to 1950.
Oxford African American Studies Center (AASC) This link opens in a new window
The most comprehensive collection of scholarship to focus on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture. Over 2,500 images, more than 700 primary sources with specially written commentaries, and nearly 200 maps have been collected to enhance this reference content
U.S. Intelligence on the Middle East, 1945-2009 This link opens in a new window
This comprehensive document set sheds light on the U.S. intelligence community’s spying and analytic efforts in the Arab world, including the Middle East, the Near East, and North Africa.
U.S. Serial Set This link opens in a new window
A collection of U.S. Government publications compiled under directive of the Congress. Includes Congressional Hearings. Coverage 1789-present.
U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs, 1832-1978 This link opens in a new window
Records and briefs brought before the U.S. Supreme Court in the period 1832-1978, primary source for the study American history and the U.S. judicial system.
Vogue Archive This link opens in a new window
The Vogue Archive preserves the work of the world's greatest fashion designers, stylists and photographers and is a unique record of American and international fashion, culture and society from the dawn of the modern era to the present day. Covers 1892 to the present.
Women's Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
Collection of leading US women's magazines from the late 19th-century to the 2005. Includes: Better Homes & Gardens, Cosmopolitan, Essence, Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal, Parents, Redbook, Seventeen, Town & Country and more.