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Open Access

These are open access resources that are avalible for use.

History

Constitution Annotated

The Constitution Annotated provides a comprehensive overview of how the Constitution has been interpreted over time and is now available on this new site with upgraded search capabilities. The online Constitution Annotated includes discussions of the Supreme Court’s latest opinions.

Library of Congress

Main research arm of the US Congress for historical and educational content. Holds over 150 million items covering all aspects of American history and culture.

Library of Congress Webcasts & Videos

The Library of Congress publishes its webcasts to offer selections of early motion pictures and recordings of events, lectures and concerts to a broader audience.

National Jukebox

Historical recordings from the Library of Congress.

United Nations Documents

Full text of official U.N. documents published from 1993 onward, including documents of the Security Council, the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council and their subsidiaries, as well as administrative issuances and other documents.

United Nations Treaty Collection

Includes the United Nations Treaty Series (14 December 1946 - February 2005) and the League of Nations Treaty Series (5 July 1920 - 3 October 1944).

History Research Day

American Memory: Remaining Collections (Library of Congress)

Drawn from the vast and varied collections at the Library of Congress, this site has full-text of amazing items from maps of national parks to vintage baseball cards to documents from the Women's Rights Movement.

NOTE: According to Library of Congress website: We've migrated most of our American Memory collections to new presentations. For a full list of all digitized collections at the Library of Congress, please go to Library of Congress Digital Collection.

Below are the collections still on the American Memory site:

Amdocs: Documents for the Study of American History

Index of primary source documents relevant to American history. Documents dated 800-2009.

ArchiveGrid

Locate specialized archival collections, both physical and electronic

The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy: A digital document library by the Yale Law School Lillian Goldman Law Library.

Biodiversity Heritage Library

"The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is a consortium of natural history and botanical libraries that cooperate to digitize the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their collections and to make that literature available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global “biodiversity commons.” The BHL consortium works with the international taxonomic community, rights holders, and other interested parties to ensure that this biodiversity heritage is made available to a global audience through open access principles. In partnership with the Internet Archive and through local digitization efforts, the BHL has digitized millions of pages of taxonomic literature, representing over 120,000 titles and over 200,000 volumes."

Caselaw Access Project

The Caselaw Access Project (“CAP”) expands public access to U.S. law. Our goal is to make all published U.S. court decisions freely available to the public online, in a consistent format, digitized from the collection of the Harvard Law Library.

CAP includes all official, book-published United States case law — every volume designated as an official report of decisions by a court within the United States. Our scope includes all state courts, federal courts, and territorial courts for American Samoa, Dakota Territory, Guam, Native American Courts, Navajo Nation, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Our earliest case is from 1658, and our most recent cases are from 2018.

David Rumsey Map Collection

High quality map images, with emphasis on 19th and 20th century North and South America.

Densho Digital Repository

"Hear the story of the Japanese American incarceration experience from those who lived it, and find thousands of historic photographs, documents, newspapers, letters and other

Digital Library on American Slavery

Searchable database of detailed personal information about slaves, slaveholders, and free people of color, numbering 150,000.

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)

Provides access to millions of images, photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, and more from libraries, archives, and museums across the U.S.

Documenting the American South

Resource providing documents, images, and audio files related to the history, literature, and culture of the American South.

Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920: (Duke University Libraries) - A collection of over 3,300 advertising items and publications dating from 1850 to 1920, illustrating the rise of consumer culture and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States.

EuroDocs: Online Sources for European History

Resource for documents related to Western European history including many primary historical documents. Documents are transcribed or translated if needed.

Europeana

Searchable collection of resources works with thousands of European archives, libraries, and museums to provide to users access This website gives you access to millions of books, music, artworks and more – with sophisticated search and filter tools to help you find what you’re looking for.

Fashion Plate Collection (University of Washington Libraries)

Hathi Trust

HathiTrust is a digital repository and research management tool for the United States' great research libraries, focused on providing scholars in the digital age with the largest collection of electronic research material this side of Google Book Search, large-scale full-text searching and archiving tools to manage it, and the ability to very easily flip through and purchase full titles in both print and electronic form.

Historic American Newspapers

Library of Congress searchable and full text newspapers from 1836 to 1922 in selected states. Directory of newspapers from 1690 to present.

History Matters

Resource for high school and college teachers and students. Serves as a gateway to web resources and offers other useful materials for teaching U.S. history.

Internet Archive: Moving Image Archive

Free online database that archives films and film criticism.

Internet History Sourcebooks

A series of sourcebooks providing electronic access to documents in the public domain.

Library of Congress Digital Collections

Searches across and provides access to the more than 300 digital collections created by the Library of Congress. Includes photos, prints, drawings, maps, books, manuscripts, audio recordings, films, notated music, newspapers, and archived websites.

Library of Congress

Library of Congress Government and Law Collections

A listing with links to the Continental Congress documents and papers of early presidents who were involved in the American Revolution including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

Making of America (Cornell)

Provides full-text access to 267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles related to 19th century American history.

Nineteenth Century Documents Project

Furman University professor Lloyd Benson works with students to provide this database of searchable transcribed documents on American history, with emphasis on sectional conflict and regional identity. 

National Archives (archives.gov) - The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the nation's record keeper. Of all documents and materials created in the course of business conducted by the United States Federal government, only 1%-3% are so important for legal or historical reasons that they are kept by us forever. Check out high quality reproductions of America's most important documents here.

New York Public Library Digital Collections

Explore well over a half a million items digitized from The New York Public Library's collections. Spanning a wide range of historical eras, geography, and media, NYPL Digital Collections offers drawings, illuminated manuscripts, maps, photographs, posters, prints, rare illustrated books, videos, audio, and more. Encompassing the subject strengths of the vast collections of The Library, these materials represent the applied sciences, fine and decorative arts, history, performing arts, and social sciences.

Nuremberg Trials Project: A Digital Document Collection

Public Domain Review - Collections

"With a leaning toward the surprising, the strange, and the beautiful, we hope to provide an ever-growing cabinet of curiosities for the digital age, a kind of hyperlinked Wunderkammer – an archive of materials which truly celebrates the breadth and variety of our shared cultural commons and the minds that have made it."

U.S. Census Bureau

Online access to a wide array of population statistics.

WGBH Open Vault

Open Vault is the home of WGBH Media Library and Archives, providing online access to unique and historically important content produced by the public television and radio station WGBH. The ever-expanding site contains video, audio, images, searchable transcripts, and resource management tools, all of which are available for individual and classroom learning. Visitors can become a "member" (free) of Open Vault: to access records and save findings.

World Digital Library

The World Digital Library (WDL) is a project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with the support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world.