Suggestions from Archivist Lisa Rickey:
Identify worldwide library ownership of any type of material. Each entry contains descriptive information and library holdings. Use links to OhioLINK and Interlibrary Loan to order material. Most useful to determine ownership of books, archive literature, and journal subscriptions. Do not use to search for the content of book chapters or individual articles.
Selected public libraries
Selected historical societies
Selected county records centers
Note: You can also try county courthouses or offices for the location in question.
Selected colleges and universities
Unless otherwise noted, the resources linked below are available to Wright State University students, faculty, and staff because Wright State University Libraries has an institutional subscription.
An important collection of Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922 useful to African-American studies. Includes a wide range of archival materials including books, pamphlets and broadsides. Coverage includes the West's discovery and exploitation of Africa; the rise of slavery in the New World; the growth and success of abolitionist movements; the development of racial thought and racism; and descriptions of African American life -- slave and free.
Contains page images of historic American magazines, journals and newspapers. These resources illustrate the development of American culture, politics and society from the mid-eighteenth century through 1900.
Access three historic research tools. The Morgan Bibliography of Ohio Imprints describes more than 10,400 books, pamphlets, and broadsides printed in Ohio between 1796 and 1850. The Ohio Name Index includes over 156,000 names from the Morgan Bibliography. The Student Name Index, 1800-1900, contains more than 740,000 entries of students, teachers, and trustees from the catalogues of the American Antiquarian Society's School and College Collection.
HeinOnline Academic is a full-text research collection offering U.S. federal publications such as the U.S. Code, Federal Register, treaties and agreements, U.S. and state appellate court opinions, federal legislative histories, presidential documents; a collection of legal classics; and constitutions of the world
Search the complete text of journals and ebooks published by Wiley. Unavailable items are marked with a locked icon.
Study the history of US women and their role in social change between 1600 and 2000. Search primary documents, reviews, archive notes, and teaching tools. Includes local, state, and federal level commission reports. The resource will be useful to anyone studying women's issues and curriculum developers.
Read the full-text of titles listed in the Pollard & Redgrave Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wings Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection and the Early English Books Tract Supplement.
Read from this online archive of digitized versions of every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom from 1701-1800. The collection includes books, pamphlets, broadsides and ephemera covering a broad range of subjects across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
Read the full-text of Harper's Weekly (1857-1912), the leading American illustrated magazine of the period. Covers political, military, social and cultural issues. Search by section: subjects, illustrations, literature, and advertising.
The Historical NYT is an online digital reproduction of the New York Times, including photographs and advertisements.
Browse digital image reproductions of articles and ads from The Sunday Times (London, England) for the years 1822-2006. The newspaper is reproduced from cover to cover in pdf formatted files. Note: Search the Times Digital Archives for Monday through Saturday articles.
This primary source collection focuses on the experience and impact of African Americans as recorded by the news media, from the early 18th century to early 21st century. In includes American and global news sources, as well as current and historical Black publications.
Access World News is a comprehensive resource that includes news publications from around the world. These sources include major national and international newspapers, as well as local and regional titles. Access World News is updated daily to keep students informed of current issues and events, and it includes deep archives that provide background information on important topics, enabling students to trace an issue or event over a period of time.
Collections held in museums, national archives, university/college archives, and historical societies are often available. To check if any organization has done this for your topic, Google digital [or some version of this word] collections [your topic keywords] site:.edu (thanks to the Georgia State history librarian for putting this so well). You can also try site:.org (this would capture those by historical societies, for example) but remember that .org sites may be of poor quality--be sure to check who is sponsoring the website and what they are all about! Site:.gov will include U.S. government sites, including our national archives, Smithsonian institutions, and government departments.
The terms sources, documents, primary documents are sometimes useful to identify primary sources published in books or digitized on the internet, so you may also wish to try these terms if you are searching library catalogs or internet search engines for your topic.
As stated by Archivist Lisa Rickey, "Digital collections often reflect just a small fraction of the total holdings of a repository. There may be (and likely are) non-digitized materials at the same institution that are also pertinent to your research." Consider searching online finding aids to identify relevant non-digitized materials.
Note: If you cannot travel to the institution, inquire about the availability of research services and duplication services and any applicable fee(s). Fees can vary depending on the size and nature of the request.
Here are just a few examples of digitized collections.
A few examples of the digital archives in the Library of Congress collections that demonstrate the uniqueness of its digital memory.
The American Historical Association highlights digital primary sources at its annual meeting in the "Digital Projects Lightning Round".
In addition, the American Historical Review, the official journal of the American Historical Association, includes a Digital Primary Sources section in every issue (starting with April 2016). They ask readers to submit digital primary sources for inclusion.
With volume 127, American Historical Review stopped the publication of the "Digital Resources" article.