Non-Harvard Library E-Resources
Europhoto offers historical photograph archives of nine European news agencies. Commercial site: copies of the photos are available for sale. Thumbnails available on Europeana (browse by provider).
Flickr Commons offers thousands of historical photographs contributed by institutions, including NARA, Library of Congress and many foreign libraries and archives.
Africa through a lens (1860s- ) From the Foreign and Commonwealth Office photographic collection (CO 1069).
Mission Centenaire 14-18 includes maps, photos, oral histories, post cards and other documents about the First World War from French archives.
The Recipes Project (Early Modern Recipes Online Collective) is an international group of scholars interested in the history of recipes, ranging from magical charms to veterinary remedies.
Harvard Collections
HOLLIS now includes records for most films in the Harvard Film Archive.
The Santo Domingo collection includes 30,000 books and 25,000 posters, photographs, and other ephemera, 16th-20th century, of erotica and psychoactive drugs.
Elsewhere in the Boston Area
In the Massachusetts State Archives are 4,000 to 6,000 antislavery, antisegregation, anti Fugitive Slave Act petitions sent to the Massachusetts Legislature. They are currently being digitized by the Harvard Center for American Political Studies.
The Boston Public Library has a large Joan of Arc collection. Finding aid.
Open Vault (WGBH Media Library and Archives) (1947- ) provides catalog and online access to over a million items (video, audio, images, searchable transcripts, and resource management tools) produced by public television and radio station WGBH. Much is available online; other material must be used onsite.
The Boston Digital Humanities Consortium is an association of New England institutions involved in the digital humanities and social sciences.
New Microfilm
Receipt books, c.1575-1800. Part 1, From the Folger Shakespeare Library. Marlborough, Wiltshire: Adam Matthew Publications, 2006. 18 microfilm reels. Location : CRL (Ctr for Research Libs) [To obtain CRL items, submit an Interlibrary Loan request. Include HOLLIS no. on request: 013416722
"This project brings together over 80 manuscripts. Such receipt books preserved family traditions and passed on common wisdom."--Publisher’s note.
Online Guide
Sixteenth and seventeenth century newsletters and related papers. 18 reels.
Microforms (Lamont) Film A 1183
Microforms (Lamont) INDEX Fil m A 1183 = guide
Online guide
--Newsletters, c.1564-1667, and related papers c.1607-1794, from the Public Record Office.
--Newsletters from the State Papers Foreign and Chancery collections at the PRO. They provide an English perspective of events in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. The majority of the material consists of letters either from or to the first Viscount Scudamore who was Charles I’s ambassador in Paris from 1635 to 1639.
Brazil’s popular groups: a collection of materials issued by socio-political, religious, labor and minority grassroots organizations. Supplement 19, 2009. 18 microfilm reels
Microforms (Lamont) Film A 783.19
Online guide
More information on HOLLIS record
Continues:
Brazil's popular groups, 1966-1986. 32 microfilm reels.
Washington, DC: Library of Congress Photoduplication Service, 1988.
Microforms (Lamont) | Film A 783
HOLLIS record
--With several supplements
First Fruits
Greg Eow, the new Charles Warren Bibliographer for American History, joined the department of Collection Development in Widener the 1st of April, where he will have responsibilities for building Widener’s Americana collections. He is very happy to entertain questions about purchase requests and desiderata geow@fas.harvard.edu. I remain the main contact for reference questions, research guides, course support, and other matters. We will, of course, exchange questions as appropriate.
Among the first fruits of his work are some major new newspaper acquisitions with more to come this summer.
Additions to America’s Historical Newspapers:
More 1690-1922 newspapers. Title list (Scroll down to Series 8 & 9).
Ethnic American Newspapers from the Balch Collection (1799-1971). Title list (In Quick Facts & Overview box on the right). The titles marked Forthcoming are in fact available now.
20th-century-american-newspapers (1923-1993). Title list (In Quick Facts & Overview box on the right).
Selected New Harvard Library E-Resources
Book History Online (1970) is the online continuation of the Annual Bibliography of the History of the Printed Book and Libraries (ABHB), first published in 1970. Formerly a free database, it is now available through Harvard Library E-Resources.
Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts: ASSIA (largely 1987- ; but some back to 1870) covers health, social services, psychology, sociology, economics, politics, race relations and education literature from over 16 countries. A search on “hygiene” for 1870-1950 yields 175 citations.
Europe (general and continental)
Encyclopedia of Ancient History
The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe (1769-1794) tracks the dissemination of over 400,000 copies of almost 4,000 editions of 3,600 works by Swiss publisher-bookseller, the Société typographique de Neuchâtel (STN).
Grand Tour (1550-1850). Sources drawn from various libraries and archives, including the Beinecke Library, the Paul Mellon Centre, the Chaney Library, and the British Library, on British European travel. Includes full-text of John Ingamell's Dictionary of British and Irish travellers in Italy, 1701-1800 (1997). Print version
Grove encyclopedia of medieval art and architecture
Hispana: directorio y recolector de recursos digitales is a central index of over 4 million digital objects from 195 repositories and 326 different projects throughout Spain.
Torrossa.it! (largely 2000- ) offers full text access to over 300,000 articles and chapters, 15,000 ebooks and 650 ejournals from over 160 Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese publishers. --Includes Biblioteca italiana Zanichelli, a collection of over 600 works of Italian literature, from its origins to the end of the 1930’s.
Verfasser-Datenbank offers updated online versions of the standard reference works Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters, Deutscher Humanismus 1480-1520, Frühe Neuzeit in Deutschland 1520-1620 and the Killy-Literaturlexikon.
DARBASE offers a catalogue of Darwin manuscripts plus facsimiles and transcriptions of many.
Financial Times Historical Archive (1888-2006) includes all articles, advertisements and market listings.
CQ Press Electronic Library: Political Reference Suite contains many historical sources.
ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the United States (Current) For earlier editions:
Census Bureau, including earlier editions (1878-2005) .
HathiTrust
LLMC (1916-2006)
Vogue Archive (1892- ) full text of all issues of Vogue magazine.
Africa Portal (2003 - ) offers policy-related journal articles, working papers and reports, a directory of scholars and practitioners, a discussion blog, and a calendar of international events.
Declassified Documents (U.S.)
The National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) routinely reviews 25-year old files in many record groups for declassification. Some of this material is microfilmed and some of the microfilm is offered for sale by commercial vendors (See below). Since the 1966 Freedom of Information act (FOIA), declassification of more recent documemts can be requested by individuals. Also, many government agencies have FOIA Electronic Reading Rooms on their websites.
The two most important collective sources for FOIA material are:
Digital National Security Archive (1945- ) contains 22 core collections of declassified documents, previously published on microfiche. Additional material is available in their Electronic Briefing Books and the CIA’s “family jewels” collection
Declassified Documents Reference System Online which contains declassified documents sent from various government agencies to the presidential libraries.
Some material on the Presidential Library websites is not in the Declassified Documents Reference System.
Major Electronic Reading Rooms include:
CIA Electronic Reading Room If you leave the search field blank and hit search, you can use the filters on the right to narrow your search. CREST (CIA Records Search Tool) material as well as FOIA is included. Also:
CIA's Analysis Of The Soviet Union, 1947-1991
Department of Defense FOIA Reading Room
OpenNet via Department of Energy
IRS Electronic Reading Room. FOIA information
State Department Electronic Reading Room contains over 50,000 documents. State Department material from 1973-76 is available on the National Archives’ Access to Archival Databases website.
Other Electronic Reading Rooms are listed on the FOIA site. Scroll down to View the full list of agencies and choose your agency. Under Select an Office, choose the office of the Secretary or equivalent central office.
Other Sources
Official Intelligence Agency Homepages (Federation of American Scientists)
Pentagon Papers, officially titled "Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force"
Project on Government Secrecy (Federation of American Scientists)
Commercial Microfilm
Most of the National Archives microfilm is distributed by the following companies. You can browse or search their microfilm lists, and then look up the microfilm in HOLLIS or WorldCat.
Primary Source Media, Scholarly Resources, University Publications of America (ProQuest)
There are several useful research guides available:
- U.S. Department of State Diplomatic Records on Microfilm (Stanford University).
- A Guide to Conducting Research in FBI Records
- University of California at Berkeley has a guide listing State Department microfilm collections by country.
Finding HOLLIS records for a group of microform collections (as opposed to a known item search for a single collection) presents difficulties. An inclusive search on “United States State Department” yields 6516 records. There are several possible limitations which narrow the results, but each has problems:
1. Limit to Library: Microforms (Lamont), but this misses collection at the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), easily obtainable via Interlibrary Loan.
2. Limit to Format: Microforms, but some microform records made before about 1980 were not tagged as microform.
3. Add the terms Sources or Archives or Correspondence to the search.
4. Gather terms (e.g., despatches, "Central files” “special files” “post records”) from your results to add to searches.
A combination of various searches with browsing in the above research guides and publishers’ lists is best.