Newsletter
Harvard recently joined Borrow Direct which is a service allowing expedited interlibrary loan (within four days) for books held by Harvard, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale. Books (not journals, dvds, etc.) are located and ordered through the Borrow Direct catalog. Books which Harvard owns but which are checked out or marked non-circulating (providing they are circulating at another library) are available via Borrow Direct.
HathiTrust Digital Library is a database of digitized books and periodicals contributed by numerous libraries. It includes items contributed by these libraries to Google Books and to Internet Archive but with much unique material. Each digitized book or periodical is linked to a standard library catalog record, thus providing good metadata. The catalog can be searched separately. Globally full text searchable, like Google Books and Internet Archive. Full text is fully viewable for pre-1923 material and for many post-1923 US government documents, for which HathiTrust is a good source. A few post-1923 non-government documents are full text viewable. Non-full text viewable documents can be searched by keyword which yields the page numbers where the keywords occur.
Since each item has a catalog record, the Subject terms thereon can be used in Advanced Full Text Search. Put your search term in the first box, then adjust the second to Subject. For full text searches, phrases (for example proper names) work best, as multiple separate keywords can occur on different pages. You can also search by Author, Title, Publisher, Series title and ISBN/ISSN, limiting by date, format, and language.
Doing full text searches of specified items in HathiTrust is a bit complicated. You will need to put the item(s) you want in a private collection. Then you can search your collection full text. Under the Collections tab choose "Read more about creating collections" and follow the instructions. Because of a technical problem with the HathiTrust authentication system, Harvard users must currently get a Friend account at the University of Michigan. After this is done, search the Catalog, find what you want, and open the full view or the volume specific infomation on a limited view item. There will be an Add to Collection box on the left.
New renewal policy. In the past, after five online renewals, you had to renew the book in person at the originating library. Now for books from 16 Harvard libraries (including Baker and Countway) you can do the in-person renewal at any of the 16 participating libraries.
Primo Central (accessed via the Articles and more box of Harvard Library) is a new cross-disciplinary search tool that searches the full text of hundreds of millions of scholarly e-resources, including journal articles, e-books, and digital collections. It does not replace the more focused and controlled search tools like Historical Abstracts, but it is very useful, not unlike Google Scholar, in exploratory searches and finding occurrences of specific keywords in unexpected places. You can also enter author, title, etc. of an article and be taken easily to the full text article if available. Primo Central retrieves its results from material supplied by the publishers, aggregators and open-access repositories; it is not a federated search of other Harvard Library e-resources.
Non-Harvard E-Resources
Connected Histories: British History Sources, 1500-1900 provides federated searching for several databases of British primary sources, including the primary source content of British History Online. Both free and licensed databases are searched. Connected Histories has not been integrated into the Find It @ Harvard system, so when you discover a document in a database licensed by Harvard, you must leave Connected Histories and enter through Harvard Library E-Resources.
Selected New Harvard Library E-Resources
- General
- Europe (general and continental)
- Great Britain
- United States
- Ancient/Medieval
- Asia/Middle East/Judaica
- Religion and Missionaries
Archives Unbound: Witchcraft in Europe and America includes 16th-18th century printed and manuscript material drawn from the Cornell University collection.
British Records of the Atlantic World, 1700-1900 contains archival records largely of slave and other trade, estates, and missionary activity in the Americas, especially West Indies, and West Africa
Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership provides Early English Books Online works as fully searchable, with Boolean and proximity searches, texts of over 25,000 of the 125,000 EEBO works. These works accessed through EEBO are page images and OCR and so not fully searchable.
Education Index Retrospective 1929-1983 indexes about 500 English-language periodicals and yearbooks. Includes book reviews.
International directory of company histories provides information on the development of the world's 8,500 largest and most influential companies.
International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest
Oxford Bibliographies Online is a series of selective literature guides in subjects in the humanities and social sciences.
Slavery and Anti-slavery: A Transnational Archive. Part 1: Debates over Slavery and Abolition. More information.
Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels (1965-2005) contains 75,000 pages of North American and European comics and graphics novels, as well as interviews, commentary and criticism.
Universal Short Title Catalogue (USTC) is a collective catalog of all books published in Europe and the Americas between the invention of printing and the end of the sixteenth century.
World History in Video. Over 1,750 documentaries, covering prehistory - fall of the Berlin Wall.
World Newspaper Archive includes: African Newspapers, 1800-1922; Latin American Newspapers, 1805-1922; South Asian Newspapers, 1864-1922
Europe (general and continental)
Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB) / Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB) provides full text: ADB, 56 v., 1875-1912; NDB, 23 v. through Schwarz, E. Last volume (v. 24, 2010) not full text.
Archive of European Integration (AEI), 1951-present, includes independently-produced research materials and official European Community/European Union documents.
Bibliothèque Bibliographique des Littératures Francophones Européennes (BIBLIFRE) provides online access to the print series “Bibliographie des écrivains français,” (Harvard holdings of the print series). Searchable by keyword or subject over the whole series. Covers published editions and manuscripts, together with the secondary literature and translations.
CAIRN (2001- ) is a searchable collection of French-language ejournals for the humanities and social sciences.
Early European Books (EEB) aims at providing digital access to continental printed texts before 1701. Searchable on the bibliographic descriptions. Full text not searchable. More information.
Electronic Enlightenment includes over 53,000 English, French, German and Italian letters and documents associated with over 6000 18th century thinkers.
Archives Unbound: Policing the Shanghai International Settlement, 1894-1945 presents files from the archives of the British-run municipal police force based in Shanghai's former international settlement.
Bibliography of English Women Writers 1500-1640. More Information.
British Literary Manuscripts online, c. 1660-1900. More Information.
Illustrated London News Historical Archive 1842-2003
John Johnson Collection: an archive of printed ephemera (18th-20th centuries). Collection, housed in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, documents everyday life in Britain. Currently consists of five categories: Nineteenth-Century Entertainment; The Booktrade; Popular prints; Crimes, murders and executions; and Advertising.
Old Bailey Online - Proceedings of the Old Bailey
State Papers Online: 1509-1721 Digital Archive combines State Papers Domestic and Foreign with the Registers of the Privy Council and State Papers in the British Library, reproducing the original historical manuscripts in facsimile and linking each manuscript to its corresponding fully-searchable Calendar entry. 1509-1714. Parts 1-3 available now, Part 4 available in July 2011. Part IV: The Stuarts and Commonwealth, James I - Anne I, 1603-1714
TLS historical archive, 1902-2005. Times Literary Supplement now full text to 2005.
African American Periodicals, 1825-1995 offers over 170 periodicals from 26 states including academic and political journals, commercial magazines, institutional newsletters, organizations’ bulletins, annual reports, etc.
Archives Unbound: American Indian Movement and Native American Radicalism.
Archives Unbound: James Meredith, J. Edgar Hoover, and the Integration of the University of Mississippi includes FBI records, Meredith's correspondence with the NAACP, and letters he received from around the world.
Archives Unbound: Overland Journeys: Travels in the West, 1800-1880 presents printed materials selected from the bibliographies, The Plains and Rockies: A Critical Bibliography of Exploration, Adventure, and Travel in the American West, 1800-1865, and The Trail West: A Bibliography-Index to Western American Trails, 1841-1869.
Archives Unbound: U.S. and Iraqi Relations: U.S. Technical Aid, 1950-1958 offers records drawn from the U.S. National Archives.
Black Abolitionist Papers is a digital edition of approximately 15,000 articles, documents, correspondence, proceedings, manuscripts, and literary works of nearly 300 Black abolitionists in the United States, Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, France and Germany, first issued on microfilm. Coverage: 1830-1865
Early Republic: Critical Editions on the Founding of the United States includes 17 volumes of: Documentary history of the First Federal Congress of the United States of America, March 4, 1789-March 3, 1791. Features a cumulative index and robust search engine, and to incorporate the full text of future volumesand other critical editions of documentary collections.
Encyclopedia of American Studies. More Information.
Gallup Brain (1935- ) offers searchable public opinion polling data and analyses compiled by Gallup, Inc.
Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources, 1620-1926. More information (choose Detailed Overview).
Opinion Archives offers a full text, as well as author/title, search of full runs of the following opinion periodicals:
American Spectator (1972- ) - Commentary – (1945- ) Commonweal (1924) - Dissent (1954- ) - Harpers Magazine (1850- ) - Moment (1975- )- NACLA (1966- ) - Nation (1965- ) - National Review (1955- ) - New Leader (1924- ) - New Republic (1914- ) - New York Review (1963- ) - New Yorker (1925- ) - Orion Magazine (1982- ) - Progressive (1909- )- Washington Monthly (1969- ) - Weekly Standard (1995- )
Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower.
ProQuest Civil War Era (1840-1865) Includes nearly 2,000 pamphlets and complete runs of eight newspapers: Richmond Dispatch, Charleston Mercury, New Orleans Times Picayune, Boston Herald, New York Herald, Columbus State Journal (Ohio), The Kentucky Daily Journal, and Memphis Daily Appeal.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Boston Globe, 1872-1979
United States Census Data Resources (Research Guide)
Analecta Carminum Saecularium Medii Aevi posterioris is a database of Latin love poems and secular poetry of the high and late middle ages.
Bibliothecae codicum medii aevi is a database of mediaeval libraries and manuscripts held in Germany and other European countries.
Encyclopedia of medieval philosophy.
FRANTIQ (Fichiers de Recherches de l'Antiquité) offers bibliographical data from 19 major libraries on Prehistory, Antiquity and Middle Ages on line. Comprises ca. 125,000 records. With a searchable index and thesaurus.
Glossarium mediæ et infimæ latinitatis.
Late antique and early medieval inscriptions.
Medieval Family Life is a collection of the family papers of 5 British medieval families from East Anglia, Essex, Oxfordshire, Yorkshire and Warwickshire, c1400-1490. The families are The Pastons, Celys, Stonors, Plumptons and the Armburghs.
Online Egyptological Bibliography is an online version and continuation of the Annual Egyptological Bibliography (1947-2001) and the Bibliographie Altägypten (1822-2002, partial coverage of 2003-2008).
Regnum Francorum Online — interactive maps and sources of early medieval Europe 614-840 offers access to primary source documents via interactive maps for the Merovingian and Carolingian periods
Foreign Office Files for India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, Section II: South Asian Conflicts and Independence for Bangladesh, 1964-71. Sections on additional subjects will be added in the future.
Kotobarabia E-Library is a collection of over 4,500 Arabic e-books, including all types of publications: banned literature, fiction, non-fiction (scholarly and popular), written by Arab authors. Content is primarily in Arabic with metadata in both Arabic and English and bilingual Arabic/English search interface, including a virtual Arabic keyboard.
Otzar HaHochma Electronic Library provides online access to over 47,000 scanned Judaica books.
Archives Unbound: Global Missions and Theology includes personal narratives, organizational records and biographies of leaders, missionaries and churches. Includes materials on American domestic and foreign missionary activities, 1800-1899. More information.
Biographisch-bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon
Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History
Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR)
World Religion Database (WRD) contains country by country statistics on religious affiliation. Estimates for 1900 to 2050.
Current Awareness Resources
To find new Harvard E-Resources.Go to Cross-Search in Harvard Libraries E-Resources and choose the Quick Set: New E-Resources. This operates oddly, you sometimes have to select one of the E-Resources displayed, then close the resulting page to see the whole list of new E-Resources. This list displays some but not all new E-Resources.
The following history library blogs list new history resources:
History Faculty Library at Oxford
University of Victoria Libraries
List of history blogs:
Cliopatria's History Blogroll