Digital Libraries/Collections
A large amount of online full text is available through Harvard Libraries or free on the Web. Only general digitized print and multi-format collections are listed here. Full text government documents, periodical, and archival material are listed in those sections. To find full text collections in Harvard Library E-Resources: choose Subject + Resource Type: Electronic book/text collections.
Google Book Search has digitized many pre-1920s books. Links to digitized books, whether digitized at Harvard or at another library are available through HOLLIS records, either through a Networked Resource link (Harvard books) or the "Discover more in Google Books" icon (from other libraries) To find books Google has digitized from other libraries, but which are not held at Harvard, search directly in the Google Book Search.
HathiTrust Digital Library includes a searchable database of digitized books and periodicals contributed by numerous libraries. Includes items contributed by these libraries to Google Books and to Internet Archive but with some unique material. Each full text item 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 but unlike Internet Archive. Full text is fully viewable. PDF downloads of a whole work are available.
There is now an Advanced Full Text search feature available in HathiTrust that allows a full text search of specified books or periodicals similar to that available in Google Books Advanced search. Described at: Advanced Search for HathiTrust full-text search.
Internet Archive also offers much digitized full text, but unlike Google Books and HathiTrust, it is not globally full text searchable.
The Making of the Modern World offers full text searching of works on economics and business published from 1450-1850 from the Kress Collection of Business and Economics at the Baker Library, Harvard Business School and the Goldsmiths' Library of Economic Literature at the University of London Library. Includes material on commerce, finance, social conditions, politics, public health, trade and transport. A great deal of more recently acquired material in the Kress Collection is not included in The Making of the Modern World.
Yale Law School Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy
Searching Early English Books Online (EEBO), Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) and Early American Imprints.
Since spelling in early books is variable and the long s (which looks like an f) is often used, it is important to try variant spellings and the wild card feature. ECCO offers fuzzy searching in Advanced Search
Both Early English Books Online (EEBO) and Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) contain full text of most books published 1475-1800 in Great Britain and North America and books published in English anywhere.
Early English Books Online (EEBO) offers full text for works, including much ephemera and many periodicals, dated 1475-1700. Uses Library of Congress Subject Headings.
EEBO uses page images and OCR text. Although searchable by words and phrases, there are character recognition errors and full Boolean searching is not possible. Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnershiphas input over 25,000 works and offers corrected text and full Boolean and other search capabilities for this subset of EEBO.Periodicals included in EEBO include corantos, newsbooks and periodicals included in the Thomason Tracts. Periodicals Search guide.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) offers full text for English language works dated 1700-1800. Uses Library of Congress Subject Headings. Searchable by words and phrases based on the OCR text. Many 18th century American imprints are not included in ECCO because they are available in Early American Imprints (EAI) (next).
Both EEBO and ECCO are based on the English Short Title Catalog (ESTC) which has over 470,000 catalog (no full text) entries listing books, periodicals, newspapers and some ephemera printed before 1801. Works published in Britain, Ireland, British colonies, and the US are included, together with items printed elsewhere which contain significant text in English, Welsh, Irish or Gaelic. Books falsely claiming London publication are included. Items omitted from ECCO because they are available in EAI are represented in the ESTC. Reprints (reissues of original works) are not usually included in ECCO; they are fully represented in the ESTC.
NINES (Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship) (1770-1920) is a searchable (full text search available) database of selected digital scholarship and of websites related to the British and American long 19th century. Where fee-based material is found, you will have to go through Harvard Library E-Resources; no automatic link to Harvard resources is available.
Digital Public Library of America allows searching an browsing of textual, visual, and sound resources contributed by numerous libraries, archives, and museums.
Early American Imprints, Series 1 (1639-1800) and Early American Imprints, Series 2 (1801-1819) are based on the microform collection of books, pamphlets and broadsides issued in America recorded in Charles Evans' American Bibliography and Roger P. Bristol's Supplement to Charles Evans' American Bibliography, and in American Bibliography: A Preliminary Checklist for 1801-1819 by Ralph Shaw and Richard Shoemaker.
Nineteenth Century in Print: The Making of America in Books and Periodicals: Periodicals
Fold3 (formerly Footnote) provides access to a wide variety of digitzed historical documents--many from the microfilmed collections of the United States National Archives and Records Administration.
AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History: Online documents arranged by year
Digital Libraries by State
Digital Libraries by State or Region
250+ Killer Digital Libraries and Archives
American Memory (Library of Congress)
A Chronology of US Historical Documents
Connected Histories: British History Sources, 1500-1900 provides federated searching for several databases of British primary historical sources, including the primary source content of British History Online for 1500-1900.
EuroDocs: Online Sources for European History: Selected Transcriptions, Facsimiles and Translations.
Europeana: Cultural collections of Europe is the largest European search engine for digitized books, images, manuscripts, etc.
European History Primary Sources is an index of scholarly websites providing access to primary sources.
Gallica includes the full-text for more than 100,000 volumes and 300,000 images covering the Middle Ages to the beginning of the twentieth century, with an emphasis on nineteenth-century material. Included are dictionaries and encyclopedias, journals, manuscripts, recordings and images.