Library Research Guide for History

Lidia Uziel has accepted the position of Librarian for Western Europe in the Widener Library’s Collection Development Department, effective August 5, 2013.

In this position, Lidia will carry primary responsibility for collection development and related services for all materials originating in Western Europe, Hungary, Romania, and Albania.  Lidia previously worked as the Librarian for Western European Humanities and Coordinator for Humanities Collections at the Yale University Libraries.  She has a Bachelor of Arts in French from the Jagiellonian University of Krakow, Poland, Master of Arts in French Literature from Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University in France, Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Montreal and Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University in France, and a Master in Library and Information Science from the University of Montreal in Canada.

Harvard Library Get It describes Scan&Deliver, Borrow Direct and Interlibrary Loan Services. A section on obtaining scans of archival documents is forthcoming.

Women's Magazines A list of women's magazines held by the Schlesinger Library.

lyndaCampus, an online computer training resource, is a library of over 2000 instructional videos on topics including: Microsoft, Adobe, iPhones & iPads, business skills, web design, programming, audio, video, and more, including web tools like Dropbox, Twitter, and Skype.

DDR-Presse offers full text of three East German newspapers where they are included in ZEFYS, the Berlin State Library online historical newspaper portal.
Neues Deutschland (23. April 1946 - 3. Oktober 1990)
Berliner Zeitung (21. Mai 1945 - 31. Dezember 1990)
Neue Zeit (22. Juli 1945 - 5. Juli 1994)
Article in SpiegelOnline (English version)

Diario de Pernambuco is available online starting with the first issue November 7, 1825 through March 1863. It is the oldest newspaper in circulation in Latin America, published in Recife, Brazil. Announcement.

e-corpus is a digital library that includes manuscripts, archival documents, books, journals, prints, audio recordings, video, etc. presenting cultural diversity worldwide and especially in the Euro-Mediterranean region drawn from the collections of numerous organizations and countries.

Historic Mexican and Mexican American Press collection (mid-1800s-1970s) includes newspapers published in Tucson, El Paso, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sonora, Mexico

United Nations War Crimes Commission documents over 2,200 cases against accused World War II criminals in Europe and Asia.
Via International Criminal Court
Via UN
News story

Boston Abolitionists 1831-1865 (Massachusetts Historical Society) includes manuscripts, pamphlets, photographs, artifacts, broadsides, signage, and other ephemera.

Following up Greg Eow’s previous newspaper purchases described in the June newsletter, the following newspaper resources will be available before the beginning of Fall semester:
--Access Newspaper Archive (called NewspaperArchive.com for individual subscriptions). Description.  Contains several foreign newspapers.
--ProQuest Historical Newspapers Baltimore Sun (1837-1985),
--ProQuest Historical Newspapers Christian Science Monitor (1908-1999),
--ProQuest Historical Newspapers NY Herald Tribune (1922-1962)

• Europe (general and continental)
• Ancient/Medieval
• United States
• Asia/Middle East/Africa

Peabody Museum Collections Online provides access to approximately 600,000 database records and over 300,000 associated digital photographs.

PolicyMap is a web-based Geographic Information System. It captures data through custom demographic maps, tables, reports and an analysis tool called Analytics. PolicyMap's GIS mapping services can incorporate your own data and leverage it against the thousands of indicators already available. Available data includes demographics, home sale statistics, health data, mortgage trends, school performance scores and labor data like unemployment, crime statistics and city crime rates. Available data: 2000-2012.

United States

Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922 offers over 12,000 books, pamphlets and broadsides, including many lesser-known imprints, from the Library Company of Philadelphia.

Ethnic American Newspapers from the Balch Collection, 1799-1971

Founder's Early Access presents documents before they are published in one of the Founding Era digital archives. These letters and papers are in various stages of the editorial process and may be revised at the Early Access site or at final publication in a Rotunda archive:
Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution
Adams Papers Digital Edition
Papers of Alexander Hamilton Digital Edition
Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition
Dolley Madison Digital Edition Papers of James Madison Digital Edition
Papers of George Washington Digital Edition

LGBT Thought and Culture hosts books, periodicals, and archival materials documenting LGBT political, social and cultural movements from the 20th century to the present. Includes letters, speeches, interviews, and ephemera, memoirs, biographies, and literary works. Currently largely U.S..

Women’s Studies Manuscript Collections from the Schlesinger Library: Voting Rights, National Politics, and Reproductive Rights (1850-1970). Guide.

Europe (general and continental)

Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (1485-1700) provides an interlinked collection of Oxford editions of poetry, prose, and drama. Each title presents the full text of the work, accompanied by textual variations and interpretative and explanatory notes. Currently include sover 240 editions including all of Shakespeare's plays.

Ancient/Medieval

Ancient Ports - Ports Antiques is a list of around 2750 ancient harbours and ports based on 66 ancient and a few modern authors.

Archives Portal Europe provides a single interface searching across archival collections of national and regional archives throughout Europe plus a directory of archival repositories. Additional archives resources available at Library Research Guide for Archives and Manuscripts

Asia/Middle East/Africa

African Language Materials Archive (ALMA) offers downloadable e-books in pdf format in indigenous African languages with emphasis on West African languages and scripts.

Oral literature in Africa is a revised digital edition of Ruth Finnegan's Oral Literature in Africa. Includes new introduction, additional images and an updated bibliography. Print version:
Widener copy
Tozzer & Lamont copies

Banglapedia - the National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh is a comprehensive reference work on Bangladesh from high ancient period to date.

Bibliothéque numérique contains a collection of digitized Mauritian rare books, journals, annual reports and government documents.

Like the dispatches of US diplomats and consuls abroad listed in the December 2012 newsletter, the letters and reports of both business people abroad and missionaries (in the next newsletter) contain much social and cultural information on the countries visited.  Traveling business people are discussed in the Baker Library Historical Collections box, below.

I thank Anna Esty and Susan Gilman of HCL Services for Academic Programs for help with this newsletter.

If you're willing to take a short walk across the river, you should check out the Baker Library Historical Collections (located in the Baker Library|Bloomberg Center at HBS). Though particularly strong in early American business history, this collection contains international elements as well, including letters and other materials that give insight to the political and social culture of the times. True to the interdisciplinary nature of history, this collection holds materials for researchers interested in more than business records and has ties to several other collections across Harvard.

The current focus in collecting is on 20th and 21st century business and technological innovation. One of their most-used collections is the 19th-century R.G. Dun & Co. (a predecessor to Dun & Bradstreet) credit reports on local businesses, created by lawyers reporting on local companies and individuals, running to more than 2,500 volumes arranged geographically. They also have thousands of company annual reports (1820-date), with a current collecting focus on Fortune 500 and global companies. Individual reports are not in HOLLIS, but are included in an onsite database. They are starting to acquire sustainability and other types of reports and will soon acquire Stanford and UC Berkeley’s annual report collections. Baker Library Historical Collections also boasts a sizeable trade catalog collection (19th-early 20th century) on machinery, textiles, locomotives, etc. All of the catalogs are in HOLLIS and can be searched for under the form/genre term “trade catalogs.”

Researchers engaged in academic work are welcome to use their collections. Appointments are not required, but they do have many materials stored off-site, so it may be best to contact them ahead of time in case they need to request materials for you.

A small selection of major collections includes:

A vast accumulation of local business records bulking in late 18th-early 20th with strengths in: labor, records of merchants (e.g., Hancock family), farmer’s account books, early financiers (often with Harvard background). Lots on the China trade.

Papers of the Bleichroeder family, a late 19th century German banking family.

Medieval Italian business records of the Medici and Barberini families.

Thomas W. Lamont papers relating to his partnership in J.P. Morgan & Co., his ambassadorship to Great Britain and his input into decision-making in international government policy between WWI and WWII as US financial advisor.

Polaroid Corporation records: administrative and patent/legal material now open. Polaroid was progressive with respect to hiring women and African-Americans.

Kress Collection of Business and Economics contains rare books, pamphlets, broadsides, manuscripts, and prints, from the 15th to the early 20th centuries with traditional strengths in economic philosophy, political economy, commerce, and business history. Many, but not all, of the titles in the Kress Collection may be found in Making of the Modern World (MOMW). HOLLIS includes all recently cataloged titles, plus those in MOMW. The most complete point of access to the collection is via a card catalog in the reading room. There is much material on the environment of economics and business: social conditions, politics, public health, transport, etc. Kress is expanding into Eastern Europe and Russia.

Other Sources for Annual Reports

Annual Reports at Academic Business Libraries is a database locating reports of individual companies in nine major collections including Harvard.

Annual Reports to Shareholders: Historical Collections in Libraries, by Judith M. Nixon (Libraries Research Publications. Paper 123 (2010)) offers an overview of corporate report collections

Proquest Historic Annual Reports offers full text of  800 Fortune 500 companies back to 1844.

Columbia Historical Corporate Reports Online Collection 

Historical Corporate Reports (University of Pennsylvania) (1800s-1975)

Other Business History Collections

Business History in the United States: A Guide to Archival Collections

Directory of Corporate Archives in the United States and Canada