History Newsletter November 2025

We issue this newsletter twice yearly.  Old newsletter issues.

We are always happy to give you a tour of Widener and an orientation to our catalog, HOLLIS, and our other resources.

Announcements

Fred's Retirement

It is with much regret that I (Fred) will be retiring at the end of this December.  Working with you has been on of the chief joys of my life, but I am getting on in years, and it's time to depart and hand over the work entirely into the more than capable hands of Anna Assogba (History, American Studies, Warren Center), and Emily Bell (History of Science, CES).

Zotero User Group

The Zotero User Group is for advanced Zotero users to exchange information and learn from each other. 

Harvard Library Bookmark Update

The Harvard Library Bookmark recently updated; if you've installed it prior to September 2025, follow the directions to update the bookmark settings so you can continue using it to easily access electronic content via Harvard!

New York Times is now Single Sign-On

New York Times has been upgraded to a single sign-on (SSO) model! Access instructions are posted on the New York Times Tools page

Unabridged: A Library Research Intensive

The Unabridged 2026 January Program will meet in person January 12-16, 10:30am-3:15pm, in the James Room, Swartz Hall at the Harvard Divinity School.

Apply now - Note: priority is given to applications received by October 31st, but we continue to accept applications on a rolling basis until December. 

Unabridged In Person is a multi-day intensive for GSAS and DCE graduate students, offered during January@GSAS. Designed to lay the groundwork for your academic career, the program aims to help you become a more effective, resourceful, and creative researcher. We feature a host of experts from across the university, giving you a multi-disciplinary perspective on research practices. No specific research experience is required: our sessions are accessible to new graduate students and useful to seasoned researchers.

New Slavic & Eurasian Collective Newsletter

The Harvard Library New Slavic & Eurasian Collective Newsletter has published a new issue of its Newsletter

Non-Harvard E-Resources

EconBiz (Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft) offers journal articles, working papers, and conferences in business studies and economics. Mainly bibliographic records but with considerable full text. Mainly recent but a few items back to late 19th century. Contents.

Latino Cultures in the US offers digital collections available through Google and largely derived from museum collections. Includes text, images, video.

Visible Removed Books in Internet Archive

Many hitherto borrowable books in Internet Archive have been removed due to complaints from publishers. You can still search within them and get a list of snippets containing you search term. For The proper lady and the woman writer you will see that the book is "removed" and not available for borrowing. BUT, if you search on the left (magnifying glass image) on Chapter 6 and then on "ideological contradictions", you will get, one-by-one, respectively the left hand and right hand pages of that chapter. So as long as there are chapter numbers and/or chapter titles on each page you can, with some inconvenience read much of the book. Or you can search successive page numbers.

New Oxford Bibliographies

Oxford Bibliographies Online are literature guides in numerous humanities and social sciences areas. They offer annotated lists of secondary source articles on particular subjects. 

There is a new Oxford Bibliography on the History of Medicine.  The numerous component bibliographies are listed by subject. Browse the component bibliographies or search using Advanced Search, selecting History of Medicine

New Harvard Library Digital Collections

The Forgotten Cities: Thomas Jacoby Images of Early Christian Architecture in Greater Syria

Letters from Black America offers letters authored by Black Americans from the 1920s to the 1940s 

The Cuban Teachers' Expedition of 1900

CURIOSity Digital Collections

Featured Database: Eureka (A News database)

Less well known than NexsUni and Factiva, Eureka.cc offers over 2500 news sources worldwide. Content is largely post-2008, although some French and French-Canadian sources go back to the 1980s. Much of the content is 2024 to present. There is significant African, Asian and Latin American material. Includes many US local papers. Both major and small local publications are included.

Includes Le Monde (1987-present) and thus supplements  ProQuest historical newspapers. Le monde (1944-2000

New News Resources

F.A.Z.-BiblioNet contains digitized articles from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung since 1993 and Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung beginning in 1995; F.A.Z. 49-92 contains digitized articles from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from 1949 to 1992 and Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung from 1990 to 1992; and Frankfurter Rundschau contains digitized articles from Frankfurter Rundschau since 1995. 
AP Newsroom

Imperial-Era Newspaper Bibliography (UDB-INB) lists over 9,000 newspapers titles (late 18th to early 20th centuries) emanating from the Austro-Hungarian, German, and Russian Empires and from diasporas.

Native News Online (2017- ) "Delivers important daily news that affects the lives of Native Americans nationwide."

New E-Resources

Asia  -- Latin America/Caribbean  --   Middle East  --  North America  --  Russia

Business, Economic and Labour History (AM Scholar) 

Decolonization Politics and Independence in Former Colonial and Commonwealth Territories “This database gathers primary source material from the former British colonies and Commonwealth nations, along with some from former French and Portuguese territories, documenting decolonization, trade union, and political movements around the world”

Colonial Legacies: Empire & Commonwealth Periodicals

Documents on British Policy Overseas

Empire Studies (AM Scholar)

LGBTQ+ Social Justice and Culture

Literary Studies (AM Scholar)

Missionary Studies (AM Scholar)

Women's Studies (AM Scholar)

World War Two Studies (AM Scholar)

Asia

Area Studies: China and Southeast Asia

Area Studies: India

Area Studies: Japan

China and the Modern World: Diplomacy and Political Secrets, 1869-1950

South Asian History and Culture

Europe

Medieval and Early Modern Studies (AM Scholar)

Universal Database of the Belarus National Bibliography (UDB-BIB-BEL)

Royal Geographical Society (with IBG [Institute of British Geographers]) offers the archives of the Royal Geographical Society from 1478 to 1953

Documents on British policy overseas offers documents from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office  Based on distinct print series:

  • British Documents on the Origins of the War 1898-1914
  • Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939
  • Documents on British Policy Overseas

Latin America/Caribbean

Federal Surveillance of the Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño (Archives Unbound)

Latin American material in addition to that in the Archives of Latin American and Caribbean history, sixteenth to twentieth century.

Brazil: Records of the U.S. Department of State; 1960-1963 (Archives Unbound)

Records of the Department of State Relating to Political Relations Between the United States and Venezuela, 1945-1959 (Archives Unbound)

Crisis in the Dominican Republic: Records of the U.S. State Department Central Files, February 1963-1966 (Archives Unbound)

Venezuela: Records of the U.S. Department of State; 1960-1963 (Archives Unbound)

Foreign Relations Between the U.S. and Latin America and the Caribbean States, 1930-1944 (Archives Unbound)

Argentina: Records of the U.S. Department of State, 1960-1963 (Archives Unbound)

Chile: Records of the U.S. Department of State; 1930-1963 (Archives Unbound)

Records of the Department of State Relating to Political Relations Between the United States and Chile, 1945-1959 (Archives Unbound)

Records of the Department of State Relating to Political Relations Between the United States and Colombia, 1945-1959 (Archives Unbound)

Records of the Department of State Relating to Political Relations Between the United States and Costa Rica, 1945-1959 (Archives Unbound) 

Records of the Department of State Relating to Political Relations Between the United States and Ecuador, 1945-1959 (Archives Unbound)

Records of the Department of State Relating to Political Relations Between the United States and Panama, 1950-1959 (Archives Unbound)

Middle East

French Mandate in The Lebanon, Christian-Muslim Relations, and the U.S. Consulate at Beirut, 1920-1941

North America

Franz Boas papers. Philadelphia, PA : American Philosophical Society, [2013?]
Series; Organized into two series: I. Correspondence, 1862-1942. II Graphics, 1869-1940. Boas (1858-1942) was an anthropologist at Columbia.

Civil War Service Reports of Union Army Generals (Archives Unbound)

Latino Social and Political Culture and History: Perspectives on the Chicano Movement Digital Archive

Administrative Histories of U.S. Civilian Agencies: Korean War (Archives Unbound)

Federal Surveillance of the Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño (Archives Unbound)

Federal Response to Radicalism in the 1960s (Archives Unbound)

Minutemen: Rise of the Militia Movement in America, 1963-1969 (Archives Unbound)

George H. W. Bush and Foreign Affairs: The Moscow Summit and the Dissolution of the USSR (Archives Unbound)

Final Accountability Rosters of Japanese-American Relocation Centers, 1944-1946 (Archives Unbound)

Japanese American Internment: Records of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library (Archives Unbound)

Japanese-American Relocation Camp Newspapers: Perspectives on Day-to-Day Life (Archives Unbound)

Personal Justice Denied: Public Hearings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment, 1981 (Archives Unbound)

Administrative Histories of U.S. Civilian Agencies: World War II (Archives Unbound)

Papers of Carlos Montezuma, M.D. (Archives Unbound)   (c. 1866-1923) Native American activist

Mass Incarceration and Prison Studies offers court cases, first-hand accounts, videos, Supreme court audio files, research on rehabilitation, training materials, government documents, ephemera, interviews and other matter

U.S. Army Center of Military History historical manuscripts collection.. The Korean War.

Ebony Magazine Archive

Jet Magazine Archive

Life Magazine Archive

Digital National Security Archive (DNSA): The CIA and the Behavioral Sciences: Mind Control, Drug Experiments and MKULTRA

Youth and Popular Culture Magazine Archive (1940-2020) offers 13 teen and pre-teen magazines.

Russia

Oktiabr' Digital Archive (choose "Oktiabr' Digital Archive (DA-OKT) from list of resources)

Zvezda Digital Archive (DA-ZVE)  (1924- ) Official organ of the Union of Writers of the USSR. choose "Zvezda Digital Archive" for full archive access

George H. W. Bush and Foreign Affairs: The Moscow Summit and the Dissolution of the USSR (Archives Unbound) 

Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, 1941-1945 (Archives Unbound)