Boston Area Resources

This page lists a variety of kinds of sources and offers links to resources for exploring them. We start with two general resources: HOLLIS and HathiTrust.

 Digital Libraries and Collections

Hathitrust is a huge general digital library similar to, and partly overlapping in content with, Google Book Search and Internet Archive but with some special features.  In HathiTrust Full Text Advanced Search, you can do a full text search over the whole collection of millions of books and journals or over a subset defined by Title (useful for periodicals), Author, Subject, or Publisher.   You can search for a Subject keyword in, say, travel books (Subject term: "Description and travel") on a certain city for a specified time period.   Full text of post-1923 copyrighted material is not viewable.  If you limit your search to post-1923 material and to Full View, you will retrieve largely government documents (because they are not copyrighted).  Phrases, rather than combinations of separate words, work best.

Digital Commonwealth offers digitized historical collections from libraries, museums, and archives across Massachusetts 

These guides offer links on online material:

Archives

Harvard has enormous collections of archives and manuscripts.  These include the unpublished records of organizations and of individuals (often called personal papers and including correspondence (letters), notes, diaries and other material). They may be original collections located at Harvard, online, microfilm or print copies of collections at other institutions.

There are about 40 special collections (archives, manuscript and rare book collections) at Harvard.  Houghton, the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, and the University Archives are stand-alone special collections. Many others exist within other libraries.

Once you have found your collection, be sure to take the time to talk in person to an archivist or librarian about your project.

City of Boston Archives and Records (30 Millstone Road, Hyde Park, Ma 02136-2324; tel.: 617-364-8679, fax: 617-361-5729, By appointment only) includes city records, including health services records

Desegregation-era Records Collection: Boston Public Schools

Northeastern University, Archives and Special Collections, Boston History Collections holds large archival collections documenting Boston history, especially social justice organizations serving minority populations.

More information on finding archives and manuscripts at Harvard and elsewhere.

Bibliographies

Sometimes you can find a bibliography, a publication that lists other publications, on your subject. Search in HOLLIS with the word Bibliography as a Subject keyword search (Bibliography needs to be Subject keyword, NOT Keywords anywhere) :  "Water supply"  AND bibliography.  You can use Keywords anywhere for your other keywords in Advanced search.  Browsing a bibliography offers a different experience from database searching with keywords.

Bibliographies of New England History
LOCATION: Widener: WID-LC F4.Z99 C65 x
--Numbered entries arranged by city/town. Subject index by entry number. The most complete bibliography of secondary and many primary sources on New England history.

  • v. 1. Massachusetts, a bibliography of its history, 1976.
  • v. 8. New England: additions to the six state bibliographies, 1989.
  • v. 9. Further additions, to 1994, 1995.

Diaries and Other Personal Writings

Writings in which people reflect or report on their own lives and experiences are called personal writings.  They are sometimes written for publication (autobiographies, memoirs) and sometimes for private use (diaries, letters, although diaries are sometimes written with an eye to publication) and published posthumously.  Personal narratives are usually accounts of wars or diseases.  See also Oral Histories

To find them in HOLLIS Advanced Search search Subject : "civil rights workers" AND (sources OR diaries OR narratives OR correspondence).

Autobiographies usually bear the Subject term Biography, and so are not distinguished from biographies. The search Autobiographies OR Autobiography yields many autobiographies, but by no means all.

Memoir is not an official subject term.  Search memoir as a Keyword anywhere or Keyword title search

To find them in  search: India AND disasters AND (diaries OR archives OR correspondence).

Government Documents: State and Local

Boston and Massachusetts government documents are rich sources of environmental history. See the State and Local Documents page of this guide

State Library of Massachusetts | Digital Repository offers online documents from state agencies.

Boston (City) Departmental Reports

Boston Government History 

Images

Records for many, but by no means all, individual Harvard University Library images are available in HOLLIS Images, an online catalog of images. Records include subjects and a thumbnail image.

Combining your topical words with the phrase "Pictorial Works" in HOLLIS yields books that are largely composed of pictures.

There are several image collections in the Boston Public Library Digital Collections.

Digital Commonwealth offers digitized historical collections from libraries, museums, and archives across Massachusetts 

Photographs

Images of America: a history of American life in images and texts is the online version of thousands of books in the Arcadia US local history series. The histories Includes photographs from archives, historical societies and private collections. Images and text are fully searchable. Searchable by location, person, event, date, ethic group and organization. 

Newspapers

Bay State Banner in Ethnic NewsWatch (1965-1979)​

Boston Globe (1872-1985). The ProQuest Boston Globe (1980- ) is available to Massachusetts residents. Scroll down to Boston Globe.