American History Resources
American History Encyclopedias and Bibliographies
- Oxford Research Encyclopedia: American HistoryAn encyclopedia of peer-reviewed and regularly updated articles covering the discipline.
- Oxford Bibliographies: Atlantic HistoryAn annotated bibliography of the best scholarship in the discipline.
American History Databases
- Sabin Americana, 1500-1926Based on Joseph Sabin's landmark bibliography, this collection contains works about the Americas published throughout the world from 1500 to the early 1900's.
- Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800 has been hailed as the definitive resource for researching every aspect of 17th- and 18th-century America. This incomparable digital collection contains virtually every book, pamphlet and broadside published in America over a 160-year period.
- Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819 provides a comprehensive set of American books, pamphlets and broadsides published in the early part of the 19th century.
- Images of America: A History of American Life in Images and TextThe online collection is growing to include 5,000 individual volumes, with 650,000 pages and more than a million images. Each book tells a small piece of American history. But when researched together with Alexander Street's Semantic Indexing, the collection becomes a massive and powerful primary-source research tool, a tapestry of the places and people that have made America.
- Revolutionary War Era Orderly Books from the New-York Historical SocietyThe content in Orderly Books provides detailed accounts of troops’ daily lives, documenting everything from court martial cases to the price of necessities charged by locals. Given the dearth of soldiers’ diaries, Orderly Books provides historically valuable information about soldiers’ lives.
- Civil War Primary Source DocumentsThis unique archive captures various accounts of the Civil War as it was experienced on land and at sea. The collection provides firsthand perspectives from hospitals and prison camps and reactions to the War from the homefront.
- Gateway to North America: The People, Places, and Organizations of 19th-Century New YorkGateway to North America contains over 800,000 pages of content from over 1,500 print and manuscript directories, member lists, travel guides and other sources, chronicling the people and organizations of New York City from the late 18th through the early 20th century.
- North American Women's Letters and DiariesNorth American Women's Letters and Diaries is the largest collection of women's diaries and correspondence ever assembled. Spanning more than 300 years, brings the personal experiences of some 1,325 women to researchers, students, and general readers.
- Making of Modern Law - Legal Treatises 1800 to 1926The Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926 represents a revolution in historical law research, opening up a wealth of hidden or previously inaccessible sources to scholars and students. This unique digital collection covers the watershed period of legal development during the 19th and early 20th centuries and is the world’s most comprehensive full-text collection of Anglo-American legal treatises of the period.
- European Views of the Americas, 1493-1750This archive is a comprehensive guide to printed records about the Americas written in Europe before 1750 from European Americana: A Chronological Guide to Works Printed In Europe Relating to the Americas, 1493-1750.
American History Newspaper Databases
- American Periodicals Series OnlineAmerican Periodicals Series Online (APS Online) includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century. Titles range from Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine and America's first scientific journal, Medical Repository; popular magazines such as Vanity Fair and Ladies' Home Journal;regional and niche publications; and groundbreaking journals like The Dial, Puck, and McClure's.
- Historical American NewspapersFull text of more than 100 historical American newspapers from 1690 to 1922.
- AAS Historical Periodicals Collection
The American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection contains more than 6,500 historical periodical titles dating from 1684 to 1912.
- Gleeson Databases A to Z: Newspapers — CurrentAn A-Z list of current newspaper databases at Gleeson
- Gleeson Databases A to Z: Newspapers — HistoricalAn A-Z list of historical newspaper databases at Gleeson
American History Maps
- Digital Sanborn MapsSanborn fire insurance maps are the most frequently consulted maps in both public and academic libraries. Sanborn maps are valuable historical tools for urban specialists, social historians, architects, geographers, genealogists, local historians, planners, environmentalists and anyone who wants to learn about the history, growth, and development of American cities, towns, and neighborhoods.
- American PanoramaAmerican Panorama is a digital atlas of United States history, created by the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond. The atlas is an ongoing project, with more maps being added as they are completed.
- Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United StatesThis website, created by the University of Richmond, is a digital edition of Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright's Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, first published in 1932. The digital edition reproduces all of the atlas's nearly 700 maps. Many of the maps are enhanced in ways impossible in print, animated to show change over time or made clickable to view the underlying data.
- Social ExplorerCreate a personal account, or use USF guest account information: email: guest@usfca.edu password: guest Social Explorer provides quick and easy access to current and historical census data and demographic information. The easy-to-use web interface lets users create maps and reports to illustrate, analyze, and understand demography and social change.
- Interactive Maps from the Census BureauWork with interactive mapping tools from across the Census Bureau.