History

ArchiveGrid includes over 5 million records describing archival materials, bringing together information about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more. With over 1,000 different archival institutions represented, ArchiveGrid helps researchers looking for primary source materials held in archives, libraries, museums and historical societies.

Best of History Web Sites aims to provide quick, convenient, and reliable access to the best history-oriented resources online in a wide range of categories and has been designed to benefit history teachers and their students; however, general history enthusiasts will benefit from the site as well. Ranked #1 by Google for history web sites, Best of History Web Sitesd receives upwards of 100,000 visitors per month. With links to over 1200 history-related web sites that have been reviewed for quality, accuracy, and usefulness, the site also includes links to K-12 history lesson plans, teacher guides, activities, games, quizzes, and more. Sites with engaging educational content and stimulating and useful multimedia technologies are most likely to be included in these pages. However, useful general resources and research-oriented sites have been included as well.

Children & Youth in History is a world history resource that provides teachers and students with access to sources about young people from the past to the present.

Includes timeline, eras, topics, resources, and references.

DPLA connects people to the riches held within America’s libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions. All of the materials found through DPLA—photographs, books, maps, news footage, oral histories, personal letters, museum objects, artwork, government documents, and so much more—are free and immediately available in digital format. The cultural institutions participating in DPLA represent the richness and diversity of America itself, from the smallest local history museum to our nation’s largest cultural institutions. Our core work includes bringing new collections and partners into DPLA, building our technology, and managing projects that further our mission through curation, education, and community building.

The HTA is in its 26th year of publishing high quality articles, books, essays, documents, historical photos, and links, screened for content, for a broad range of historical subjects. It was founded in 1990 in Mississippi and is one of the oldest history sites on the Internet. This site is dynamic with regular additions to its contents and its link collection.

The Internet History Sourcebooks Project is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts presented cleanly (without advertising or excessive layout) for educational use.

You will find in the Access to Archival Databases (AAD) resource online access to records in a small selection of historic databases preserved permanently in NARA. Out of the nearly 200,000 data files in its holdings, NARA has selected approximately 475 of them for public searching through AAD. We selected these data because the records identify specific persons, geographic areas, organizations, and dates. The records cover a wide variety of civilian and military functions and have many genealogical, social, political, and economic research uses.

We are a non-profit company publishing the world's most-read history encyclopedia. Our mission is to improve history education worldwide by creating the most complete, freely accessible, and reliable history resource in the world. Studying history helps us gain a more nuanced understanding of the world we live in today. Our knowledge and interpretation of history shape how we define ourselves as nations and as cultures, and it influences how we see and interact with other cultures. We help people across the globe gain a deeper, fundamental knowledge of our interconnected human past in order to create curious, open-minded, and tolerant societies in the future.

From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1822-1909 presents 396 pamphlets from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, published from 1822 through 1909, by African-American authors and others who wrote about slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and related topics. The materials range from personal accounts and public orations to organizational reports and legislative speeches. Among the authors represented are Frederick Douglass, Kelly Miller, Charles Sumner, Mary Church Terrell, and Booker T. Washington.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA). At the conclusion of the Slave Narrative project, a set of edited transcripts was assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. In 2000-2001, with major support from the Citigroup Foundation, the Library digitized the narratives from the microfilm edition and scanned from the originals 500 photographs, including more than 200 that had never been microfilmed or made publicly available. This online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs divisions of the Library of Congress.

A range of collections surrounding Slavery in the United States.

This data collection was designed to examine the characteristics of free Blacks and ex-slaves mustered into the Union Army between 1862 and the end of the Civil War. In addition to variables on personal characteristics, such as skin, eye, and hair color, height, age, birthplace, and occupation before enlistment, the data also contain Army-related variables, such as regiment and company number, rank, enlistment date and place, changes in rank, and date and cause of end of service.

The almost seven hours of recorded interviews presented here took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine Southern states. Twenty-three interviewees, born between 1823 and the early 1860s, discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, coercion of slaves, their families, and freedom. Several individuals sing songs, many of which were learned during the time of their enslavement. It is important to note that all of the interviewees spoke sixty or more years after the end of their enslavement, and it is their full lives that are reflected in these recordings. The individuals documented in this presentation have much to say about living as African Americans from the 1870s to the 1930s, and beyond.

This database provides access to digital collections of primary sources (photos, letters, diaries, artifacts, etc.) that document the history of women in the United States. These diverse collections range from Ancestral Pueblo pottery to interviews with women engineers from the 1970s.

From Blondie and Dagwood to sharecroppers, battlefield reporters, actresses, political activists, and urban shopgirls, the online versions of Library of Congress exhibitions are peopled with dynamic images of women. The Exhibitions Web pages are a good place to find photographs, lithographs, and designs by women artists, as well as images of allegorical women, famous faces, and representative women from all walks of life. Women's words and voices can also be found here in the many letters, speeches, books, films, and sound recordings that fill these digital exhibit halls. To find exhibited women's history materials, begin with the Exhibitions home page, which is highlighted on the home page of the Library of Congress Web site.

This page lists annotated links of various comprehensive sources of U.S. and global women and gender history.

The Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities to create Women in World History. The project is in development and will be completed by June 2006.

The Avalon Project will mount digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government. We do not intend to mount only static text but rather to add value to the text by linking to supporting documents expressly referred to in the body of the text. The Avalon Project will no doubt contain controversial documents. Their inclusion does not indicate endorsement of their contents nor sympathy with the ideology, doctrines, or means employed by their authors. They are included for the sake of completeness and balance and because in many cases they are by our definition a supporting document.

These open access sources are readily available to all -- without fees or subscriptions. Links connect to European primary historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. In addition you will find video or sound files, maps, photographs or other imagery, databases, and other documentation. The sources cover a broad range of historical happenings (political, economic, social and cultural). The order of documents is chronological wherever possible.

Explore millions of items from a range of Europe's leading galleries, libraries, archives and museums. Books and manuscripts, photos and paintings, television and film, sculpture and crafts, diaries and maps, sheet music and recordings, they’re all here.

The following is a list of 100 milestone documents, compiled by the National Archives and Records Administration, and drawn primarily from its nationwide holdings. The documents chronicle United States history from 1776 to 1965.

Digital Scriptorium is a growing consortium of American libraries and museums committed to free online access to their collections of pre-modern manuscripts. Our website unites scattered resources from many institutions into a national digital platform for teaching and scholarly research. It serves to connect an international user community to multiple repositories by means of a digital union catalog with sample images and searchable metadata. Many DS records also link out to the websites of our contributors, where users can discover further information.

Early Modern Resources is a research portal for the early modern period (c.1500-1800 CE). It only lists websites that are free to access and focuses on high-quality resources that are suitable for advanced research, study and teaching.

The Labyrinth provides free, organized access to resources in medieval studies. The Labyrinth’s easy-to-use links provide connections to databases, services, texts, and images around the world. Each user will be able to find an Ariadne’s thread through the maze of information on the Web.