History Guide

Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1770-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.

This collection of primary source documents discusses international relations during World War II and the years shortly after. It begins with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, signed in 1939, and ends with records from the 1950s. The collection contains various documents, including agreements, memorandums, meeting minutes, cables, letters, diary entries, and military reports from WWII. The records mainly come from Russian and Bulgarian archives.

Cornell University Library holds historical primary sources on a universe of topics. Many selections from our rare and distinctive collections are available online. Many are presented as part of online exhibitions. Many more are available through our Digital Collections portal. In the tabs of this guide, you will find these kinds of online primary sources from some of Cornell's areas of strength and direction on finding more.

The Cornell University Library Making of America Collection is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is solid in education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. This site provides access to 267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles with 19th-century imprints. The project represents a major collaborative endeavor in preserving and accessing historical texts electronically.

The Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean Ephemera is a steadily growing repository containing a previously unavailable subset of Princeton’s Latin American Ephemera Collection and newly acquired materials being digitized and added continuously.

Historical images present a visual archive of 20th-century East Asian cultural heritage.

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Record Group 105), also known as the Freedmen’s Bureau, was established in the War Department by an act of Congress on March 3, 1865. The Bureau was responsible for supervising and managing all matters relating to the refugees and freedmen and lands abandoned or seized during the Civil War, duties previously shared by military commanders and US Treasury Department officials. In May 1865, President Andrew Johnson appointed Maj. Gen. Oliver Otis Howard as Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Howard’s headquarters were in Washington, DC. Still, assistant commissioners, sub-assistant commissioners, and agents conducted the Bureau’s daily operations in the former Confederate states, the border states, and the District of Columbia. Although the Bureau was not abolished until 1872, most of its work was conducted from June 1865 to December 1868. While a significant part of the Bureau’s early activities included supervising abandoned and confiscated property, its mission was to provide relief and help formerly enslaved people become self-sufficient.

Throughout the 1970s, Garland Publishers issued a series of Indian captivity narrative reprints that dated from 1682 to 1962. This guide sorts 111 volumes in the series by century and offers information and links to Cornell University Library's holdings for the titles within each book.

The Library of Congress' Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian collections are challenging to itemize/enumerate because they include millions of items in diverse formats and multiple languages. Chronologically they range from ancient history through the present; they support research and creativity in many fields on nearly any imaginable subject. While Jefferson's famous Library included essential works such as Cruz Cano y Olmedilla's 1775 map of South America, the Library's collections on the Americas predate this foundational acquisition. These collections continue to grow with purchases of contemporary and historical items daily. Copyright deposit ensures the Library receives interdisciplinary US-published works about these regions, and international approval plans guarantee continued collection of recent works from each of the countries and territories in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Iberia. Retrospective purchases, gifts, and long-standing efforts to capture audio recordings for the PALABRA Archive enable broad and deep holdings exceeding 10 million items from 61 countries and regions in 26 languages and varying formats, such as books, maps, photographs, manuscripts, and digital objects.

Welcome to HOSLAC, a comprehensive database of primary sources on the history of science in Latin America and the Caribbean. The site, launched in January 2010, provides a virtual archive of over 200 primary sources and introductions based on the latest scholarly findings. We hope the database will be helpful in teaching, research, or general interest purposes for viewers curious about the history of science in Latin America and the Caribbean. Feel free to contact the website administrator with any comments or suggestions.

A collection of links and documents about east Asian history, especially China and Japan.

HIstorical documents from the National Institute of Korean History (국사편찬위원회), Kyujanggak (규장각), Jongyŏnggak (존경각), Munchŏn’gak (문천각), the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs of the Republic of Korea (국가보훈처), Independence Hall of Korea (독립기념관), Academia Coreana (명지대학교 국제한국학 연구소), Korean Classics Research Institute (민족문화추진회), the Korea Democracy Foundation (민주화운동 기념사업회), the War Memorial of Korea (전쟁기념사업회), the Korean Studies Advancement Center (한국국학진흥원), Korean Women’s Development Institute (한국여성개발원), and the Academy of Korean Studies (한국학중앙연구원).

The nation's record keeper is the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Of all documents and materials created in the course of business conducted by the United States federal government, only 1%-3% are so important for legal or historical reasons that they are kept by us forever.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency created in 1965. It is one of the largest funders of humanities programs in the United States.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture is the only national Museum documenting African American life, history, and culture. It was established by an Act of Congress in 2003, following decades of efforts to promote and highlight the contributions of African Americans. The Museum has collected over 40,000 artifacts, and nearly 100,000 individuals have become members. The Museum opened on September 24, 2016, as the 19th Museum of the Smithsonian Institution.

Founded in 1985 by journalists and scholars to check rising government secrecy, the National Security Archive combines a unique range of functions: investigative journalism center, research institute on international affairs, library and archive of declassified U.S. documents ("the world's largest nongovernmental collection" according to the Los Angeles Times), leading non-profit user of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, public interest law firm defending and expanding public access to government information, global advocate of open government, and indexer and publisher of former secrets.

This archive was the product of a joint project between the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICWS) and the Institute for the Study of the Americas (ISA), which aimed to improve access to and use of their extensive collections of political ephemera. These collections are fully searchable, and a selection of items can be viewed through the online gallery. Whether you are interested in politics, ephemeral material, or the mechanics of organizing a project of this kind, it is hoped that this site will be helpful to you.

The Joseph A. Labadie Collection contains posters acquired over the past 100 years. This database consists of images of those posters covering social protest movements such as Anarchism, Civil Liberties, Colonialism, Communism, Ecology, Labor, Pacifism, Sexual Freedom, Socialism, Women, and Youth/Student Protest. Some are from the first half of the 20th century, but most are from the 1960s and later. Many are undated. All originals are held in the Joseph A. Labadie Collection.

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, one of The New York Public Library’s renowned research libraries, is a world-leading cultural institution devoted to researching, preserving, and exhibiting materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences.

The Southeast Asia Digital Library (SEADL) provides educators, students, scholars, and members of the general public with a wide variety of materials published or otherwise produced in Southeast Asia. Drawn mainly from the collections of universities and scholars in this region, SEADL contains digital facsimiles of books and manuscripts, multimedia materials and searchable indexes of additional Southeast Asian resources. Nations represented in the collection include Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

The Virtual Vietnam Archive enables scholars, students, and all others interested in this remarkable period in our world history to conduct research directly from universities, schools, libraries, and homes. Of equal importance, it will enable Vietnam veterans - those who served - to access records that might be of significance to them in their continuing efforts to understand their own experiences. It will facilitate the research and writing of participants' memoirs and will give high school and college students an important and authoritative source of information as they seek to understand the complexities of the Vietnam War.

The American Historical Association is the largest professional organization serving historians in all fields and all professions. The AHA is a trusted voice advocating for history education, the professional work of historians, and the critical role of historical thinking in public life.

The American Studies Association promotes developing and disseminating interdisciplinary research on U.S. culture and history globally. Its purpose is to support scholars and scholarship committed to original research, critical thinking, and public dialogue. We are researchers, teachers, students, writers, curators, community organizers, and activists from around the world committed to studying and teaching U.S. history and culture from multiple perspectives.

Established on September 9, 1915, by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, we are the Founders of Black History Month and carry forth the work of our founder, the Father of Black History.
We continue his legacy of speaking a fundamental truth to the world–that Africans and peoples of African descent are makers of history and co-workers in what W. E. B. Du Bois called “The Kingdom of Culture.” ASALH’s mission is to create and disseminate knowledge about Black History, to be, in short, the nexus between the Ivory Tower and the global public. We labor in the service of Blacks and all humanity.

Since 1958 the Central European History Society has promoted scholarly engagement with the region’s diverse and profoundly layered history. Through our journal, conference sponsorships, grants, and prizes, we provide intellectual and material support to historians of Central Europe.

CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies provides a platform for intellectual leadership in addressing issues that affect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals and other sexual and gender minorities. As the first university-based LGBTQ research center in the United States, CLAGS nurtures cutting-edge scholarship, organizes events for examining and affirming LGBTQ lives, and fosters network-building among academics, artists, activists, policymakers, and community members. CLAGS is committed to maintaining a broad program of public events, online projects, and fellowships promoting reflection on queer pasts, presents, and futures.

The CLAH is a professional association devoted to encouraging the diffusion of knowledge about Latin America through fostering the study and improving the teaching of Latin American history. The Conference is a non-political, autonomous, incorporated, tax-exempt, and non-profit society affiliated with the American Historical Association. However, membership in the AHA is not a prerequisite for joining CLAH.

The German Historical Institute Washington (GHI) is a center for advanced historical research. The GHI facilitates dialogue and collaboration across national and disciplinary boundaries by working with junior and senior scholars worldwide.

Since founding in 1764, The German Society of Pennsylvania has served Philadelphia's German community. Between the 1680s and the American Revolution, most of an estimated 100,000 German-speaking immigrants coming to North America settled in Pennsylvania, making up a third of Philadelphia's population by the 1760s. These immigrants often arrived miserable after long sea voyages known for unhealthy conditions. In response to their plight, on December 26, 1764, sixty-five prominent German colonists established an organization "for the relief of distressed Germans." Throughout its 250-year history, the Society has evolved with the changing needs of the German-American population of Philadelphia. During the 1800s, the Society continued its support for immigrants in need while also increasingly sponsoring activities to preserve and promote German traditions and customs. Today, the Society's membership and programs are open to anyone interested in the German language and culture.

The Historical Society of Montgomery County began in 1881, just three years before the County's centennial celebration. Inspired by the upcoming anniversary, a group of notable county residents created the Historical Society to protect local history. It valued the educational opportunities involved in their pursuits, explicitly mentioning the exhibition and research purposes available through their efforts. They believed that the Historical Society could cooperate with other local historical organizations and become a place where individuals could learn at a glance what other collections could offer. In addition, the society sought to collect public and private collections related to the County's people, events, and places; public records from the county records to be destroyed; newspaper files printed throughout the County; and census, church, and cemetery records.

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, founded in 1824, is one of the nation’s most extensive archives of historical documents. We proudly serve as Philadelphia’s Library of American History, with over 21 million manuscripts, books, and graphic images encompassing centuries of US history. HSP helps more than 4,000 on-site researchers annually and millions more around the globe who use its online resources. HSP is also a leading center for documenting and studying ethnic communities and immigrant experiences in the 20th century and one of the largest family history libraries in the country. Through educator workshops, research opportunities, public programs, and lectures throughout the year, we strive to make history relevant and exhilarating to all.

The official digital archive of the Japanese government.

LAWCHA is an organization of scholars, teachers, students, labor educators, and activists who seek to promote public and scholarly awareness of labor and working-class history through research, writing, and organizing.

The Massachusetts Historical Society is a significant historical archive specializing in early American, Massachusetts, and New England history.

The Medieval Academy of America is a scholarly community committed to deepening, broadening, and sharing knowledge of the medieval past inclusively and equitably.

The National Coalition for History is a non-profit educational organization providing leadership in history-related advocacy.

The New Jersey Historical Society is a historical society and museum located in Newark, Essex County, New Jersey, United States. The Historical Society is housed in the former headquarters of the Essex Club. It has two floors of exhibition space, a gift shop, and a lecture hall.

The Organization of American Historians is the largest professional society dedicated to United States history, guided by the principles of advocacy, professional integrity, and the advancement of scholarship.

The Pennsylvania Historical Association advocates and advances knowledge about the history and culture of Pennsylvania and the mid-Atlantic region because understanding how the past informs the present helps us shape a better future.

The Polish American Historical Association is a non-profit, tax-exempt, interdisciplinary organization that studies Polish American history and culture. Founded in 1942 as part of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America, PAHA became an autonomous scholarly society in 1948. As an affiliate of the American Historical Association, PAHA promotes research and publication of educational materials focused on Polish American history and culture as part of the more significant Polish diaspora. PAHA publishes a scholarly peer-reviewed journal, Polish American Studies, and disseminates information about its activities via a newsletter, PAHA News blog, and a Facebook group. Membership is open to all individuals interested in the fields of Polish American history and culture, and immigration studies.

Founded in 1868, the Royal Historical Society (RHS) is a prosperous learned society, membership organization, and charity with a 150-year history. Today, the RHS is the UK’s foremost society working for historians and history.

The Social Science History Association was created in 1974 by scholars interested in using social science methods and theories to understand the past better.

Historical Archaeology is a subfield of archaeology and focuses on the emergence, nature, and transformation of the Modern World.

The Society for the History of Technology studies technology and its relations with politics, economics, labor, business, the environment, public policy, science, and the arts. Founded in 1958, the society now numbers around 1500 members. An international community, SHOT meets annually in North America or Europe and sponsors smaller conferences focused on specialized topics, often jointly with other scholarly associations and organizations.