Librarian
Heather Perez
she/her
Contact:
Heather Perez
Special Collections Librarian
Richard E. Bjork Library E-055
609-652-4532 (Reading Room)
Special Collections Librarian
Richard E. Bjork Library E-055
609-652-4532 (Reading Room)
609-652-4555 (Office)
About Digital Collections
This page lists digital collections available for online research. Most are open and freely available. Please remember that these are only some of the records that a site may offer for research. Most institutions cannot put everything they have in their holdings online. When you find digitized items of interest, you might wish to contact the site for more information and to see if there are additional holdings relating to what you are viewing.
Pre-Colonial
- Exploring the Early Americas (Library of Congress)Online exhibit features selections from the more than 3,000 rare maps, documents, paintings, prints, and artifacts that make up the Jay I. Kislak Collection at the Library of Congress.
- Greater Cahokia ArcheologyMaps, archaeology, and artifacts relating to the Cahioka of the Mississippi River valley.
- Indian Converts (Reed College)First published in 1727, "Indian Converts, or Some account of the lives and dying speeches of a considerable number of the Christianized Indians of Martha's Vineyard" was written by Experience Mayhew and provides insights into the lives and culture of four generations of Native Americans in colonial America.
- Global Middle AgesServes as a guide to link to digital projects about the middle ages.
Colonial
- American Beginnings: 1492-1690 (National Humanities Center)Primary resources thematically organized with notes and discussion questions.
- Early Americas Digital Archive (UMD)Collection of electronic texts originally written in or about the Americas from 1492 to approximately 1820.
- IDA Treaties Explorer (Indigenous Digital Archive)While treaties between Indigenous peoples and the United States affect virtually every area in the USA, there is as yet no official list of all the treaties. The US National Archives holds 374 of the treaties, where they are known as the Ratified Indian Treaties. Here you can view them for the first time with key historic works that provide context to the agreements made and the histories of our shared lands.
- Salem Witch TrialsElectronic collection of primary source materials relating to the Salem witch trials of 1692 and a new transcription of the court records.
- Virtual JamestownDigital research, teaching and learning project that explores the legacies of the Jamestown settlement and "the Virginia experiment."
- Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade DatabaseThis website has much information on almost 35,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. It offers researchers, students and the general public a chance to rediscover the reality of one of the largest forced movements of peoples in world history.
- Witness to the Early American ExperienceLetters, newspapers, broadsides, legal records, and maps that tell the story of New York from the early Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam up to the British occupation of the city during the American Revolution.
Revolutionary War & Founding of the United States
- Annotated Newspapers of Harbottle Dorr, Jr. (Mass. Historical Society)Complete four volume set of Revolutionary-era Boston newspapers and pamphlets collected, annotated, and indexed by Harbottle Dorr, Jr., a shopkeeper in Boston.
- Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774 to 1789 (Library of Congress)Contains 277 documents relating to the work of Congress and the drafting and ratification of the Constitution.
- Founders OnlineOver 185,000 searchable documents, fully annotated, from the authoritative Founding Fathers Papers projects.
- Papers of the War DepartmentThe War Department office was established in 1790. It burned in 1800. For decades historians believed that its files, and the window they provide into the early federal government, had been lost forever. This collection unites copies of the lost files in a digital archive that reconstitutes this invaluable historical resource.
- Revolutionary CityLearn about diverse stories of the American Revolution from the perspective of early residents of America's revolutionary city, Philadelphia.
- Washington Papers (UVA)Working to publish comprehensive letterpress and digital editions of the Washington family's correspondence.
Civil War
- Civil War in the American SouthA central portal to access digital collections from the Civil War Era (1850-1865) held by members of the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL).
- Civil War (New York State Library)Publications that have been digitized from items/volumes in the New York State Library's collection.
- US Civil War (Library of Congress)Selected items digitized from the Library of Congress relating to the Civil War, including the Matthew Brady photographs.
- The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War (UVA)Documents the lives of people in Augusta County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania, during the era of the American Civil War.
Reconstruction
- Freedmen's Bureau Records (National Archives)The Bureau confronted the basic and urgent needs of freedpeople, as shown by these sample documents.
- Remembering Jim CrowCreated by America Public Media, this site contains a collection of oral histories that document African American experiences of Jim Crow.
1930s
- Alan Lomax Collection of Michigan and Wisconsin Recordings (Library of Congress)In 1938 the Library of Congress dispatched the pioneering folklorist and song collector Alan Lomax—already a seasoned field worker at age 23—to conduct a folk song survey of the Great Lakes region.
- American Guide Series: The WPA Federal Writers' Project: The GuidesThe American Guide Series Books, created through a cooperative effort of both Federal and State organizations, are part travel guide, part almanac. Each includes illustrations and photographs and offers a fascinating snapshot of the 48 United States in the Union, and Alaska, in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
- Civilian Conservation Corps Digital ArchivesItems and images documenting the work of the CCC.
- Living New DealA national database of information, documents, photographs, and personal stories about the public works made possible by the New Deal.
- Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America (U. of Richmond)Interactive atlas of the US, showing maps and descriptions of neighborhoods, rated by federal government agents of the Home Owners' Loan Corporation.
- New Deal Programs (Library of Congress)Digitized materials from the Library of Congress, including the Federal Writers' Project, iconic images the Farm Security Administration, slave narratives, WPA Posters, folk music recordings, Federal Theatre Project, and Florida Folklife.
- Primary Sources: The Great Depression and the 1930s (Christopher Newport U.)A guide linking to many resources.
- Studs Terkel Radio Archive: The Art of ConversationOral histories collected by radio host Studs Terkel on multiple issues including the Great Depression, Race, and World War II.
1970s
- U.S. v. Liddy (National Archives)Digitized records unsealed in the case of U.S. v. Liddy, the Watergate break-in case.
1980s
- AIDS History Project (UCSF)Digitized materials from various San Francisco-area institutions include oral history transcripts, advertising materials, organizing committee records, photographs and more.
- Critical Infrastructure Protection Oral History ProjectDocuments the history of the nation’s efforts to protect the systems and structures that are vital to the smooth and safe functioning of our economy, society, and way of life.
2000s
- 9-11 Digital ArchiveUses electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the history of September 11, 2001 and its aftermath.
- Hurricane Digital Memory ProjectThe stories of victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University and the University of New Orleans organized the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank (HDMB) in 2005 in partnership with many national and Gulf Coast area organizations and individuals.
Westward Expansion
- American Panorama (U. of Richmond)Digital Humanities projects offering interactive atlases based on American history. Projects include maps of redlining, westward migration, urban renewal displacements, forced migration of enslaved people, and US politics.
- Bureau of Indian Affairs PhotographsExplore over 18,000 Photographs from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (Record Group 75 at National Archives).
- Indigenous Digital ArchiveExplore the history of US goverment boarding schools for Native Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries.
- Trails of Hope: Overland Diaries and Letters, 1846-1869 (BYU)Collection of the original writings of 49 voyagers on the Mormon, California, Oregon, and Montana trails who wrote while traveling on the trail.
1910s
- The American Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919: An EncyclopediaThese pages contain the stories of the places, the people, and the organizations that battled the American influenza epidemic of 1918-1919.
- The Influenza Epidemic of 1918 (National Archives)Online exhibit of selected items.
- ReSounding the ArchivesBrings World War I sheet music back to life through recordings and live performances.
- World War I collections (Library of Congress)The Library’s unparalleled collections include posters, recordings, newspapers, sheet music, photographs, and veterans’ stories as well as publications, exhibitions, educational tools, and research guides related to World War I.
- Henry Ford Archive of American InnovationResource for researching stories of American innovation, ingenuity and resourcefulness, including digital collections relating to Henry Ford and his inventions, automobile racing,
1920s
- Alcohol, Temperance and Prohibition (Brown)The digitized items are from the Alcoholism and Addiction Studies Collection, and include broadsides, sheet music, pamphlets and government publications.
1940s
- National Museum of the Pacific War Digital ArchiveThe Digital Archive of the National Museum of the Pacific War include collections from the Nimitz Education and Research Center archives.
- Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Photographs (Library of Congress)Photographers working for the U.S. government's Farm Security Administration (FSA) and later the Office of War Information (OWI) between 1939 and 1944 made approximately 1,600 color photographs that depict life in the United States, including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
1950s
- Wilson Center Digital Archives - Cold WarSince its establishment in August 1991, the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) has amassed a tremendous collection of archival documents on the Cold War era from the once secret archives of former communist countries.
1960s
- Baltimore 68: Riots and RebirthInterviews about the urban disturbances of April 1968 in Baltimore, Maryland.
- Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Digital GatewayIncludes interviews, archives, and photographs relating to the work of the SNCC.
- Virtual Vietnam Archive (Texas Tech)The Vietnam Archive is a donation-driven archive containing documents, photographs, slides, negatives, oral histories, artifacts, moving images, sound recordings, maps, and collection finding aids.
- Women's Liberation Movement Print Culture (Duke)This collection contains manifestos, speeches, essays, and other materials documenting various aspects of the Women's Movement in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.
2010s
- Hurricane Sandy Oral History Project (The College of New Jersey)The Hurricane Sandy Oral History Project aims to preserve the memories of people whose lives have been affected by the storm and its aftermath.
2010s
- Hurricane Sandy Oral History Project (The College of New Jersey)The Hurricane Sandy Oral History Project aims to preserve the memories of people whose lives have been affected by the storm and its aftermath.
2020s
- A Journal of the Plague YearCommunity online archive of experiences relating to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Pandemic ReligionCollects and preserves experiences and responses from individuals and religious communities during the COVID-19 pandemic.