Research guides: History Research Guide: History 620

Online primary source collections

ARTstor
Collection of images of architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative art, design, and various forms of visual culture. Artstor's high-quality collections and key functionality are now on JSTOR.
Coverage: prehistoric - present
ARTstor's software tools allow the viewing and analyzing of images through features such as zooming and panning, saving groups of images online for personal or shared uses, and creating and delivering both online and offline presentations.
Classical Music Library
Collection of classical music recordings, reference material, program notes, biographies of composers, and images.
Coverage: varies
Note: A limited number of users may access this database simultaneously; if you are unable to connect, please try later.
Defining Gender, 1450-1910
British and European primary source material. Themes include: Conduct and Politeness, Domesticity and the Family, Consumption and Leisure, Education and Sensibility, and The Body.
Coverage: 1450 - 1910
Early English Books Online (EEBO)
Facsimiles of works printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, British North America, and works in English printed elsewhere.
Coverage: 1475 - 1700
EEBO contains images of works by such authors as Malory, Spenser, Bacon, More, Erasmus, Boyle, Newton, and Galileo. The database also includes musical exercises by Henry Purcell, novels by Aphra Behn, prayer books, pamphlets, proclamations, almanacs, calendars, and many other primary resources.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)
English and other language books, pamphlets, broadsides and other ephemera published in the United Kingdom and the Americas.
Coverage: 1701 - 1820
Included are significant collections of women writers, collections on the French Revolution, numerous 18th century editions of the works of Shakespeare, and multiple editions of other works of literature.

Emory University digitized archive
This digitized archive holds a number of woodcuts from the early modern period. Use Advance search and the "Type" option in the "Search by Value" field to search for "woodcut".
English Broadside Ballad Archive (EBBA)
A broadside ballad was a single large sheet of paper printed on one side (hence “broad-side”) with multiple eye-catching illustrations, a popular tune title, and an alluring poem—the latter mostly in black-letter, or what we today call “gothic,” type. EBBA's goal is to make these ballads fully accessible as texts, art, music, and cultural records of the period.
English Crime and Execution Broadsides
This collection of nearly 600 broadsides highlights crime and capital punishment, primarily in England, as seen through the popular press in the 18th and 19th century.
EuroDocs
Choose a country, choose a time period.
Europeana
Search items from Europe's galleries, libraries, archives and museums. Find books and manuscripts, photos and paintings, television and film, sculpture and crafts, diaries and maps, sheet music ...
German History in Documents and Images
via the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.
London Lives
1690-1800
Retrieve records from the courts, hospitals, churches relating to poverty, crime, illness, and social conditions.
Loyola Marymount University digitized archive
This digitized archive holds a handful of pertinent primary source documents (e.g. leaf from a Luther bible). Add a date range (e.g. 1400-1800) to see relevant items.
Modern History Sourcebook
1450-present
via Fordham University
Old Bailey
Proceedings of London's criminal court, 1674-1913

Perdita Manuscripts
These manuscripts were written or compiled by women in the British Isles. Find transcriptions and images of all manner of writing from account book entries, diaries, essays, hymns, and more
Coverage: 16th - 17th centuries

The Protestant Reformation
A selection of primary sources on the Protestant Reformation, put together by the University of Arizona's Special Collections team.

Databases that track secondary sources

Atla Religion Database with AtlaSerials
Indexes journals, essays in multi-author works, and book reviews in the areas of religion and theology.
Coverage: 1949 - present
Bibliography of British and Irish History
Indexes historical scholarship relating to the British Isles, the British Empire, and the Commonwealth. Time periods range from 55 BC.
Coverage: 1901 - present
HeinOnline
Articles on law and legal history, court judgments, tribunal decisions, statutes and regulations from Canadian, U.S. and UK jurisdictions.
Coverage: varies
Historical Abstracts
Articles, books, and dissertations on world history from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada).
Coverage: 1955 - present
Note: A limited number of users may access this database simultaneously; if you are unable to connect, please try later.
History of Science Technology and Medicine
Journal articles, conference proceedings, books, book reviews, and dissertations in the history of science, technology, and medicine and related historical fields.
Coverage: 1975 - present
ITER
Indexes articles, books, reviews, catalogues, and conference proceedings about the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700).
Coverage: 1945 - present
Iter, meaning 'a journey' or 'a path' in Latin, is a non-profit research project with partners in Toronto (the headquarters), New York City, and Tempe, Arizona. The goal of Iter is to increase access to all published materials pertaining to the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700) through the creation of online bibliographic databases. Iter has been made available through the Ontario Scholars Portal collection of databases. The Journals database is an electronic bibliography of interdisciplinary journal literature pertaining to the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Citations for articles, bibliographies, catalogues, abstracts and discographies are included. To date, the full runs of 518 scholarly journal titles, published since 1853, have been indexed. Journals and essay collections indexed Subject access to selected materials pertaining to the Renaissance (1300-1700), published since 1990, is available via Library of Congress Subject Headings
JSTOR
Provides access to back issues of journals in the humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences, many of which date from the 1800s.
Coverage: varies (excludes current 3 to 5 years)
Oxford Bibliographies
Annotated bibliographies in the social sciences and humanities.
Coverage: varies
We only get the collections that are listed at the top of the Oxford Bibliographies page: Atlantic History, Classics, Medieval Studies, Philosophy, and Renaissance.

Two search tips

1. Use shortcuts. Typically you can use

the asterisk * at the end of a word stem to retrieve more results. For example, arrest* finds arrest, arrests, arrested.
quotation marks around phrases retrieves records with that exact string of words.
geographical and date limits to narrow or broaden your results.

2. Use terms that will expand (or narrow) your search

synonyms, antonyms
specialized vocabulary used by scholars
subject headings assigned by cataloguers to records
alternate/older spelling variations that have changed overtime. For example:
use v for u; u for v; j for i or y; i for j or y; y for i or j; w for vv or uu; s for f
- dictionaries can help with this:
  - English: Oxford English Dictionary
  - English: Historical Thesaurus
  - German: Deutsches Wörterbuch.
  - Polish: Elektroniczny Słownik Języka Polskiego XVII I XVIII wieku
  - for others check the page: The OED and its cousins.

Build a bibliography

From Jenéa Tallentire's bibliography for her thesis: "An Edifice Built Like a City Wall: Women, Gender Ideology, and the Social Construction of Space in Early Modern Europe." University of Regina, 1998.