History
Resources
Online Historical Resources
Historical study first of all provides a better understanding of one's self and society. But it also provides many options for a rapidly changing present and future. We’ve compiled a list of sites so you can learn more about topics that pique your interest.
Online Resources
Local and Regional History
- Central Minnesota History Center: The Central Minnesota Historical Center is a collection of documentation of the history of central Minnesotan counties.
- Stearns County Museum: In addition to providing general information about the museum, this site also has a link to their library and archival online catalog (the collection is excellent for conducting genealogical and local history).
- SCSU University Archives and Special Collections: This site gives information, guides, and catalogs pertaining to the special collections (the family papers of Sinclair Lewis, Minnesota Authors Manuscripts, among others) housed in the university’s archives, located on the third floor of the Miller Learning and Resource Center.
- Minnesota State Historical Society: See this extraordinarily rich website for access to their library catalog, e-books, a birth certificate index, a photograph and art database, available primary documents, and information on their special collections.
American History (General)
- American Historical Association: A key resource for historians of any research area, this site has online versions of the AHA’s key publications, as well as access to job ads, conference information, fellowship opportunities, and career paths in history.
- The Library of Congress: This is a central site for the study of American history, one that provides access to their library catalog, an overview of their special collections, and numerous databases containing digitized photographs, maps, works of art, and documents.
- Making of America (MOA): MOA is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through Reconstruction. The site is particularly strong in those subject areas of social history that relate to education, psychology, sociology, religion, as well as science and technology.
- Research Society for American Periodicals (RSAP): The RSAP represents an interdisciplinary organization of scholars who are interested in American magazines and newspapers. Use this website to find scanned nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first-century periodicals as well as the resources for using them.
- Digital Scriptorium Projects (Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University): This site gives access to extensive digitized collections of documents, maps, images, and sheet music. The collections cover a wide variety of topics in American history, from the history of advertising, to women’s history, to the experiences of Native Americans. The site also has a few collections in European history and ancient Egyptian history.
- History Matters (George Mason University): Useful for high school and college teachers of American history, this site serves as a gateway to relevant web resources and is particularly strong in social history. Consult this site for first-person primary documents, classroom ideas, and discussions about teaching U.S. history.
Native American History
- Indian Laws and Treaties (The Kappler Project): This is an online compilation of seven volumes of U.S. treaties, laws, and executive orders concerning the Native American Indian peoples. The chronological coverage of the set extends from 1778 to 1970.
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration: Indians/Native Americans: Serving as a metasite for American history relating to Native Americans, this central site provides access to genealogical information and specific search engines, primary document collections, and laws and treaties.
- Lakota Winter Count: An Online Exhibit from the Smithsonian Institute: Winter counts are histories or calendars in which events are recorded through pictures, with one picture for each year. Winter counts are physical records that were used in conjunction with a more extensive oral history. This site contains not only the exhibition, but also a searchable database of the Smithsonian’s collection of winter counts, a documentary about Lakota history and culture, video interviews, and a teacher’s guide.
European History
- EuroDocs: Primary Historical Documents from Western Europe: This site offers links to (mainly primary) historical documents pertaining to Western European countries. Organized by country and then chronologically, EuroDocs shed light on the political, economic, social, and cultural history of this region.
- Web Gallery of Art: This is a virtual museum and searchable database of painting and sculpture from the Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque periods (with a chronological coverage extending from 1100 to 1850). The site contains numerous and high quality images in addition to commentaries and artists’ biographies.
- The Louvre Museum (Paris): Not only does this site showcase one of the best art museums in the world, but it also has databases on several thematic subjects that pertain to the museum’s collections such as daily life, Roman antiquities, and Renaissance art.
- The British Library (London): In addition to providing information about the library and its collections, this site also has an online catalogue as well as journal article and primary document databases. See the site also for its fine digitized images of such texts as the Magna Carta and the Gutenberg Bible.
- Internet Modern History Sourcebook: This is one of a series of primary source websites that together form part of the Internet History Sourcebooks Project. This particular site focuses on modern European history and American history as well as more general areas of modern Western civilization and world cultures. Follow the links to access primary documents in ancient and medieval history.
- Medieval and Renaissance Web (WESS at Johns Hopkins University): Produced by the Western European Studies Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries, this site provides links to scholarly resources for the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Western Europe.
Asia
- Internet East Asian History Sourcebook: This site is a composite of three major Internet Sourcebooks that contain transcribed primary documents in all periods of East Asian history. The documents are translated into English. Consult this site also for supporting material and images.
- Institute of Southeast Asian Studies: The ISAS is a research center that promotes the study of socio-political, economic, and security trends in this region and its wider economic environment. Their central website contains links to information on their publications as well as access to their library catalog and online books and articles.
- Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library (The Australian National University): This is a global collaborative project that provides access to scholarly documents and web resources that are relevant to Asian Studies. The site is particularly useful as a gateway to other websites in this field.
- AsiaSource: This site was developed by the Asia Society to meet the need for up-to-date, reliable, and objective information pertaining to the cultural, economic, social, historical, and political aspects of Asia. See this site for the latest news on this topic as well as reports, statistics, speeches, and educational resources.
- Asian Arts: This site offers a forum for scholars, museums, and commercial galleries dedicated to the study of Asian art. Specifically, Asian Arts has online galleries, scholarly articles, and links to exhibitions around the world.
- East and Southeast Asia: An Annotated Directory of Internet Resources: This site serves as a gateway to numerous websites on East Asia and Southeast Asia. The individual sites are grouped by various political, social, historical, cultural, and economic categories.
- The China WWW Virtual Library/Internet Guide for Chinese Studies: Those interested in Chinese Studies will find this metasite helpful. It has links to academic institutions, library resources, news media, scholarly journals, and full-text databases. The individual websites are rated.
Africa
- Gateway to African Studies on H-Net: A member of H-Net’s consortium of scholarly online lists, this site contains a discussion list relating to topics in African history and art as well as a database of book reviews.
- The National Museum of African Art (Smithsonian Institute): The website for this museum contains a searchable database of African art with elaborate and detailed supporting material. High quality images accompany the textual information about each work of art.
Women and Gender History
- ViVa: A Bibliography of Women's History in Historical and Women's Studies Journals: ViVa is an up-to-date bibliography of women’s history and gender history. Consult this site to gain access to thousands of articles written in a wide variety of languages and dealing with an extensive array of subtopics in this field.
- Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000: In addition to providing abstracts of recent issues of the journal Women and Social Movements, this website also provides resources for teachers of American history as well as links to document projects and websites in U.S. women’s history.
- Martha Ballard’s Diary Online: History teachers will be interested in this online version of Martha Ballard’s two-hundred-year-old diary. It is an interactive site that gives direct access to the remarkable observations and experiences of an American healer and midwife.
- Early Modern Women Database (University of Maryland): Focusing primarily but not exclusively on the period from about 1500 to 1800, this site provides links to relevant Web sources for the study of women in Early Modern Europe and the Americas. The materials selected range from bibliographic databases to full-text resources, images, and sound recordings.
Other
- PBS Digital Studio: PBS produces reliable and engaging videos about specific historical topics, and thus this website would be helpful for history teachers and professors who use multimedia in the classroom.