Research Methods for History: Digital Collections (Primary Sources)
Adam Matthew Products
Adam Matthew is an academic publisher of primary source material. The digital collections found here are presented in a similar fashion, allowing you to search for items based on keywords but also providing several options for browsing. Additionally, if you find a subset of the collection that has material relevant to your topic, you can restrict your search to a particular module, theme, or archival collection. Overall, this is a good option for gaining familiarity with digitized archival material.
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You can cross-search all of their digital collections through AM Explorer
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You can find a full list of all Adam Matthew Products to which we subscribe in the guide linked below
Gale Archives Unbound
Gale Archives Unbound offers an array of subject-specific resources primarily derived from microfilm, tailored to scholars conducting academic research. Particular strengths in the Archive Unbound program include U.S. foreign policy; U.S. civil rights; and global affairs. In this guide, you'll find detailed lists of sub-collections belonging to various subject headings Gale has assigned to their databases. Each sub-collection listed includes a description of the contents and a link to directly access the sub-collection from on or off campus.
Historical Newspapers and Periodicals
To learn more about using newspapers in your research, consult our Finding News Stories guide.
- ProQuest Historical NewspapersSearch hundreds of thousands of pages of full-text and full-image newspaper articles. Includes news, editorials, letters to the editor, obituaries, and birth and marriage announcements; historical photos, graphics, and advertisements are also included; display the complete image of any page in any issue or browse the database to scan individual issues page by page.
- America's Historical NewspapersAmerica's Historical Newspapers, 1690 to the 1920s, provides access to hundreds of thousands of newspaper issues from about 2000 newspapers from Colonial America to the Roaring Twenties. The papers were published in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
- Gale NewsVaultAllows you to cross-search a variety of newspaper and periodical databases: 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers, British Newspapers, 1780 1950, Times (London) Digital Archive, Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive, Financial Times Historical Archive, 19th Century U.S. Newspapers, 19th Century UK Periodicals, and Economist Historical Archive.
- World Newspaper Archive (19th - 20th centuries)Online database of digitized historical newspapers covering the 19th and 20th centuries. Focus is on Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and South Asia. Covers 19th and 20th centuries, and includes some of these regions’ largest and most important newspapers.
- African American Newspapers, 1827-1998Provides online access to approximately 270 U.S. newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience. This unique collection offers researchers valuable primary sources for such diverse disciplines as cultural, literary and social history; ethnic studies and more. Users can compare and contrast African American views on practically every major theme of the American past.
- Newspapers.com (North Carolina Newspapers)Provides access to historic newspapers from the 1700s to the present. UNC users have access to a large selection of North Carolina newspapers through a partnership between Newspapers.com and the UNC University Library.
Note: Please clear your browser's cache and cookies if you are having problems accessing this resource - Readers' Guide RetrospectiveOffers indexing of over 500 popular periodicals and magazines for a period of over 100 years. From the presidency of Benjamin Harrison to the election of Ronald Reagan, from the Spanish-American War to the Cold War, from the "robber barons" to the oil embargoes, the Readers' Guide provides access to articles chronicling the daily lives and the momentous events of America in the 20th century.
- Periodicals Index OnlineProvides keyword indexing to the articles of over 4700 periodicals in the humanities and social sciences in dozen of languages from their first issues to 1995.
- American Periodicals Series OnlineContains over 1,000 journals published between 1740 and 1900. American Periodicals From the Center for Research Libraries provides full text to nearly 400 journals. The collection contains special interest and general magazines, labor and trade publications, scientific and literary journals, and photographic periodicals,. See "About" within the database for a fuller description.
- British PeriodicalsBritish Periodicals I and II includes the searchable full text and facsimile page images of 500 periodicals published between 1681 and 1921, a significant time not only for British history, but, given the growth and dominance of the British Empire for most of that period, world history. British Periodicals III extends the scope of British Periodicals by focusing on the first half of the twentieth century. All of this content is available in full page images with searchable full text.
Government Information
UNC holds over two million Federal, international, and state documents, but not all of these are in the catalog. Still, the catalog is a great place to start your research, particularly for documents published after 1976.
A few other useful sources for finding government information are below. For more information, contact our GovDocs librarian, Angela Bardeen
- ProQuest CongressionalComprehensive source of current and historical U.S. Congressional material, including bills, testimony, reports, documents, selected prints, the Congressional Record, the U.S. Code, Federal Register, and the Code of Federal Regulations.
- Social ExplorerProvides web-based access to United States Census data from 1790 to the present, and to other U.S. and international data, with the ability to make tables and interactive maps easily or export data for analysis. Data include the most commonly used variables and geographies.
- Digital National Security ArchiveContains a comprehensive set of declassified government documents and is a strong complement to the Declassified Documents Reference System. Includes collections of important primary source materials relative to U.S. foreign policy since 1945, accompanied by reference and secondary material.
- House of Commons Parliamentary PapersWorking documents of the British government for all areas of social, political, economic and foreign policy, showing how issues were explored and legislation was formed. With all collections available, HCPP includes over 200,000 House of Commons sessional papers from 1715 to the present, with supplementary material back to 1688. HCPP delivers page images and searchable full text for each paper, along with detailed indexing.
Readex Products
ProQuest History Vault
- ProQuest History VaultProvides access to historical documents of the history of the American South and African American History. This collection is organized into two main groups; Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle AND Southern Life and Slavery.
About HistoryVault
- You can cross search the various modules through their Advanced Search
- You can read more detailed descriptions of the various modules here.
More Gale Products
You can browse all of the Gale products we subscribe to and find options for cross-searching through the Gale Product Menu.
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