HIST 140: The World since 1945: Home
This guide will help you find resources and research tips for this course.
To find general resources, scroll down this page. Click on the tabs to find more resources for the module you picked.
For Immigration, Refugees, and “Stateless” Rights AND Indigenous Rights and Settler Colonialism, look under Immigration & Indigenous Rights
For Justice, Violence, and Power AND Racial Reckoning and World History, look under Justice & Racial Reckoning
For Capitalism, Socialism, and the Meaning of Freedom AND Nationalism and the Claims of the Cold War, look under Capitalism & Nationalism
For Feminism in Contexts: Women’s Rights to Culture, look under Feminism in Contexts
Finding Articles
- Academic Search PremierFind information on academic areas of business, social sciences, humanities, general academic, general science, education and multi-cultural topics; resource provides access to major popular and scholarly journals with many full-text articles.
- AllAfricaAllAfrica archive is a unique collection containing over 5 million articles from hundreds of African news organizations and from AllAfrica's award-winning reporting team, as well as documents and releases from a range of NGOs, governments and international institutions. The archive covers from 1996.
- CQ ResearcherThe CQ Researcher is the perfect answer for people beginning research on current topics. It covers the most current and controversial issues of the day. From Abortion to War, each issue gives you a comprehensive review of the controversies, historical background, chronology of important events, opposing views from experts on the subject, and extensive bibliographies for additional research.
- Gale Primary SourcesGale Primary Sources is a search engine for Gale's historical digital collections of primary materials. You can search all at once or choose selectively. Consult the database to see the full-text collections available.
- Historical AbstractsCovers the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada) and indexes nearly 2,300 journals in over 40 languages.
Note: Limited to 6 users at a time.
Newspapers
- Finding News StoriesThis guide provides resources for finding news stories online and on microfilm.
- British Library NewspapersThe most comprehensive range of national, regional and local newspapers in Britain between the 18th and the mid-20th centuries. Taken directly from the extensive holdings of the British Library.
- EUobserverEUobserver is an independent online newspaper established in Brussels with the aim to support European democracy. Features in depth investigations containing news from different countries in Europe but also extends to the rest of the world. Focused reports on different issues – LGBTI rights, health, Nordic news, and EU presidency. News is presented as headlines, but also in separate categories and in browse-able format. Reports are also available in German and French.
- 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.
- New York Times Academic Pass UNC Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff now have full, year-round access to The New York Times, including smartphone, tablet, and browser access, thanks to a sponsorship from the University Library. For app downloads, visit NYTimes.com/mobile. Access does not include e-reader editions, NYT Cooking, Premium Crosswords or The New York Times Crosswords apps. Pass users also receive access to the New York Times archives (1851-2002) which includes 5 PDF downloads from the Times Machine per day via timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser. Archive articles outside that date range are not subject to that limit. Digital access is available only during the time that our New York Times Site License is active. To set up your account: Please consult https://guides.lib.unc.edu/nyt-academic-pass for detailed directions on setting up your account.
- 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.
- Times (London) Digital ArchiveA full-image online archive of every page in the complete run of the world's oldest continuously published newspaper. Please note that online coverage of the Times after the end date in this database is available in several sources. Click here for more details.
- Washington Post (Online)Access articles for the The Washington Post in 15 years of rolling archival content to the present. Available to all UNC students, faculty, and staff.
Primary Source Websites for Research in World History
Most of these sources contain both primary and secondary texts.
- Archives Portal EuropeThe Archives Portal Europe provides access to information on archival material from different European countries as well as information on archival institutions throughout the continent.
- The Avalon Project. Documents in Law, History and DiplomacyDocuments relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government. Search by time period - ancient times (4000BCE - 399) to the 21st century - or by document collection, covering a variety of topic in world and American history.
- EuroDocsHistory of Europe: Primary Documents
- EuropeanaEuropeana works with thousands of European archives, libraries and museums to share cultural heritage.
- European History Primary Sources (EHPS)An easily searchable index of scholarly digital repositories that contain primary sources for the history of Europe.
- Fordham University: Internet Modern History SourcebookTexts from Fordham University's History Sourcebook project covering Western history, from the Reformation through the 21st century. Includes English translations for many texts.
- Archive of European Integration (AEI)An electronic repository and archive for research materials on the topic of European integration and unification. The goal of the AEI is to collect as many potential research materials, working papers, policy papers, conference papers, small monographs, pre-prints, etc on this topic as possible, both for current use and for permanent archiving. The database includes publications in any language, although titles must be in English.
- British Cabinet Papers, 1915-1980Core records of the British Cabinet from 1915 to 1980 have been digitised, and their full text is searchable online from these web pages. These include: conclusions of Cabinet meetings, Cabinet memoranda, Cabinet Secretary's notebooks, and the Cabinet Office precedent books.
- Empire OnlineCovers 500 years of the rise and fall of empires, this features a wide variety of material, including exploration journals & logs; correspondence; periodicals; diaries; government papers; missionary papers; travel writing; slave papers; memoirs; fiction; children's adventure stories; folk tales; exhibition catalogs; maps; marketing posters; photographs; and illustrations, with many in color.
Edited Primary Source Collections
When you search the library catalog, begin with a simple keyword search to identify one or more relevant resources. Keyword terms used to find primary sources can include:
| - Personal narratives | - Diaries |
| - Correspondence | - Letters |
| - Interviews | - Autobiography |
| - Memoirs | - Maps |
| - Pamphlets | - Speeches |
| - Sources | - Archives |
| - Archival Resources |
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:
- 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.
Guides
This guide provides assistance with research using primary sources, especially those we have available here at UNC Libraries in several formats: paper, republication, microfilm, and electronic. The database below helps identifies primary source repositories around the world.
- ArchiveGridServes as a single point of entry that provides online access to descriptions of archival collections held by thousands of libraries, museums, historical societies, and archives worldwide. Allows discovery of information about primary source materials - both personal papers and corporate records.
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