Large Digital Collections
Following are major sources of digitized content in multiple formats. These huge open access sites are excellent places to find digitized photographs, maps, documents, manuscripts, music, books, newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, news footage, oral histories, sound recordings, museum objects, posters, artwork, government documents, and other items. Also check the websites of libraries, museums, and historical societies for digitized materials.
- Internet Archive
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Vast source of digitized books, periodicals, and other texts, audio recordings, videos, images, archived web pages, and software programs.
- Avalon Project - Documents in Law History & DiplomacyCoverage spans from 4000 BCE to the 21st Century CE. Contains the text of historical documents rather than images of them.
- Biodiversity Heritage Library"[T]he world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. ... [F]ree access to hundreds of thousands of volumes, comprising over 58 million pages, from the 15th-21st centuries."
- Digital Library Federation (DLF)Many libraries, particularly those that are members of the DLF, have digital collections, so check websites for online content.
- DigitalnzMore than 30 million digital New Zealand items from 300+ collections.
- Digital Public Library of AmericaA portal that "provides innovative ways to search and scan through the united collection of millions of items, including by timeline, map, virtual bookshelf, format, subject, and partner." See the DPLA's Primary Source Sets of topically arranged resources.
- EuropeanaEuropeana enables people to explore the digital resources of Europes museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections.
- HathiTrust Digital Library
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Millions of books digitized by a variety of major research institutions. See this post for more information about public domain items available to all via HathiTrust.
- Library of CongressAn immense resource containing millions of images of materials in every format, including maps, notated music, photographs, letters, diaries, newspapers, books, legislation, and audio visual materials.
- Media History Digital LibraryA free online resource featuring millions of pages of books and magazines from the histories of film, broadcasting, and recorded sound.
- Music Library Association Publications - Internet ArchiveThis collection includes all backlist titles owned by the Music Library Association. You can learn more about the association's publications online.
- National Archives and Records Administration (U.S.)NARA is an independent federal agency. Search vast holdings of U.S. government records and view online exhibits.
- New York Public Library Digital CollectionsCurrently contains more than 800,000 images. "This site is a living database with new materials added every day, featuring prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more."
- Online Archive of California"[P]rovides free public access to detailed descriptions of primary resource collections maintained by more than 200 ... libraries, special collections, archives, historical societies, and museums throughout California."
- Smithsonian Libraries - Digital LibraryIncludes books, drawings, photos, indexes to vertical files of artists, trade catalogs, and ephemera, as well as fascinating digital exhibitions covering a wide range of topics; and an index of all the physical exhibitions that the Smithsonian Libraries has produced over the years.
- TroveOver 587,237,502 books, images, historic newspapers, maps, music, archives and and other digitized sources from the National Library of Australia.
- WikiLeaksA multi-national media organization and digital library specializing "in the analysis and publication of large datasets of censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying and corruption." Fully searchable.
- World Digital Library"A project of the U.S. Library of Congress, with the support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world." The WDL makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from all countries and cultures.
Books, Newspapers, and Journals (Selected Sources)
- Newspapers Research GuideThis Grad Center research guide is a great resource for finding current and historical, national and international, mainstream and alternative newspapers and journals in databases, on the open web, and as stand-alone sources.
- American Periodicals (1740-1940) - NYPL databaseAvailable at all NYPL locations and remotely with a library card, this database contains over 1,800 magazines, journals, and newspapers published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and many other historically significant titles.
- Baldwin Library of Historical Children's LiteratureMore than 6,000 digitized books from The University of Florida's Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature.
- Bartleby - Great Books OnlineOpen web resource containing reference and verse, fiction and nonfiction. With Author, Subject, and Title indexes.
- California Digitial Newspaper CollectionA "growing repository of historical California newspapers published from 1846-present, including the first California newspaper, the Californian, and the first daily California newspaper, the Daily Alta California. It also contains issues of current California newspapers, collected as PDFs, that are part of a project to preserve and provide access to contemporary papers."
- Eighteenth Century Book TrackerIndexes links to freely-available digital facsimiles of eighteenth-century texts available at sites like Google Books and the Internet Archive and connects those links to more complete bibliographic descriptions than are commonly available at those sites.
- Folger Digital TextsHighly accurate texts from the Folger Shakespeare Library's editions of Shakespeare's plays, sonnets, and poems.
- Life MagazineBrowse and search issues of Life Magazine from the 1930s to the 1970s. Available via Google Books.
- The Making of America - Cornell UniversityThe content of Cornell's Making of America collection was moved to Hathi Trust in March 2018. Users may still browse the colletion on the MOA site, but searching will open in Hathi Trust. MOA contains books and periodicals. "A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. This site provides access to 267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints."
- The Making of America - University of MichiganContains books and periodicals. "A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The collection currently contains approximately 10,000 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints."
- Modernist Journals ProjectA web-based resource for the study of modernism. Includes a rich and growing collection of cover-to-cover digital editions of modern books and periodicals (ca. 1890-1922) and a biographical database of authors and artists. Publications include Masses (1911-1917), The Freewoman (1911-1912), and The Crisis (1910-1922).
- New York City Record, 1873-1949The City Record is has been published daily in NYC since 1873 and includes "official listings of more than 100 city agencies and departments about public hearings, meetings, property auctions, agency rules, personnel changes and contracts to be awarded" as noted in a a profile article in the New York TImes. Browse or search across PDFs of every issue published between 1873-1949.
- New Yorker Digital Archive - NYPL databaseThe entire run of the New Yorker, in full text and full color, from 1925-present. Available at all NYPL locations and remotely with a library card.
- Open Bookshelf from DPLAA digital library collection of openly-licensed popular books that are free to download and formatted for modern devices.
- Open LibraryThousands of eBooks scanned at the Internet Archive are available for loan to anyone with a free Open Library account. Borrowers need Adobe Digital Editions to view books. "Open Library is an open, editable library catalog, building towards a web page for every book ever published."
- Perseus Digital LibraryThe flagship collection covers the history, literature and culture of the Greco-Roman world. Many full-text materials are available online in ancient Greek and Roman.
- Readex (All Databases) via NYPL
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Search across all Readex databases simultaneously, including African American Periodicals, America’s Historical Imprints, America’s Historical Newspapers, American State Papers, House and Senate Journals, Rand Daily Mail, U.S. Congressional Serial Set, and World Newspaper Archive.
Primary Source Databases @ the GC
The GC Library subscribes to more than three dozen databases that contain digitized primary sources. These databases cover virtually every subject area and include books, pamphlets, broadsides, printed ephemera, journals, historical newspapers, video, manuscripts, diaries, letters, images of artworks, dramatic productions, government documents, classical literature, legal documents, data, underground comics, and more.
Also see our Newspapers research guide for information on and links to digital editions of current and historical, domestic and international, mainstream and alternative newspapers and journals.
E-Books
Find out Graduate Center Ebook Collections, Dissertations, and open access Ebooks in our Ebook Collections research guide.
Open Access Journals
DOAJ is an online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.
Digitized Archival Collections
Following are links to selected archival collections available online.
See our Archival Research Guide for tips on finding and using archival sources in your research.
- Other SourcesConsult the websites of archival repositories to discover digital editions of library holdings.
Finding Digital Collections
Many U.S. states, regions, university libraries, museums, and national libraries around the world have digital collections. One way to find them is with a Google search with the words "digital library" plus your keyword. E.g., digital library France.
Examples include Trove (from the National Library of Australia) and Europeana (Europe's digital collections).
Another way to find digital resources is to visit the websites of libraries whose collections are relevant to your subject area or to browse the website of the Digital Library Federation.
There are always exciting new digital projects on the horizon, such as The Caselaw Access Project (formerly known as the "Free the Law" initiative) from Harvard University. You can read more about it in a New York Times article.
Highlights from Around the Web
