A-Z Databases

Collection of streaming video covering subjects including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, and music.

Database of African cultural and historical materials including books, magazines, newspapers, historical journals, government documents, posters, manuscripts, letters, diaries, ephemera, photographs, art, music, videos, and oral histories.

Includes information about the history of exploration from 1420-1920. Covers scientific discoveries; the expansion of European colonialism; conflict over territories and trade routes; decades-long search and rescue attempts; the earliest voyages of Vasco da Gama; the opening of trade with the Spice Islands; the colonization of the Americas and Australasia; the search for the Northwest and Northeast Passage; and the race for the Poles. Features rare manuscripts; early printed material; illustrated maps and documents; diaries; and ships' logs.

Oral histories, correspondence, diaries, photographs, artifacts, and military records of United States military personnel and civilians during World War II.

Thousands of primary source documents including correspondence, diaries, government documents, business records, books, pamphlets, newspapers, broadsides, photographs, artwork, and maps covering United States history from 1493 to 1945. Sourced from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, this collection is split into two modules:

Module I: Settlement, Commerce, Revolution and Reform: 1493-1859
Module II: Civil War, Reconstruction and the Modern Era: 1860-1945

Includes two hundred years of Indigenous print newspapers from the United States and Canada.

Materials from the Everett D. Graff collection at the Newberry Library, Chicago, include papers of early pioneers, explorers and hunters; accounts of the Gold Rush and of the landscape of Canada and the Pacific Northwest; description of the evolution of Western towns through materials such as prospectuses and city directories; information about the growth of railway and road networks through maps and through records of key railroad companies; emigrant guides, manuscript travel journals, store catalogues, illustrations and maps to enable a better understanding of the phenomenon of Westward expansion; information about the agricultural transformation of the West; accounts of ranches and of the prairie lands; and information about Texas, Mexico, the South, and Native American history and culture.

Includes British government files from the Foreign, Colonial, Dominion and Foreign and Commonwealth Offices spanning the period 1948 to 1980. Includes letters, diplomatic dispatches, reports, trial papers, activists’ biographies, and first-hand accounts of events about the the history of South Africa’s apartheid regime.

Archive of video content from C-SPAN.

Foreign Office files dealing with the history of Persia (Iran), Central Asia, and Afghanistan from the decline of the Silk Road in the first half of the nineteenth century to the establishment of Soviet rule over parts of the region in the early 1920s. Consists of correspondence, intelligence reports, agents’ diaries, minutes, maps, and newspaper excerpts.

Collection of rare books, games, ephemera, and artwork from the golden age of children's literature in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Includes rare documents from Cornell University Library’s Charles W. Wason Collection on East Asia covering the period 1750-1929, including addresses and speeches, annual reports, assessments, catalogues, essays, examinations, guides and manuals, inquiries and studies, journals, lecture notes, letters, magazine articles, minutes of meetings, notes, and records.

Includes publications from the Church Missionary Society; the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society; and the South American Missionary Society that document missionary work from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century.

Covering the period 1606 to 1822, consists of the original correspondence between the British government and the governments of the American colonies.

Covers the history of the various territories under British colonial governance from 1624 to 1870, this extensive resource includes administrative documentation, trade and shipping records, minutes of council meetings, and details of plantation life, colonial settlement, imperial rivalries across the region, and the growing concern of absentee landlords. Territories covered include Anguilla; Antigua; Bahamas; Barbados; Berbice; Bermuda; British Guiana; British Honduras; British Virgin Islands; Curaçao; Demarara; Dominica; Essequibo; Grenada; Guadeloupe; Jamaica; Leeward Islands; Martinique; Montserrat; Nevis; St Bartholomew; St Christopher (St Kitts); St Croix; Santo Domingo; St Eustatius; St Lucia; St Thomas; St Vincent; Suriname; Tobago; Tortola; Trinidad; and Turks and Caicos.

Part of the British Government's Confidential Print series, issued between 1820 and 1970, these primary sources cover the modern period of European colonization of the continent from the British Government’s perspective. Topics include coastal trading in the early nineteenth century; the Conference of Berlin of 1884; the subsequent Scramble for Africa; the abuses of the Congo Free State; fights against tropical disease; Italy’s defeat by the Abyssinians; World War II; apartheid in South Africa; and colonial moves towards independence.

Part of the British Government's Confidential Print series, issued between 1820 and 1970, these primary sources cover slavery and the slave trade, immigration, relations with indigenous peoples, wars and territorial disputes, the fall of the Brazilian monarchy, British business and financial interests, industrial development, the building of the Panama Canal, and the rise to power of populist rulers such as Perón in Argentina and Vargas in Brazil.

Part of the British Government's Confidential Print series, issued between 1820 and 1970, these primary sources cover events in the the countries of the Levant and the Arabian peninsula, Iran, Turkey, Egypt and Sudan during that time, including the Egyptian reforms of Muhammad Ali Pasha in the 1830s; the Middle East Conference of 1921; the mandates for Palestine and Mesopotamia; the partition of Palestine; the 1956 Suez Crisis; post-Suez Western foreign policy; and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Provides information on the role of signals intelligence, human agents, diplomats, politicians and the armed forces in the gathering of intelligence from across the British empire in the twentieth century.

Brings together material from within former British colonies and Commonwealth nations, alongside some from former French and Portuguese territories, to provide primary source material created for local audiences by local actors during a period of enormous global change.

Streaming platform for entertainment and education, enlisting leading artists and thinkers to expand the reach of rising key conversations through contemporary art, culture, activism, philosophy, and technology. Every video proposes something -- a solution, a question -- a way to think about our shifting reality.

Includes information about the lived experience of people who witnessed this pivotal era of English history. From "ordinary" people through to more prominent individuals and families, these documents show how everyday working, family, religious and administrative life was experienced across England.

Collection of India Office Records from the British Library, London, which includes documents about British trade and rule in the Indian subcontinent from 1599 to 1947. These documents include royal charters, correspondence, trading diaries, minutes of council meetings, and reports of expeditions.

Archive of almost every play submitted for license in the Great Britain between 1737 and 1824, and hundreds of documents that provide social context for the plays, featuring the John Larpent Collection of Plays from the Huntington Library; supplementary documents including Anna Larpent Diaries; the London Stage database, which which lists every traceable performance 1660-1800; and the database Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800.

Manuscript, printed, and visual primary source materials for the study of "Empire" and its theories, practices, and consequences.

Produced in collaboration with the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive, the material in this collection includes thousands of audio field recordings and interviews, educational recordings, film footage, field notebooks, slides, correspondence, and ephemera supporting the cultural study of music.

Open-access repository of digitized contents pages of academic journals and pop culture magazines in the fields of Feminism, Gender and Women's Studies, Sexuality Studies, and LGBTQIA+ studies.

Includes primary sources for the study of World War I, brought together in four thematic modules: Personal Experiences; Propaganda and Recruitment: Visual Perspectives and Narratives; and A Global Conflict.

Covers independence and partition; the Indian annexation of Hyderabad and Goa; war between India and Pakistan; tensions and war between India and China; the consolidation of power of the Congress Party in India; military rule in Pakistan; the turbulent independence of Bangladesh; and the development of nuclear weapons in the region.

Primary source documents from the British Foreign Office files dealing with Japan between 1919 and 1952.

Foreign Office Files covering Southeast Asia between 1963 and 1980 in a time of conflict, growth and change. Covers the establishment of an independent Malaysia in 1963, following the release of the Cobbold Commission Report and the escalation of hostilities between Malaysia and Indonesia, which opposed the independence of Malaysia. Indonesia itself would experience growing civil unrest in this period, with anti-Communist sentiments on the rise.

Primary source documents about existence on the edges of the anglophone world from 1650-1920, including various European and colonial frontier regions of North America, Africa, and Australasia.

Primary sources on the United States' transformative age of industrialization, expanding wealth, inequality, and social change.

Comprehensive database for health-related U.S. survey questions, covering eighty years of national polling. Searchable questions and results, demographic crosstabs, and trends are available on every topic related to health, from social determinants and influences on health to insurance, costs and health-care utilization.

Search questions now, or use our visual map of the database to explore concepts in health polling.

Information from the manuscript collections of the National Library of Scotland about the history of South Asia between the foundation of the East India Company in 1615 and the granting of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947.

Access to popular and lesser-known periodicals published during the interwar period, with articles covering culture, entertainment, fashion, home and family life, world current affairs, class, and social and welfare issues.

Access to records which can be used to explore the history of Jewish communities in the United States, from the arrival of the first Jews in New Amsterdam in the seventeenth century right through to the mid-twentieth century. Sourced from archival collections held by the American Jewish Historical Society in New York City.

Primary sources drawn from world-class maritime archives and heritage collections that focus on the individual experiences and personal narratives of Anglo-American seafarers who practiced their craft between 1650 and 1950. These sources include journals, memoirs, ships' logs, and court records.

Collection of literary manuscripts drawn from the nineteenth century holdings of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library, covering the authors Matthew Arnold; Emily Brontë; Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Robert Browning; Wilkie Collins; Joseph Conrad; Charles Dickens; George Eliot; George Gissing; Thomas Hardy; Henry James; Dante Gabriel Rossetti; John Ruskin; Alfred Tennyson; and William Makepeace Thackeray.

Includes complete images of nearly two hundred manuscripts of seventeenth and eighteenth century poetry from the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds.

An important resource for understanding the workings of the early book trade, the printing and publishing community, the establishment of legal requirements for copyright provisions, and the history of bookbinding with rare materials dating from 1554 to the twenty-first century.

Full-text searchable resource containing rare books, ephemera, maps and other materials relating to eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth century London.

Complete coverage of the Cabinet conclusions (minutes) and memoranda of Harold Macmillan’s (United Kingdom prime minister, 1957-63) government, plus selected minutes and memoranda of policy committees..

Access to the complete market research reports of Ernest Dichter, the era’s foremost consumer analyst, market research pioneer and widely-recognized "father" of Motivational Research.

Access to original manuscript and typescript papers created and collected by the Mass Observation organization, as well as printed publications, photographs and interactive features.

Directives (questionnaires) sent out by the Mass Observation project between 1980 and 2010 and the responses to them from Mass Observers, an effort to document the social history of Britain by recruiting volunteers to write about their lives and opinions. An important source for qualitative social data in the UK.

Full-color images of the original medieval manuscripts that make up family letter collections and full-text-searchable transcripts from the printed editions, where they are available. Covers trade, warfare, arranged marriages, arguments between parents and children, matters of inheritance, births and deaths, estate management, legal disputes, domestic finances, women and their role in the family, and everyday social and domestic life.

Manuscripts of some of the most important works of European travel writing from the later medieval period, with the chief focus on journeys to central Asia and the Far East, including accounts of travel to Mongolia, Persia, India, China, and South-East Asia. Includes works by Marco Polo, "Sir John Mandeville," John of Plano Carpini, and Odoric of Pordenone.

Access to the papers of Edward Sylvester Morse (1838-1925), an American polymath notable for his work in natural history, ethnography, archaeology and art history. Morse was invited to teach at Tokyo Imperial University in the 1870s and traveled extensively in Japan, recording his experiences in great detail and maintaining a deep interest in the country and its culture for the remainder of his life. Morse's papers provides insights into Japan during the Mejii Era (1868-1912) along with Morse's numerous and valuable contributions to a wide range of academic disciplines.

Charts the emigration experience of millions during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, including information about the New Zealand Company and British, European, and Asian migration. Includes primary source personal accounts, shipping logs, printed literature, and organizational papers.

Access to both the Mirror and Sunday Mirror, the United King's only mainstream left-wing tabloid, from 1903-2000.

Several hundred items from the archive of the John Murray publishing company representing the period during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when it published the Quarterly Review, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Austen’s Emma, and Livingstone’s Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa.

Access to Britain's Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) files for Richard Nixon’s presidency, including top-level Anglo-American discussions and briefing papers and material on social conditions, domestic reforms, trade, culture and the environment. Covers United States policy decisions by the FCO and the British embassy in Washington; White House staff appointments and UN discussions; views on Europe; Nixon’s battles over funding from Congress; visits to the U.S. by Harold Wilson and Edward Heath; and the internal situation in the U.S. and domestic reform.

Manuscripts written or compiled by women in the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Produced in association with the Perdita Project based at the University of Warwick and Nottingham Trent University.

Allows users to study the period 1950-1975 using manuscript and rare printed material as well as photographs, ephemera, and memorabilia. The interactive chronology, extensive visual resources, and video footage provide valuable contextual background to the materials included in this collection, such as pamphlets, letters, government files, and eye witness accounts covering key events of the period; the Social Protest Collection from the University of California, Berkeley; underground magazines including OZ and IT; American fanzines and alternative press titles from Bowling Green State University; thousands of indexed photographs depicting the people and events of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s; ephemera and memorabilia such as posters, pins, and artifacts; and a collection of carefully selected video footage of the sights and sounds of the period.

Comprises collections from The National Archives at Kew, the British Library and Senate House Library and navigates the complex social climate of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain between the introduction of the New Poor Law in 1834 and the eventual abolition of the workhouse system in 1930. Shows what life was like for the poorest communities in Victorian Britain and provides information on the government policy, social reform movements, and philanthropic efforts of charitable institutions that sought to alleviate poverty.

Documenting the fight for civil rights from 1943-1970, this resource showcases the speeches, reports, surveys and analyses produced by Fisk University's Race Relations Department’s staff and Institute participants, including Charles S. Johnson and Thurgood Marshall. The Department and its annual Institute were set up by the American Missionary Association to investigate problem areas in race relations and develop methods for educating communities and preventing conflict.

Includes information about the plight of refugees and displaced persons across Europe, North Africa, and Asia from 1935 to 1950, bringing together several hundred thousand pages of pamphlets, ephemera, government documents, relief organization publications, and refugee reports that recount the causes, effects and responses to refugee crises before, during and shortly after World War II.

Supports the teaching and learning of skills and research methods through hundreds of hours of structured online learning. Online courses are self-paced and instructor-led and included a mix of interactive content, video, and formative assessments. The topics cover critical skills and research methods for across all stages of academic study, including navigating information, data literacy, research skills, data science skills, and getting published.

Reveals the story of war as told by the newspapers that brought information, entertainment and camaraderie to the forces at home and overseas. Explore over three hundred titles from key nations across the globe that took part in the world-changing conflict.

Explores changing attitudes towards human sexuality, gender identities and sexual behaviors from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Investigating the breadth and complexity of human sexual understanding through the work of leading sexologists, sex researchers, organizations, and personal accounts. Includes unpublished papers of prominent sexologists, sex researchers, societies, advocacy groups, and campaigners working across America and beyond during the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, as well as a significant proportion of correspondence between professional and private individuals, autobiographical accounts, official records, and literary works.

Collection of documents that offers insights into the performance practice in the particular space of the reconstructed Globe Theatre; details the way in which the theatre was constructed as a place of radical experiment; and documents over two hundred performances through prompt books, wardrobe notes, programmes, publicity material, annual reports, show reports, photographs, and architectural plans.

Set of videos Purdue Libraries currently license from Swank Motion Pictures. Titles may change from year to year depending on institutional need.

Provides a sustainable methodology and platform for access and findability of coordination resources across a diverse range of transportation technical assistance centers and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA).

Provides information in the fields of public policy, arts and literature in the classroom, and math and science pedagogy from the paper of record in education.

This resource presents a wealth of highly illustrated primary source documents that highlight commercial tastes and consumer trends in the United States between 1850 and 1950.

Includes hundreds of accounts by women of their travels across the globe from the early nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. Topics covered include architecture, art, the British Empire, climate, customs, exploration, family life, housing, industry, language, monuments, mountains, natural history, politics and diplomacy, race, religion, science, shopping, and war.

Online access to the British Film Institute’s Victorian Film Collection and the Mitchell and Kenyon Collection. Provides a glimpse into the lives of the late Victorians and Edwardians captured by some of Britain’s earliest film pioneers and innovators.

This resource is a comprehensive record of the history of the Virginia Company of London, 1606-1624; documents the founding and economic development of the Virginia colony, relations between colonists and indigenous peoples, and early trade between Britain and America; and it is a crucial source for London's economic history and the religious and social history of early modern England.