SHAFR Task Force on On-Line Research

List of Primary Source Websites             9 June 2020 | With Additions 15 March 2021

The SHAFR Task Force on Freely Available Research Databases has compiled this bibliography of electronic resources to aid research in U.S. foreign relations history.  This project depends on regular updates and suggestions of additional collections to be included in this bibliography.

Task Force of Freely Available Research Databases
Victoria Phillips, Chair, Columbia University ([email protected])
Melanie Griffin, University of Arkansas
Philip Nash, Penn State University, Shenango
Carole Finke, Ohio State University

With thanks to: Shaul Mitelpunkt, Tom Metcalfe, Matthew Connelly, Karine Walther, James Stocker, and the Google Group for document sharing; Kristin Hoganson and the SHAFR Council. Compiled and edited by Victoria Phillips, Philip Nash, Melanie Griffith, and Victoria Phillips, Chair. To offer additional sources, please email Dr. Phillips directly at [email protected].

By Nation or Region (alphabetically)

Africa

• Africa South of the Sahara database of online resources for African Studies, including hundreds of websites and repositories, searchable by country and topic 
• Guides: African Studies & African History: General Online Resources
• JSTOR Primary Sources

Australia

• Trove (National Library of Australia)
• Documents on Australian Foreign Policy (c. 11,000 documents, 1937-1980s)

Austria

• Zeitschriften Datenbank Online database for journals, newspapers, monographic series and other serial publications from all countries, in all languages, in printed, electronic, or digitized form. 3,700 participating libraries Austria and Germany.

Britain

1) Official Government Diplomatic Document Collection

• British Library: First World War in Europe
• British Library Digitized Manuscripts
• British Library Oral History Collection
• The National Archives: UK National Archives
• Anglo-American Legal Tradition (includes images of English legal records from National Archives--largely equity courts, but some other records. Largely in Latin)
• HANSARD 1803–2005: British parliamentary debates
• Special Branch Files Project: live archive of declassified files focusing on the surveillance of political activists and campaigners in the UK
• Royal Army Medical Corps papers
• Clergy of the Church of England Database: CCEd
• Civil War Petitions - petitions to the English government from veterans and their families during and after the civil wars of the 17th century
• Old Bailey Online - The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913 - Central Criminal Court
• The Power of Petitioning in Seventeenth-Century England - links to petitions (including at British History online)

2) Corporate Records

• History of Advertising Trust website holds a great selection of print advertisements
• Commercial Break: British Advertising on Screen (from the BFI)

3) Foundations

4) Private Library Archives and Collections

• Margaret Thatcher Foundation Archive (all online)
• The English Diplomatic Correspondence of Thomas Bodley, 1585-1597
• John Thomson photograph collections (and notes), about East Asia
• Bodleian Library: links to various British oral history resources

5) University Collections

• LSE Digital Library has digitized much of its collection: very good on Fabian Society, British political history, poverty surveying (esp. Charles Booth), visual culture and politics (campaign posters), and parts of Women’s Library.

6) Newspapers

• Welsh Newspapers Online (in English and Welsh), 1804-1919

7) Cultural Institutions and Resources

• BFI Archive Resources Online: Listing of moving images available freely online
• Imperial War Museum Collections: Access digitised collections of oral history interviews, photographs, films and objects through the catalogue covering Britain and beyond
• ArtUK: UK’s public art collection
• Birmingham Museums collection
• Deliberately Concealed Garments/Discover items which have been hidden or buried in buildings
• Lewis Walpole Library (eighteenth-century prints)
• Museum of London collections
• National Museum Scotland collections
• National Portrait Gallery collections
• National Trust Collections (art and objects)
• Royal Collection Trust
• Victoria and Albert Museum Collections
• COLLAGE - The London Picture Archive - over 250,000 images of London (up to the present day)
• British Museum Online collections: an unparalleled collection of objects, including a strong collection of Prints and Drawings from the 17th and 18th centuries, and Satires from the 17th and especially the 18th century
• British Cartoon Archive
• British Pathé: (Newsreels and video from the Pathé and Reuters collections)
• Public Information Films via the National Archives
• John Johnson Collection: Collection of Printed Ephemera (lots of advertisements), 18th-20th centuries London Stage Database

• Records of Early English Drama: transcriptions of references to drama, music, performance - much broader than usual ideas of drama

8) General

• British History Online: primary and secondary sources for the history of Britain and Ireland, mostly 1300-1800
• British Library oral history collections
• Connected Histories: British History Sources, 1500-1900.
• London Lives 1690 to 1800: Crime, Poverty and Social Policy in the Metropolis

Canada

• Documents on Canadian External Relations  (3,000+ documents)

Caribbean

• National Library of Jamaica
• Caribbean through a lens (huge collection of photos, c. 1900-1960s. Similar collections exist for other parts of the British Empire
• Schomburg Library holds items on the Caribbean and Latin America

China

1) Government Diplomatic Document Collection

2) Corporate and Private Financial Records

3) Foundations 

4) Private Library Archives and Collections

• Frank Glass (Li Fu-jen) online archive, including bibliography, provided by the Marxists Internet Archive (Glass was a prominent Trotskyist who travelled in China as a journalist and who helped to establish the Communist League in China, see also MIA’s ‘Chinese Trotskyism’ section of their Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line)
• General Pang Tzu Mow (a depository for materials that elucidate the life and work of GMD General and "audacious crook" Pang Tzu Mow)
• Henk Sneevliet collection (HS represented the Comintern in China in 1921-23 (using the pseudonym Maring), online archive of documents relating to GMD, CCP, Sun Yat Sen etc.)

5) University Collections

•  China Coast Family History, University of Bristol, includes links and resources for finding individuals and groups, including information on probate (wills), staff lists of the Imperial Chinese Maritime Customs Service, directories and burial lists
• Fordham East Asia Sourcebooks, translated sources on “cultural origins,” “religious traditions,” “imperial china,” “the western intrusion,” “China's disaster,” “China since World War II,” and “East Asian Genders and Sexualities”

6) Newspapers

• China Digital Times, online resources for contemporary China, includes insightful reporting, news in translation, the Grass Mud Horse lexicon of Chinese net-speak, collated banned and sensitive words, leaked censorship instructions by Chinese authorities, and a collection of translated news-making citizen-authored pieces under Netizen Voices.
• Chinese Record: online access to this missionary newspaper, 1868-1941
• Ling Long Women's Magazine (published in Shanghai, 1931-1937)
• Peking Review, 1958-2006: provided by the Marxists Internet Archive (Chinese propaganda publication published in English for international audiences)

7) Cultural Institutions and Resources

• Transnational China Project Image Archive: “China's Public Advertising Culture Spiritual Civilization, Local Development, Privatization and Public Service”
• Cambridge Digital Library, for rare Chinese books and artwork (better for those with Chinese language skills)
• China Heritage: blog, journal and resources on Chinese culture and contemporary events
• China Posters Online: University of Westminster (see below for information on using the archive in person)
• The Chairman Smiles (International Institute of Social History collection, Soviet, Chinese, and Cuban posters)
• The East Asia Image Collection (archive of digitized images of imperial Japan (1868-1945), its Asian empire (including China) (1895-1945) and occupied Japan (1947-52), Lafayette College). A blog accompanies the collection containing research notes and links to other collections of this sort
• Four Months of War: Shanghai 1937 (online collection of photos of 1937 conflict in Shanghai by Karl Kengelbacher)
• The Giles Pickford Collection, Australian National University (images of the Boxer Siege of Peking c.1901)
• International Centre of Photography: image collection, includes covers of the China Pictorial (CCP English language propaganda magazine, 1966-77).
• International Mission Photography Archive
• China 1974-76 image collection (Flickr collection of over 400 images of China from the point of view of Michael Rank, a foreign student at Peking University and Fudan University, Shanghai. Includes travel to Guangzhou, Tianjin, Shaoxing)
• 60 Years of China (Magnum Photos, includes iconic images by Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson from the 1940s-1950s, but also later)
• Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Resource Centre (bibliographies of mostly English-language materials on modern and contemporary Chinese literature, film, art, music, and culture, course handbooks, lists of internet resources, etc.)
• National Library of Denmark and Copenhagen University Library: Chinese posters collection
• Chinese Public Health Posters, 1933-1970 and Chinese Family Planning Posters, 1950s to present (National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD)
• Joseph Needham Photographs – Wartime China, 1942-1946 (c. 1,000 photographs, courtesy of the Needham Research Institute)
• Photography of China (Images and interviews profiling the work of famous and lesser-known photographers working in China from the Qing to the present. See also Thomas H. Hahn’s online collection)
• Red-color News Soldier (Cultural Revolution image exhibition, photos by Li Zhensheng)
• Songs of the Cultural Revolution, provided by the Marxists Internet Archive
• Virtual Museum of Cultural Revolution
• Virtual Shanghai (images, maps, primary sources, secondary materials, bibliographies, etc., developed by Christian Henriot. Includes excellent glossaries and research tools)
• Visualising China (enormous collection of images, developed by Robert Bickers)
• Visualising Modern China (extensive list of visual resources for East Asian history)
• Chinese Literature and Film Links (Yomi Braester)

8) General or Subject

• Internet Guide for Chinese Studies (list of resources on contemporary China and broader themes related to culture and history)
• Morning Sun (Cultural Revolution online resources)
• Chinese Pamphlets: Political communication and mass education in the early period of the People's Republic of China (Mass education materials published in Hong Kong and in Mainland China, particularly Shanghai, in the years 1947-1954. Contains a number of series, including ‘heroes’, ‘soldiers’, ‘anti-imperialism,’ and ‘marriage reform’)
• China-Spain Archive: open-access, digital archive that brings together textual and visual documents on the interactions between Spain and China between the mid-19^th century and mid-20^th century. Virtual exhibits and itineraries, interactive images and maps, chronologies and bibliographies.
• History of Western Medicine in China Resources Portal (IUPUI)
• prchistory.org (PRC History Group’s online discussion forum and blog with mailing list for cutting-edge research; see also, the Document of the Month (descriptions in English, sources in Chinese), as well as a very full links and resources page
• Marxists Internet Archive: Important Writings in the History and Development of Chinese Communism, 1853-1981. (Site also includes collections of individual’s works from Li Dazhao to Deng Xiaoping. Also whole-book pdfs, e.g., Dolson’s The Awakening of China)
• United States China Institute, Assignment: China: Documentary series on American reporting on China

East and Southeast Asia*

*NB: Macau, North Korea, South Korea, Mongolia, Siberia, Taiwan, Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Malaysia, Laos, Indonesia, Myanmar, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. China, Hong Kong, Japan have separate sections.

• Southeast Asian Visions (Cornell University Library)
• Online Museum Resources on Asian Art
• Digital Archival Sources for Historians of Southeast Asia: Useful list of materials with links to other databases and websites
• Database of 6,500 Korean Photo Picture Postcards at Nichibunken

France

•  Gallica: the digital library of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF)

Germany

1) Government Diplomatic Document Collection

• Documents on the Foreign Policy of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1949-1984

2) Corporate and Private Records 

3) Foundations 

4) Private Library Archives and Collections

5) University Collections 

6) Newspapers

• Der Spiegel https://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/index-1953.html
• Die Zeit https://www.zeit.de/zustimmung?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zeit.de%2F1953%2Findex
• Badische Neueste Nachrichten (1946-1950 only) https://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/blbz/zeitungen/date/calendar/4639238?d=1950

• Cold War - West German

  Der Spiegel (Berlin)
  Die Zeit (Hamburg)
  Süddeutsche Zeitung (Karlsruhe, 1946-1950)

  East Germany

  Neues Deutschland, Neue Zeit, and Berliner Zeitung (all Berlin through 1990)

7) Cultural Institutions and Resources

• https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/ (German Propaganda Archive, includes material from both Nazi Germany and East Germany)

8) General or Subject

• German History in Documents and Images (GHDI)
• Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek Offers digital access to books, archived items, images, sculptures, pieces of music, and other sound documents.
• Digitales Deutsches Frauenarchiv Online archive of materials related to the German women’s movement including books.
• Zeitschriften Datenbank Online database for journals, newspapers, monographic series and other serial publications from all countries, in all languages, in printed, electronic, or digitized form. 3,700 participating libraries in Germany and Austria.
• Archiv der sozialen Demokratie, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Collection of documents related to the history of social democracy in Germany, including photos and other multimedia.

Hong Kong

• Hong Kong Multimedia Information System (includes oral histories and old newspapers)
• Hansard LegCo records
• Yearbooks (after 1997 retrocession to China)
• Hong Kong Historical Laws and Ordinance
• The PRO website (includes some historical images and digitized records)

Hungary

• Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archive

Israel

1) Government Diplomatic Document Collection

•  Israeli State Archive

2) Corporate and Private Records

3) Foundations 

4) Private Library Archives and Collections

5) University Collections 

6) Newspapers

• Historical Jewish Press (historical Jewish and Israeli newspapers in English, Hebrew, and Yiddish)

7) Cultural Institutions and Resources

8) General or Subject

• Archive of the Israeli Left

Latin American history

1) Government Diplomatic Document Collection

2) Corporate and Private Records

• Inter American Development Bank

3) Foundations

• NB Be sure to see the Rockefeller Archive Center (DIMES) listed under United States.

4) Private Library Archives and Collections

5) University Collections

6) Newspapers 

• Fundação Biblioteca Nacional: Main site of the Brazilian National Library containing over 7,903 newspaper collections.
• A Noite (Rio de Janeiro), 1911-1964.
• Correio Paulistan (São Paulo), 1854-1942.
• Jornal de Notícias (São Paulo), 1946-1951. 
• Diário Carioca (Rio de Janeiro). This newspaper collection runs from 1920-1969, but the links are by decade (for example 1940-49).
• Fundação Mário Soares (Portugal)
• Diário de Lisboa (Lisbon), 1921-1990. 

7) Cultural Institutions and Resources

8) General or Subject

• Pan American Health Organisation IRIS PAHO Home
• Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials

Italy and Rome

• Manus  - Database of manuscripts held in Italian libraries: includes a large number of digitised manuscripts
• Vatican Libraries Digital Collections: manuscripts, incunabula, archival materials and inventories as well as graphic materials, coins and medals, printed materials

India and South Asia

• Aggregator: South Asia Open Archives [JSTOR]

Ireland

• Bureau of Irish Military History: A collection of 1,773 witness statements by men and women involved in the Irish Revolution between 1913 and 1921.
• UCD Digital Library: digitized sources on the history of Ireland, 19th and 20th centuries
• Documents on Irish Foreign Policy (1,900 documents, c. 1921-1960s)

Japan

1) Government Diplomatic Document Collection

• Japan Center for Asian Historical Records--National Archives of Japan (in English) and (in Japanese); includes official documents of the Japanese Cabinet, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Army and Navy

• Documents on Japanese Foreign Policy (1860s-1950s)

2) Corporate and Private Records

3) Foundations

4) Private Library Archives and Collections

5) University Collections

• Hiromi Mizuno's site (for students of Japanese history at the University of Minnesota, with links to many digital archives)
• Visualizing Cultures at MIT: an outstanding collection of images, articles, and teaching resources dealing with East Asian history
• East Asian History Sourcebook at Fordham University: Hundreds of images and translated source documents on East Asian history (some broken links)
• Japanese and Chinese Classics at Waseda University: online access to bibliographic information, images, and other materials in Waseda University Library's collection of Japanese and Chinese classics
• Asia for Educators at Columbia University: Hundreds of translated source documents relating to the history of East and Southeast Asia
• East Asia Image Collection at Lafayette College: "an open-access archive of digitized photographs, negatives, postcards, and slides of Imperial Japan (1868-1945), its Asian empire (1895-1945) and occupied Japan-52)."

6) Newspapers

• Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection

7) Cultural Institutions and Resources

• East Asia Image Collection Blog (has many interesting articles based on the collection)
• Bauduin Collection of photographs from the 1860s (Nagasaki University Library)
• ReEnvisioning Japan: Japan as Destination in 20^th Century Visual and Material Culture: Large collection of visual and written materials, University of Rochester
• Old Photos of Japan: A collection of photos from the Meiji, Taisho, and Showa eras
• Japanese Old Photographs in Bakumatsu-Meiji Period: A collection of old photographs based at Nagasaki University Library
• National Diet Library Digital Collections
• Color images of the US Occupation of Japan (National Diet Library, Robert V. Mosier collection)
• The Meiji and Taisho Eras in Photographs (National Diet Library)
• Ochanomizu Women’s University Digital Archives (in English) and (in Japanese); includes graduation photographs from the Meiji, Taisho, and Showa periods
• Vincent van Gogh's collection of over 500 Japanese prints (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)
• The Art of the Japanese Postcard (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
• Library of Congress collection of Japanese prints
• University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology: James Davidson Collection of Japanese photographs

8) General or Subject

• Nagasaki Foreign Settlement Research Group: A collection of information about the NFS 1859-1941, including photos and bibliographies
• History of Euro-Japanese Cultural Relations: source texts and information of European texts about Japan from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries
• Database lists at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken)
• The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895: As Seen in Prints and Archives: a collaboration between the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records and the British Library

Middle East*

*NB: State Department Definition: Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. Israel has a separate section.

• Qatar Digital Library
• The Packard Humanities Institute: Persian Literature in Translation
• A guide to resources available online in Syriac (including some English translations)

• Arabic manuscripts
• Middle East Research and Information Project (freely available through 31 August 2020)

New Zealand

• Nineteenth and twentieth-century digitised newspapers, magazines, diaries, letters and parliamentary papers

Russia and the Soviet Union

1) Government Diplomatic Document Collections

• State Papers Online (scroll to State Papers Online): contains several volumes of archival documents relating to the formation and maintenance of diplomatic relations between England (Britain) and Muscovy (Russia)
• Russian Archives Database: Project led by the University of Kansas in cooperation with Rosarkhiv to facilitate access to Russian archival materials. Database contains digitized copies of archival collection guides from a range of local and state archives. Continually updated with new materials
• Russian Archives Online

• Electronic Resources Library of the Moscow State University: digitized primary sources on Russian history.  Navigable in either Russian or English, but all sources are in original languages
• Russian National Library, Moscow (much of site in Russian; features several online public access catalogues)
• Cartography Department
• Archives of the Imperial Public Library, 1795-1916
• Russian State Library, Moscow: Includes unique domestic and foreign collections in 367 languages of the world. Holdings exceed 47.4 million items. Open access collections can be browsed here
• Bibliophika (Russian interface): specialized, full-text online catalogue created for the collections of the Russian State Public Historical Library. Currently, provides full-text access to 1235 digitized volumes, c. 500,000 pages, all from pre-revolutionary texts. Open to all and permits browsing all the digitized titles in GPIB’s collection, although in low-resolution and not all pages

2) Corporate and Private Records 

3) Foundations 

4) Private Library Archives and Collections

5) University Collections

6) Newspapers

• Russian Newspapers, 1703-1917
• Department of Printed Music and Sound Recordings

7) Cultural Institutions and Resources

• The Fundamental Digital Library of Russian Literature and Folklore: FEB-web is a project of Gorky Institute of World Literature, it’s a mammoth collection of materials on Russian literature and folklore, including full text versions of the major works of Russian literature, links to numerous literary and cultural guides and manuals, as well as a wealth of bibliographic guides detailing materials available from the most broad (Pushkin) to the most specific (historical works published in 1860)
• Moscow Kremlin Museums
• The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts
• The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. Online Collections
• Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow Online Collections
• Eurodocs: Early 19^th-century Russian Readership and Culture; Russian publications provided by the University of Illinois. Divided into: fiction, journalism, memoirs, and travel accounts
• Images of Moscow, 1850-1870s
• Russia and Eastern Europe in Rare Photographs: From New York Public Library, 1860-1945. Photos and manuscript facsimiles
• Photos from Tsarist Russia: 1891-1904, Russian interface
• Russianposter.ru:  primary source of posters of Russian cultural, social and political history. Russian/German interface, 1850-2004, images

8) General or Subject

• Runivers (Russian interface): an electronic facsimile library, mostly history and philosophy c. 1867-1917.
• LATE IMPERIAL RUSSIA (1855-1917)
• Eurodocs: Contains a list of websites with links to sources, mostly in Russian but with some translated into English
• Primary Sources from the Crimean War: includes diaries and letters from the English side of the War
• THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION and WORLD WAR I (1905-1917)
• Documents in History: prominent documents from late imperial and revolutionary Russia
• Modern History Sourcebook, Fordham University: Russian Revolution Section: variety of translated sources relating to the Tsarist state and the Russian Revolution of 1917
• Russian History, 1905-30: historical sources and documents
• Alpha History: Russian Revolution Documents: key documents pertaining to the prelude and consequences of the Russian Revolution(s)
• The Bolsheviks Storm the Winter Palace, 1917: journalist John Reed’s account
• World War I: Modern History Sourcebook, Fordham University: contains a variety of translated sources
• People’s Archive of the First World War (in Russian)
• World War I Document Archive: pre-1914 to post-1918; translations and transcriptions
• Alpha History: Russian Revolution Graphics: a gallery of graphics and cartoons produced both in and outside Russia, c. 1890s-1930
• Photos from the Eastern Front, 1914-17: Include previously unpublished private and military photos from a German officer's collection.
  • Photoset part 1
  • Photoset part 2
• Revolutionary Meetings and Movements, 1917: images.
• Posters of the Russian Civil War, 1918-1922

The Soviet Union

• Documents of the Soviet Era/(Russian) Federal Archival Agency
• A list of translated primary source collections in Soviet History (many of which are electronic), collated by Shane O’Rourke
• The Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System online: Based on 705 interviews with emigres from the Soviet Union between 1917 and 1945 about life in the Soviet Union (in English)
• The Soviet History Archive: Documents on the Revolution, Civil War, Kronstadt Rebellion, Great Terror, and Second World War
• The Marxist Internet Archive: Includes writings of all the major figures in the history of Russian Marxism (e.g., Plekhanov, Lenin, Martov, and Trotsky)
• The Stalin Digital Archive: Documents from Stalin’s personal archive. Mostly in Russian, but some translations
• Comintern Archives

Switzerland

• Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland

U.S. History

1) Government Diplomatic Document Collections

• Library of Congress Digital Collections
• National Archives
  • Blog Site
  • State Department Digital Archives
  • Hoover Presidential Library
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library 
  • Truman Presidential Library
  • Eisenhower Presidential Library 
  • Kennedy Presidential Library
  • Nixon Presidential Library
  • Ford Presidential Library
  • Carter Presidential Library
  • Reagan Presidential Library
  • George H. W. Bush Presidential Library
  • Clinton Presidential Library
  • George W. Bush Presidential Library
  • Barack Obama Presidential Library
• Foreign Relations of the United States Series (Office of the Historian, Department of State; entire series launched 1861 now digitized)
• Argentina Declassification Project (intel.gov): https://www.intelligence.gov/argentina-declassification-project/records
• U.S. Department of State Records at The National Archives (Digitized)
• The CIA Online Reading Room: online collection of declassified CIA documents, organized by subject
• Pentagon Papers: a secret Defense Department history of the Vietnam War, leaked by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, and now digitized in full
• U.S. National Library of Medicine: Digital Collections
• Marshall Spaceflight Center Oral Histories (1960s-1990s)
• FBI Records: The Vault: The FBI’s digital FOIA library
• Naval History and Heritage Command (1940s-present)
• WikiLeaks: A huge, largely unsorted and unread collection of sources for contemporary histories

2) Corporate and Private Records

• Hagley Digital Archives (over 80,000 digitized objects concerning commerce and trade activities in the U.S. and abroad, e.g., records of the DuPont corporation and American Chambers of Commerce)
• Roper Center for Public Opinion Research: historical U.S. Polling Data

3) Foundations

•  Rockefeller Archive Center

4) Private Library Archives and Collections

• Freedom Summer Digital Collection (Wisconsin Historical Society)
• New York Historical Society Digital Collections
• Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
• National Criminal Justice Reference Service Virtual Library: 80,000 online resources including many official publications (mainly in English, most from U.S.)
• Duke Collection of American Indian Oral History (University of Oklahoma)

5) University Collections

• Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, Yale Law School
• The American Presidency Project (University of California Santa Barbara, an archive of presidential public comments)
• Secret White House Tapes / Archive of tapes (University of Virginia's Miller Center, transcripts and audio files of presidential Oval Office conversations
• U.S. Congress, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (Stanford University, materials produced and used by the Committee, 1946-77)
• AdViews (Duke University, thousands of TV commercials from 126 companies, 1950s-1980s)
• WSLS-TV (Roanoke, VA) News Film Collection, 1951-1971
• Michigan State University Vietnam Group Archive
• The Vietnam War Oral History Project, Texas Tech University
• Hawaii War Records Depository Photos, 1941-45 (University of Hawai’i, Manoa Library)
• Labor History Digital Resources, NYU Libraries 
• Television News of the Civil Rights Era, 1950-1970
• History Lab/Freedom of Information Archive (c. 3.6 million declassified records from a range of U.S. and non-U.S. sources, e.g., State Department’s Central Foreign Policy Files and the UK Cabinet Papers)
• Northeastern University We Raise Our Voices Online Collection: historical records of Boston’s African-American, feminist, gay and lesbian, and Latino communities
• Digital Collections at the Beinecke Library (Yale): over one million images from the rare books and manuscripts collection
• Columbia University Oral History Archives
• Tamiment Library and Wagner Labor Archives (labor, leftist, and social movement archives)
• Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies
• J. William Fulbright Papers, University of Arkansas
• William and Mary

6) Newspapers

• Chronicling America, the Library of Congress (vast historical newspaper archive up to the early 1960s)
• The Crisis (official publication of the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People, 1910- ), digitised via Google Books
• Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives

7) Cultural Institutions and Resources

• The Living Room Candidate (digitized Presidential campaign TV ads, 1952-2016)
• American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank (includes speeches by presidents, politicians, activists, and other public figures) 
• San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive
• Ad*Access: Digital Collection of over 7000 Advertisement from early 20th century U.S. and Canada, Duke University Library
• WGBH Open Vault (film footage and oral history interviews from its documentary programs, including Vietnam: A Television History and War and Peace in the Nuclear Age)
• Television News of the Civil Rights Era, 1950-1970

8) General and Subject

• Cold War International History Project Document Archive (Woodrow Wilson Center, key source for non-US primary sources)
• Hoover Institution Library & Archives

• National Security Archive: non-profit foundation dedicated to declassifying and hosting records relating to U.S. foreign policy and national security
• Watergate: The Scandal That Brought Down Richard Nixon
• Nixon Tapes and Transcripts
• American Radicalism Collection: materials produced by a wide range of radical movements (of both left and right)
• Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library
• Black Past: sources and documents on the history of African Americans and people of African descent globally
• Civil Rights Digital Library
• Voices of the Civil Rights Movement
• Civil Rights Movement Archive: SNCC, SCLC, CORE, NAACP
• Amistad Digital Resource (Civil Rights Era Collection)
• Historymatters, features many resources for study of US history, including over 1,000 primary sources

International Alliances and Organizations

• United Nations Digital Library & About the United Nations Digital Library
• Oxfam Digital Repository
• UNESCO Digital Library
• United Nations Oral History Collection
• GATT Digital Library 1947-1994 (Stanford University)
• NATO Archives
• World Bank Group Archives Holdings
• European Union Archival Holdings Includes audio recordings and oral history interviews, digitalized archival files, video recordings, photographs and posters. Please contact the archivists including [email protected]
• European Court of Human Rights

Aggregators by Subject

General

• South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission
• Endangered Archives Programme (British Library): Links to a large number of online collections from archives around the world
• Institute of Historical Research, Digital Resources
• World Digital Library: The Library of Congress’s online digital database of digitized books from around the world
• Digital Archives Guide
• Institute of Historical Research (School of Advanced Study, Univ. of London)
• Maps, globes, and plans: an ongoing census of free digital archives, #1 (Atelier Ideas & Research)
• Maps, globes, and plans: an ongoing census of free digital archives, #4 (Atelier Ideas & Research)
• Freely available books
• Databases for e-books and open access journal access
• Internet Archive Book Images on Flickr: Over 2.6 million searchable images taken from books in the public domain

• Radical online collections and archives: New Historical Express (communism, socialism, labour, anti-racism, etc.)

• HathiTrust Digital Library/Millions of books online (especially good on the Americas)
• Internet archive: huge collection of books, films, websites, etc.
• JSTOR Community Collections and JSTOR Primary Sources

Medical Databases

• World Health Organization (1950-present, reports and publications)
• Contagion: Historical Views of Diseases and Epidemics: Digital collection from Harvard University Libraries
• McMaster University Medical Humanities and History of Medicine
• Portal for digital collections and resources related to the history of medicine
• Medical Heritage Library: Images, books, etc - a fantastic resource
• Medicine in the Americas: Digital library of texts covering evolution of American medicine, 17th-20th centuries
• Wellcome Library, Digital Collections: topics include asylums, food, sex and sexual health, genetics, public health and war
• Wellcome Library, Mental Healthcare
• USAID, Development Experience Clearinghouse

• amfAR Archives (AIDS archives)
• Resources History of Western Medicine in China, Resources Portal (IUPUI)

Culture

• Wellcome Library, Recipe books (history of medicine & science)
• Getty Images: Online archive of still and moving images (fee for use in publications)
• Visualizing Cultures (MIT, resource for image-driven scholarship and learning)

By Region

• Memórias d’África e d’Oriente: digitized primary and secondary sources in Asian and African history, especially related to the Portuguese Empire

• Internet Guide for Chinese Studies (Leiden University, list of resources on contemporary China and broader themes related to culture and history)
• A List of translated primary source collections in Soviet History (many of which are electronic), collated by Shane O’Rourke:
• Middle East Research and Information Project, freely available until end of August 2020
• European History Primary Sources (European University Institute; searchable database of repositories including online digitized texts)  

By Era

                        Pre-1945

• Early Modern Resources: A research portal for the period 1500-1800
• Harry Ransom Center Digital Collections (University of Texas, c. 15th-17th centuries)
• Primary source databases relating to World War II, compiled by Daniel Todman (QMUL)

Post-1945

• Cold War International History Project (Woodrow Wilson Center)
• Cold War International History Project Digital Archive
• Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archive
• Hoover Institution Digital Archive
• History Lab/Freedom of Information Archive
• WikiLeaks: A huge, largely unsorted and unread collection of sources for contemporary histories