Key Databases: Primary Sources (Artworks, Posters, Zines)

The study of environmental history emerged in the 1960s, inspired by the popularity of emerging environmentalist movements, but concerns about human intervention and interaction with the natural environment can be traced much further back. Starting in the late nineteenth century, in direct response to the Industrial Revolution, forces in social and political spheres across the globe struggled to balance the good of the public and the planet against the economic exploitation of resources. In Environmental History, researchers may explore the history of the environment and conservation efforts across the globe from the late 1800s onwards.

With nearly 70 million individuals dislocated by war, famine, and environmental disaster, refugee crises have been, and will continue to be, a highly visible part of our global reality. But understanding and addressing what the future holds requires reckoning with the past. In the series Refugees, Relief, and Resettlement, Gale opens a window onto the history of refugees and forced migration so that the thousands of scholars and students who will study—and possibly work with—refugee populations may look profitably to the primary source record of the past to help them navigate the present and the future.

Africa History and Culture is a comprehensive database for searching and discovering African materials from 1500 to today. It indexes African organizations, collections, and documents from archives around the world. Find books, magazines, newspapers, historical journals, government documents, oral history, photographs, art, music, videos, and more.

We’ve identified 600+ organizations around the world with significant materials from and pertaining to Africa. We’ve selected collections with significant content for teaching and learning. We’ve selected, indexed, and made documents fully searchable. Ten percent of sales go towards funding new digitization projects with African archives. We anticipate 50,000 pages of rare and endangered materials will be digitized this way.

Our index covers over 4,350 collections from around the world. We have in-depth coverage of sites primarily focused on African history and culture, along with selective coverage of sites that include African materials generally. We even index and provide details for inactive sites that no longer function.

Amnesty International Archives presents the archival records of the International Secretariat of Amnesty International from the period of 1961-1991. These records are housed at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. Covering a wide range of human rights concerns and issues, the documents in Amnesty International Archives allow researchers to follow not only the influence Amnesty International had on the global human rights movement in the late twentieth century, but also to chart the internal growth and development of the organisation through the first three decades since its founding in 1961.
Content Acknowledgement: Amnesty International Archives: A Global Movement for Human Rights publishes the records of Amnesty International from the second half of the twentieth century. The material contains minutes, reports, correspondence, first-hand accounts, publicity materials and circulars relating to human rights violations of all kinds in all parts of the world. Amnesty International’s remit of campaigning for an end to human rights abuses means that this archival material inherently relates to the themes of oppression, cruelty and degradation. Content includes, but is not limited to, descriptions of persecution, disappearances, capital punishment, violence and torture. This content contains both written descriptions and images.
Language Statement: All editorial decisions relating to Amnesty International Archives have been made with great care, consideration and sensitivity. Every effort has been taken to preserve the historic authenticity of the documents included in this collection. Due to the age and nature of this material, some items may reflect outdated, biased, and offensive views. With this in mind, terminology that would no longer be deemed acceptable may be found within the digitised sources.

The Archives of Sexuality and Genderprogram provides a robust and significant collection of primary sources for the historical study of sex, sexuality, and gender. With material dating back to the sixteenth century, researchers and scholars can examine how sexual norms have changed over time, health and hygiene, the development of sex education, the rise of sexology, changing gender roles, social movements and activism, erotica, and many other interesting topical areas. This growing archival program offers rich research opportunities across a wide span of human history.

BFI Player is a video on demand service from the British Film Institute, streaming acclaimed, landmark and archive films. The focus is on British and European independent films, as well as international releases. BFI expert curators group most of our films into unique collections, which highlight their significance, whether theyre cultural, award-winning, by a renowned director or they represent a landmark moment in film.

Black Thought and Culture is a landmark electronic collection of approximately 100,000 pages of non-fiction writings by major American black leadersteachers, artists, politicians, religious leaders, athletes, war veterans, entertainers, and other figurescovering 250 years of history. In addition to the most familiar works, Black Thought and Culture presents a great deal of previously inaccessible material, including letters, speeches, prefatory essays, political leaflets, interviews, periodicals, and trial transcripts. The ideas of over 1,000 authors present an evolving and complex view of what it is to be black in America. Subjects indexed include colonialism, socialism, Marxism, democracy, capitalism, the Labor movement, segregation, poverty, education, religion, sharecropping, Jim Crow laws, the New Deal, the World Wars, the Black Liberation movement, the South, the Scottsboro and Herndon trials, black nationalism, miscegenation, the black athlete, civil rights, apartheid, the Black Panther party, the Negritude movement, the NAACP, birth control, the vote, urban ghettoes vs. the rural South, strategies of protest and demonstration, and hundreds more.

First published in 1902, the Cambridge Histories is a globally respected series of over 400 volumes spanning ten subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, with a concentration on political and cultural history, literature, philosophy, religious studies, music and the arts. Presenting history as a continuous and evolutionary process, the Cambridge Histories offer a big picture perspective in each subject area, making them essential reading for anyone researching or studying a subject that has an historical element. This site allows instant access to the renowned texts of the Cambridge Histories series, searchable by author, title and subject. Continually updated with new volumes taken from the print series as soon as they become available, this collection represents an impressive breadth and depth of scholarship that offers an unmatched resource for today's historians.

The Coptic Gnostic Library is the only authoritative edition of many of the Coptic writings of the Gnostics from the first centuries AD. It was originally published by Brill in fourteen hardback volumes as part of the Nag Hammadi (and Manichaean) Studies series between 1975 and 1995, under the general editorship of James M. Robinson. The Coptic Gnostic Library contains all the texts of the Nag Hammadi codices, both in the original Coptic and in translation. Each text has its own introduction, and full indexes are provided. The Coptic Gnostic Library is the result of decades of dedicated research by the most distinguished international scholars in this field.

The Coptic Gnostic Library continues where the Dead Sea Scrolls left off. Our main sources of information for the Gnostic religion are the so-called Nag Hammadi codices, written in Coptic. These were unearthed in 1945 near the town of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt. The texts literally begin where the Dead Sea Scrolls end. Their discovery is considered equally significant as the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves, bringing to light a long-hidden wealth of information and insights into early Judaism and the roots of Christianity. Furthermore, these writings clearly show that the Gnostic religion was not only a force that interacted with early Christianity and Judaism in their formative periods, but also a significant religious movement in its own right.

This database contains over 10,000 vernacular literary works and historical documents from the Han and Wei dynasties onward. It includes novels, dramas, folk songs, proverbs, and more, providing rich insights into everyday life, beliefs, and culture. As a key complement to classical Chinese literature, it is an essential resource for studying the social, religious, literary, and art history of China.
The database is a valuable resource for both research and teaching in early modern Chinese fiction and drama. It supports research by offering a comprehensive corpus with keyword search and parallel reading functions, enabling a broader research scope and the inclusion of additional materials. It contributes to research on Chinese religious texts, Confucianism, and Buddhism.

Empire Online brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of 'Empire' and its theories, practices and consequences. The materials span across the last five centuries and are accompanied by a host of secondary learning resources including scholarly essays, maps and an interactive chronology. Empire Online is a powerful and interactive collection of primary source documents, sourced from leading archives around the world. This project has been developed to encourage undergraduates, postgraduates, academics and researchers to explore colonial history, politics, culture and society. Material in the collection spans five centuries, charting the story of the rise and fall of empires; from the explorations of Columbus, Captain Cook, and others, right through to de-colonisation in the second half of the twentieth century and debates over American Imperialism. Material in Empire Online has been sourced from a wide range of reputable institutions, with a particularly strong core of documents and images from the British Library. There is a good balance between highly indexed manuscript and full text printed material, with a broad range of document types; written by women and men from the European and non-European perspective. By its very nature, Empire Studies is a global subject. In our selection of material we have endeavoured to cover all continents and did not feel it appropriate to focus on the British Empire in isolation. Thus, there are a number of documents and secondary resources which relate the story of the Empire from the French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German points of view, as well as that of indigenous peoples from Africa, India and North America.

Engineering Case Studies Online will dramatically improve teaching and research by providing a single, comprehensive source for a wide range of video and text material focusing on engineering failures and successes. The collection covers over 300 videos and 70,000 pages of quality documentaries, accident reports, experiments, visualizations, case studies, lectures and interviews from leading engineering institutions around the world. The analysis of engineering failures is an essential part of many engineering curricula today. This focus enables modern engineers and scholars to learn what not to do and how to create designs with a greater chance of success. Key to learning is establishing the nature of each failure—structural, corrosive, electrical, etc. and understanding that element.

Collection of primary sources for studying the history of the film and entertainment industries, from the era of vaudeville and silent movies through to 2000. Core US and UK trade and mass market consumer magazines covering film, music, broadcasting and theatre are included in the wide-ranging portfolio.

Gender: Identity and Social Change contains essential primary sources documenting the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations from the nineteenth century to the present. This expansive collection offers sources for the study of women's suffrage, the feminist movement, the mens movement, employment, education, the body, the family, and government and politics. Gender: Identity and Social Change includes primary sources for the study of gender history, womens suffrage, the feminist movement and the mens movement. Other key areas represented in the material include: employment and labour, education, government and legislation, the body, domesticity and the family. Explore records from mens and womens organisations and pressure groups, detailing twentieth-century lobbying and activism on a wide array of issues to reveal developing gender relations and prevalent challenges. Gain an insight into changing societal expectations about gender roles through pamphlets, speeches, newsletters, newspaper clippings and more, and explore the life and careers of key figures and pioneers in gender history through personal diaries and correspondence. Also featured is a rich selection of visual material, including photographs, illustrations, posters, scrapbooks and objects. Material has been sourced from across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. The earliest documents are from the nineteenth century and the latest from the early twenty-first century.

Global Issues Library is a growing educational resource that covers important topics and events that are key to understanding the issues of today. The thematic collections span the period from the 1700s to the present and include topics that are global and interrelated such as borders and migration, human rights violations, climate crisis, terrorism, revolutions, mass incarceration, energy insecurity and chronic financial turbulence. Specific events explored include the U.S. and Mexico Border, the Rwandan Genocide, the Arab Spring, climate migrants in Asia Pacific, and Covid-19 and world economies. Curated by an international board of scholars, issues and events are presented through a variety of perspectives—personal, governmental, legal, contemporary and retrospective— demonstrating the interconnectedness of global history, policies, and events.

HCPP now includes over 200,000 House of Commons sessional papers from 1715 to the present, with supplementary material back to 1688. The database provides page images and searchable full text for each paper, along with detailed indexing. The papers are the working documents of the British government for the areas of social, political, economic, and foreign policy and as such, are a primary source for Britain, its colonies and the wider world. The database covers Bills, Reports of Royal Commissions, Reports of Select Committees, Accounts and Papers and other materials from 17th to the 21st century.

ProQuest has partnered with the National Library of Scotland to create the very first digitised collection of 19th Century House of Lords Parliamentary Papers, providing online access to previously unseen and valuable historical documents. This new collection improves research outcomes for scholars of British History, British Government, Political Science, History and more.

As the working documents of government, the House of Lords Parliamentary Papers encompass wide areas of social, political, economic and foreign policy, providing evidence of committees and commissions during a time when the Lords in the United Kingdom wielded considerable power. Most importantly from a legislative perspective, this collection will include many bills which originated and were subsequently rejected by the Lords – rich indicators of the direction and interests of the Lords that have been largely lost to researchers.

The database covers the entire four-decade period (from 1918 to 1959) in which Klemperer kept his diaries. Klemperer, who primarily identified as "German," was the son of a reform rabbi and converted to Protestantism in 1912. For the Nazis, however, he remained a Jew and was persecuted as such. His careful observations and analyses from the Weimar Republic, the National Socialist era, and the German Democratic Republic illuminate what it meant to live under these three regimes. As the Nazis rose to power, he adopted the role of a "cultural historian of the catastrophe," documenting the ongoing withdrawal of rights from Jews. These observations are accompanied by a minute account of his day-to-day life under National Socialism. His post-1945 diaries testify to a desire for a radical new beginning - both for himself and for Germany. Though less well known than his other diaries and until now never published in full, these provide significant insights into the divided post-war Germany and early East Germany, as well as Klemperer's engagement with Communism and Zionism.

Newly available through the MusicOnline platform, the largest, most comprehensive collection of in-copyright scores available to libraries online. The material offers researchers ready digital access to some of the most important scores in classical music ranging from the middle ages to the 21st century. Scores in a range of forms – full, part, manuscripts and for specific instrumentations – are immediately available on an interactive platform allowing users to zoom in to examine specific notations and tempo markings, and print scores for class or personal study.

Encompassing 900 (individually indexed) titles from a key publisher of plays and books on theatre practice and theory and accessible through Drama Online. In additional to canonical texts, the portfolio incorporates an unparalleled range of new and diverse writing from the contemporary era.

Oxford Bibliographies provides faculty and students alike with a seamless pathway to the most accurate and reliable resources for a variety of academic topics. Written and reviewed by academic experts, every article in our database is an authoritative guide to the current scholarship, containing original commentary and annotations. Offering a rapidly expanding range of subject areas and ongoing enhancements, Oxford Bibliographies is reaching more scholars and students than ever before, increasing productivity, saving time, and elevating the quality of research. An authoritative guide to the current scholarship, written and reviewed by academic experts, with original commentary and annotations. Expert scholars share the trusted sources they use across a variety of academic disciplines. Sources are rigorously peer reviewed and vetted to ensure scholarly accuracy and objectivity. The interface guides users directly to the information, providing personalized citation lists and seamless links to full-text print and online content.

With today’s overabundance of information, and misinformation, students and researchers alike can be overwhelmed in identifying what’s trustworthy, what’s up-to-date, and what’s accurate. Oxford University Press has invested in the Oxford Research Encyclopedias to meet this challenge. Working with international communities of scholars across all fields of study, we are developing new comprehensive collections of in-depth, peer-reviewed summaries on an ever-growing range of topics.

The Oxford Research Encyclopedias (OREs) offer long-form overview articles written, peer-reviewed, and edited by leading scholars. The OREs cover both foundational and cutting-edge topics in order to develop, over time, an anchoring knowledge base for major areas of research across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. New topics are added every month and current essays are updated.

The Paris Peace Conference was a meeting of Allied diplomats that took place in the aftermath of the First World War. Its purpose was to impose peace terms on the vanquished Central Powers and establish a new international order. This collection contains archival material relating to this tumultuous period in European and world history. The documents cover the treaties of Versailles, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Trianon, Svres, Lausanne, and Locarno, as well as the foundation of the League of Nations. Together, these treaties severely curtailed German power and influence, redrew national boundaries in Europe and the Middle East, and led to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Most of the files, including FO 608 (Foreign Office: Peace Conference; British Delegation, Correspondence and Papers), are drawn from the UK National Archives, while the British Library provided the personal papers of Lord Robert Cecil and Sir Arthur Balfour.

This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time. Full-page images and article images from the Chicago defender under all its title variants: Chicago daily defender (1966-1973 : Big weekend ed.), Chicago daily defender (1960-1973 : Daily ed.), Chicago defender (1905-1966 : Big weekend ed.), Chicago defender (1973-1975 : Daily ed.), Chicago defender (1921-1967 : National ed.), and the Daily defender (1956-1960 : Daily ed.). The collection includes digital reproductions of every page from every issue in PDF format.

This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.

During the Second World War, the Nazi state was responsible for the systematic enslavement and extermination of millions of Jews. Other groups, such as Russian prisoners of war, Slavs, Sinti and Romani, homosexuals, the disabled, and political opponents of the regime were also targeted. After Germanys surrender, Allied forces established a series of military tribunals, known as the Nuremberg Trials, to bring the architects and perpetrators of these crimes to justice. Drawn from The National Archives (UK) and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, this collection contains a wealth of information regarding the British government's efforts to investigate and prosecute Nazi crimes during the period 1944-1949. The evidence gathered sheds light on almost every aspect of the Holocaust, from the concentration camp system to the mass murder of the incurably sick in psychiatric hospitals. More importantly, it gives a voice to the victims of these atrocities, many of whom testified about their experiences immediately after the war. The files include materials from the WO 309 (War Office: Judge Advocate General's Office; British Army of the Rhine War Crimes Group), WO 311 (War Office: Judge Advocate General's Office; Military Deputy's Department), and WO 235 (War Office: Judge Advocate General's Office; War Crimes Case Files) series.

Public Petitions to Parliament is an online module of U.K. Parliamentary Papers covering the records of the Select Committee on Public Petitions, 1833-1918. It includes individually rekeyed metadata records for every one of the >900,000 petitions accepted by Parliament and includes the full text of each petition that the Committee transcribed. Integrated fully with U.K. Parliamentary Papers, this collection shows how “the people” during the 19th Century influenced Parliament on political, ecclesiastical, colonial, taxation, and many other topics relevant to the study of Britain and the British Empire within a range of different disciplines within the historical and social studies.

RtroNews (1631-1951) is the platform of the French national library (Bibliothque nationale de France) housing digitised historical printed press materials and offers a vast online archive of French and francophone periodicals. The collection features over 2000 newspapers, journals, magazines and reviews published over three centuries, including both important dailies - Le Petit Parisien, Le Journal, Le Matin - but also a variety of periodicals across the political spectrum, together with regional publications and satirical magazines. Full title listings are readily available. The collection is dynamic, increasing monthly to provide a large plurality of sources covering all of France, including its former territories, from the first newspapers up until the 20th century.

The backfile of Rolling Stone covers the magazine from its launch in 1967 to the present. One of the most influential consumer magazines of the 20th and 21st centuries, it initially sought to reflect the cultural, social and political outlook of a generation of students and young adults. It soon became a leading vehicle for rock and popular music journalism, shaping and chronicling new trends and movements. Also notable for its commitment to reporting on controversial topics that were largely absent from mainstream media, Rolling Stone was closely identified with a multifaceted 1960s-70s counterculture. Major journalists and authors have contributed including Hunter S. Thompson, Patti Smith and Tom Wolfe. From the 1980s, coverage expanded to encompass more entertainment topics, such as film and television, making it a leading resource for contemporary reporting and reviews pertaining to wider popular culture. This period also saw the successful serialization of Wolfes The Bonfire of the Vanities and the publication of one of the first national magazine features to address AIDS. The archive supports research in 20th and 21st century history, politics, music, cultural studies, media studies, sociology and more.

Royal Geographical Society (with Institute of British Geographers) was founded in 1830. The learned Society promotes the advancement of geographical science in all its aspects. The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) – Part I includes content in the date ranges of 1485 through 1899, and Part II includes content in the date ranges of 1900 through 1983. The Society’s archive contains vast collections of documents, maps, photographs, expedition reports, manuscript materials and books, and span 500 years of geography, travel and exploration. The RGS holds one of the largest private map collections in the world. It includes one million sheets of maps and charts, 3000 atlases, 40 globes (as gores or mounted on stands) and 1000 gazetteers. The earliest printed cartographic item dates back to 1485. Since its founding, the RGS-IBG has served as an information exchange for geographers and geography. The Society’s extensive map collection has been continuously developed from its foundation in 1830 and accessible to all users from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Historically, as today, the Society sponsored and supported expeditions and fieldwork; in the past it has loaned survey and photographic equipment to explorers and published early guidance on how to conduct expeditions and gather data. The geographical information compiled and gathered by Society-backed fieldwork and exploration covering over almost 200 years has made a monumental impact. Today, collections material from the RGS enables contemporary researchers to critically re-assess and re-evaluate these contributions to our understanding of the world.

BoF Professional is an essential daily resource for fashion creatives, executives and entrepreneurs all over the world. Through BoF, members gain in-depth analysis and actionable insights for navigating the rapidly-changing global Fashion industry. BoF Professional includes: Daily industry insights and analyses, case studies and how-to guides, online courses and live webinars. Serving members in more than 125 countries, The Business of Fashion combines independent, agenda-setting journalism with practical business advice, online learning, career-building tools and immersive events, powering positive change in fashion and the wider world. Over time, our pioneering approach has made BoF the fashion industry’s leading source of business intelligence, and one of its most respected and influential voices, simply because you won’t find BoF’s original reporting, analysis and advice anywhere else. The Business of Beauty brings the same kind of agenda-setting coverage to the beauty and wellness space. Today, our talented team of correspondents, editors, analysts, engineers, designers, marketers and more numbers more than 100 people in London, New York, Paris and Milan.

A searchable archive of the US (1867 to present) and UK (1930-2015) editions of Harper's Bazaar. The issues are reproduced as high-resolution color page images and supported by fully searchable text and article-level indexing. This resource chronicles over 150 years of American, British, and international fashion, culture, and society, supporting researchers by offering unique insights into the events, attitudes, and interests of the modern era.
The Harper's Bazaar Archive offers access to the backfiles of both the US and UK editions of Harper’s Bazaar. In combination, these publications comprise almost 500,000 pages of content, from 1867 to the present, representing a vast and indispensable resource for the study of fashion and related fields.

The Making of the Modern Worldis an extraordinary series which covers the history of Western trade, encompassing the coal, iron, and steel industries, the railway industry, the cotton industry, banking and finance, and the emergence of the modern corporation. It is also strong in the rise of the modern labor movement, the evolving status of slavery, the condition and making of the working class, colonization, the Atlantic world, Latin American/Caribbean studies, social history, gender, and the economic theories that championed and challenged capitalism in the nineteenth century. In addition, the archive offers resources on the role of finance and taxation and the growth of the early modern monarchy. It features essential texts covering the function of financial institutions, the crisis of the French monarchy and the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, and the connection between the democratic goals of revolutionaries and their legal aspirations. The majority of the material within The Making of the Modern World was collected by one man, Herbert Foxwell (1849-1936), a preeminent British economist and one of the most important collectors of economics literature. His two main collections form the nucleus of two of the greatest economics libraries in the world, Goldsmiths' Library of Economic Literature (Senate House, University of London) and Kress Library of Business and Economics (Harvard University), and the basis of this digital series.

Part of our wide-ranging Power and Preachers series, this collection contains copies of three English language newspapers published in India during the period 1782-1908: The India Gazette (1782-1834); The Bengal Hurkaru and Chronicle (1822-1866); and The Bengal Times (1876-1908). These newspapers were primarily sold to colonial businessmen, merchants, and administrators with an interest in regional and international trade. Editors and reporters therefore focussed on providing readers with an overview of significant political, military, economic, scientific, and societal trends, as well as their potential impact on stocks, commodities, and other investments. Subjects covered range from the American Revolution and the Crimean War to British parliamentary debates on the India Act of 1858 and the dramatic industrial and pharmaceutical breakthroughs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. India, England, France, Ireland, Italy, the United States, and China receive the most attention, though items regarding other nations also feature.