**An Introduction to Archival Research

Library guide introducing users to archival research

**Gale Primary Sources Learning Center

Use the links below for help on how to use these Gale Primary Sources:

• Learning Center for Crime Punishment and Popular Culture
• Learning Center for Burney Newspaper Collection--17th and 18th Centuries

**Guide to Primary Sources

A library guide to researching primary sources.

American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodical Collection

Provides digital access to the American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals Collections to American periodicals published between 1684 and 1912. The fifty thematic subsets include digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals detailing American history and culture from the mid-18th century through the late-19th century.

Archives of Latin American and Caribbean History, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century

Brings together primary source documents relating to Latin America and the Caribbean; original manuscripts, signed letters, expedition records, reports, maps, diaries, descriptions of voyages, ephemera, and more.

Black Thought and Culture

Contains the non-fiction published works of leading African Americans, and includes interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamphlets, letters and other ephemeral material.

Burney Newspaper Collection--17th and 18th Centuries (go to Learning Center for research help)

A comprehensive collection of early English newspapers from London, the British Isles, and colonies, including many American titles. To learn more about how to use this archive and refine your research question go to the Learning Center.

Census Data (Social Explorer)

Explore over 500,000 data indicators and over 220 years of data for the United States through interactive maps from the present to 1790, including all Decennial Censuses, American Community Surveys U.S. election data, U.S. crime data (FBI/UCR), World Development Indicators, and more.

Alternate access via CUNY login credentials

Census of Population and Housing 2010

Gateway to the 2010 Census from the U. S. Census Bureau.

Crime, Punishment and Popular Culture,1790-1920 (go to Learning Center for research help)

Archive containing manuscripts, books, broadsheets, and periodicals from 1790 - 1920. The collection covers Europe, North America, India, and the Antipodes.  Includes raw data about crime, its solutions, and the popular response.  To learn more about how to use this archive and refine your research question go to the Learning Center.

Criminal Trial Transcripts Collection, Lloyd Sealy Library

An index to the Lloyd Sealy Library's Trial Transcripts of the County of New York 1883-1927. Several transcripts have been digitized and are available online.

Digital Public Library of America

Portal to digital content held at the nations' archives, libraries, museums and other cultural heritage organizations.

 

Early English Books Online

EEBO contains page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473 to 1700.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online

A digital archive of 150,000 books published in the eighteenth century, covering a broad spectrum of topics like law, history, science, and art.

Gale Primary Sources

Cross-search dozens of historical archives covering hundreds of years of history through this single platform. Resources include monographs, manuscripts, trial transcripts, newspapers, maps, and photographs. Individual databases collections include :

• 17th and 18th Centry Burney Collection
• Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture 1790-1920
• The Economist Historical Archive, 1843-2011
• Eighteenth Century Collections Online
• The Making of the Modern World
• Nineteenth Century Collections Online

Hein Online

Several historical American and international law collections incuding law reviews and journals from their first volume of publication, the Federal Register, Presidential Documents, U.S. Congressional Serial Set, Attorney Generals Opinions, World Constitutions, legal classics, and the newest collection, Slavery in America and the World; History, Culture and Law. A comprehensive user's guide to this database is available at  https://heinonline.org/HeinDocs/HOLUserGuide.pdf.

History of Capital Punishment Database

Collection of materials from the National Death Penalty Archives on the nature, history, operation, effects, psychology, desirability, and compatibility with religious and moral precepts, of the death penalty.  Includes periodicals, trials, hearings, bibliographies and other related works.

History Vault (available through the NYPL)

To access this database you must login with your NYPL library card.  If you don't already have a NYPL library card you can apply for one here.

This is a digital collection of manuscript and archival materials focusing on the 20th Century including main collections such as:

Black Freedom Movement and Civil Rights (includes records of four of the most important civil rights organizations of the 1950s and 1960s: NAACP, SCLC, SNCC, and CORE).

Southern Life and Slavery (documenting the realities of slavery "at the most immediate grassroots level in Southern society" providing "some of the most revealing documentation in existence on the functioning of the slave system."

Library of Congress Digital Collections

Multimedia collections of digitized documents, photographs, recorded sound, moving pictures, and text from the Library of Congress' National Digital Library Program.

Making of the Modern World

Provides the full text of 61,000 works of literature in business, politics, and economics published from 1450 to 1850. Includes the full Goldsmiths

New York Times Historical File

Full text of articles and page images of the New York Times from 1851 to 2014.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online

An eclectic collection of digital collections of primary source materials mostly from British and American libraries.

Northeast Slavery Records Index (NESRI)

A searchable compilation of records that identify individual enslaved persons and enslavers in the states of New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Jersey. NESRI indexes census records, slave trade transactions, cemetery records, birth certifications, manumissions, ship inventories, newspaper accounts, private narratives, legal documents and many other sources.

The index contains over 35,000 records and it is expected to grow as John Jay College professors and students locate and assemble data from additional sources.

Roper Ipoll

The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, currently located at Cornell University, is an archive of social science data, specializing in data from public opinion surveys.

Slavery and Anti-Slavery

Includes collections on the transatlantic slave trade, the global movement for the abolition of slavery, the legal, personal, and economic aspects of the slavery system, and the dynamics of emancipation in the U.S. as well as in Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions.

Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law

Brings together all known legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery. Much of the non-legal material in this collection is based on the holdings of the Buffalo Public Library. Its rare book collection contains hundreds of nineteenth century pamphlets and books on slavery.  A quick reference guide on how to ue this collection can be found at  https://heinonline.org/HeinDocs/SlaveryQRG.pdf

Social Explorer

Displays interactive maps of U.S. Census data going back to 1790, U.S. election data, U.S. crime data (FBI/UCR), World Development Indicators, and more.

State Legislation Aggregator Search Sites

These freely available websites aggregate state legislative information, providing a more uniform and user-friendly search experience and the ability to compare legislative activities across the states.

1. Openstates.org
2. Legiscan.com  
3. BillTrack50.com (must register, but it is free)

SUR, 1931-1992

Archival collection of one of the most important and influential Spanish language literary magazines published in Latin America in the twentieth century. Includes images of the complete magazine, including covers, photographs and advertisements, a comprehensive electronic index, a set of images of manuscripts from the first issue and an unpublished set of letters by Victoria Ocampo.

Umbra Search

A searchable collection of over 500,000 primary source documents relating to African American history and culture digitized by over 1,000 libraries libraries and archives across the country.

Women and Social Movements in the U.S. 1600-2000

Brings together primary documents, books, images, scholarly essays, book reviews, audio recordings, Web site reviews, and teaching tools, all documenting the multiplicity of women’s activism in public life.