Major Research Tools

Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment

Full-Text, Reference

Scholarly encyclopedia covering the Enlightenment "from the rise of Descartes' disciples in 1670 to the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1815."


Historical Abstracts

Index
Time period covered: 1450 to present; Publication coverage: 1955 to present

Indexes journal articles, book reviews, and dissertations on the history of the world, except the United States and Canada. Subjects include diplomatic history, economics, international relations, and political science.


International Medieval Bibliography

Index

Multidisciplinary bibliography indexing journal articles and "miscellany volumes" (conference proceedings, essay collections or Festschriften) covering medieval studies in disciplines ranging from history to languages to art and music.


Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance

Index

Collection of databases, including Iter Bibliography, a bibliography and index of articles, books, essays, and book reviews on the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700). Includes coverage of art and literature.


Other Suggested Research Tools

Burney Collection of Newspapers

Full-Text

Digital collection of early English news media from the 17th and 18th centuries. Includes pamphlets, broadsides, periodicals, and an extensive collection of London newspapers.


Early English Books Online

Full-Text

Collection of texts printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473 to 1700. Includes literary texts, sermons, legal documents, scientific treatises, and many other types of works.


Eighteenth Century Collections Online I and II

Full-Text

Digital collection of 180,000 English language books, pamphlets, essays, and broadsides published from 1701 to 1800. Titles cover history, fine arts, medicine, science, literature, law, philosophy, and religion.


Eighteenth Century Journals

Full-Text
Coverage: 1685-1835

Full-text of magazines and newspapers providing a broad representation of print journalism in the eighteenth century. Most titles are British, but the collection also includes titles from from Canada, the Caribbean, India, and France. Minimal overlap with materials in other collections such as Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), The Burney Collection, etc.


Empire Online

Full-Text

Primary sources charting the rise and fall of empires, from the explorations of Columbus, Captain Cook, and others to decolonization in the second half of the twentieth century. Includes perspectives from colonizers as well as indigenous peoples from Africa, India and North America.


History Research Tools - Europe (General)

Gateway

Skillman library's links to major indexes and full-text collections covering multiple periods of European history.


Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive

Full-Text
Coverage: 17th C. - late 19th C.

Major collection of primary source material covering the global history of the slave trade, slavery, and anti-slavery movements. Presented in 4 collections: Debates over Slavery and Abolition; Slave Trade in the Atlantic World; The Institution of Slavery; and Age of Emancipation.


Specialized Collections

Age of Exploration

Full-Text

Primary sources, including audio-visual materials, relating to key events in the history of European maritime exploration from c.1420-1920.


British History Online

Full-Text

Digital library containing some of the core primary and secondary sources for the study of medieval and modern history of the British Isles. Includes government documents, most notably the domestic Calendar of State Papers for 1547-1704 and the foreign Calendar of State Papers for 1547-1589.


Cornell University Library Witchcraft Collection

Full-Text

An online selection from Cornell's extensive collection of materials on the history of superstition and witchcraft persecution in Europe.


Defining Gender

Full-Text
Coverage: 1410-1917

Primary source material from British archives focusing on gender, leisure, and consumer culture. Thematic areas within the collection are Conduct and Politeness, Domesticity and the Family, Consumption and Leisure, Education and Sensibility, and The Body.


Dictionnaire des femmes de l'ancienne France

Full-Text, Reference
A biographical dictionary of women who lived in France or had an important connection to the French language from the 5th through the 18th century (up to women born in 1780). Although world-famous women are represented, the dictionary's main value is for its entries of women little-known outside their regions or fields of activity. There are two types of entries ("notices"): the "notices modernes" written by contemporary scholars; and the "notices anciennes", which are reproduced from biographical works published since the 16th century. The editors warn that the information from these older published works is not always reliable. Finding entries by browsing is more efficient than searching names directly.

East India Company

Full-Text
Coverage: 1599-1947

Collection of India Office Records from the British Library charting the history of British trade and rule in the Indian subcontinent and beyond.


European Views of the Americas: 1493-1750

Full-Text
Index of works about the Americas written in Europe before 1750. "Covers the history of European exploration as well as portrayals of Indigenous peoples." Note that the full text of English language titles may be found in Early English Books Online or Eighteenth Century Collections Online; for the full text of French titles, check Gallica.

Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index

Index
Coverage: 1994-present

Index of journal articles, book reviews, and essays about women, sexuality, and gender during the Middle Ages. Covers Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Provided by The University of Iowa Libraries.


Global Commodities

Data, Full-Text

Primary sources such as manuscripts/diaries, rare books, maps, paintings, advertisements, company records, etc., covering the global history of 15 major commodities: chocolate, coffee, cotton, fur, energy, opium, porcelain, silver & gold, spices, sugar, tea, timber, tobacco, wheat, wine & spirits. Also includes data on energy production, consumption, and reserves by country from 1965 to the present.


Grand Tour

Full-Text
Coverage: c1550-1850

Primary source accounts of English young men and women travelling abroad. Good source of information on daily life in the 18th century and urban centers, particularly Paris, Rome, Florence, and Geneva.


Internet Medieval Sourcebook

Full-Text

Collection of translated texts from late antiquity to the age of exploration. From Fordham University.


London Lives 1690-1800: Crime, Poverty and Social Policy in the Metropolis

Full-Text

A variety of documents that can be used to reconstruct everyday life in 18th-century London. Incorporates the proceedings of the Old Bailey, London's central criminal court, and provides extensive background essays on London.


Map of Early Modern London

Full-Text

Map of London during the late 16th and early 17th centuries with descriptions of streets, sites, and churches. From the University of Victoria.


Medieval Family Life

Full-Text
Coverage: 14th & 15th Centuries

Collections of letters and supporting documents (e.g. wills, accounts) detailing the daily lives of 5 families in Medieval England.


Medieval Travel Writing

Full-Text
Coverage: 13th - 16th Centuries

Digitized manuscripts in a variety of European languages detailing journeys primarily to the Holy Land and Silk Road destinations in India and China.


Nichols Collection of Newspapers

Full-Text
Coverage: 1672-1737

Digital collection of early English news media from the 17th and 18th centuries. Includes an extensive collection of English newspapers as well as pamphlets, broadsides, and periodicals.


Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland

Reference
Coverage: Middle Ages-Present

Comprehensive listing of over 45,000 English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Cornish, and immigrant surnames including variant spellings, origins/etymology, geographical distribution, and associated notes.


Perdita Manuscripts

Full-Text
Coverage: 1545-1752

Digital facsimiles of manuscripts by early modern women writers from the UK and Ireland, covering topics ranging from daily life to religion to biography and more.


Slave Voyages

Data, Visual Resource

Detailed data on slaving voyages from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database and the Intra-American Slave Trade Database. Also includes the African Names Database, which provides details of Africans taken from captured slave ships or from African trading sites, and a database of images relating to the slave trade.