Estimated time to complete this section: 75 minutes
In addition to the national repositories that contain material related to places throughout the country, there are also a variety of institutions in each state that contain sources relevant to that area. There are a variety of sites to help you identify the digital collections in your state, if you do not already know them:
- Library of Congress- Portals to State History– includes links to state and regional digital archives. Created in 2013, this list does not include all the state level collections now available.
- National History Day affiliates have compiled local/state level information on historic sites, libraries and museums
State library collections range widely in scale and scope, and are organized and described in a variety of ways, but the general approaches to search outlined for the national repositories will help you identify primary sources relevant to your local history.
Additional resources that may be useful:
- Chronicling America (Library of Congress) a searchable database of U.S. newspapers that provides access to historic newspapers and some digitized newspaper pages.
- Sanborn Maps (Library of Congress and other state level archives) designed to assist fire insurance agents, these detailed maps include information on the shape and size of cities between 1867 and the present.
- Hathi Trust Digital Library – a library of digitized texts collected from a variety of sources, including Google, Microsoft, and university libraries. Some of the material is still in copyright and only available to users from specific institutions; most is publically available, and can accessed through full-text search.
- Regional National Archives Research Centers – locate one near you
- Archive Grid (OCLC WorldCat) a searchable database of records describing primary source collections held in archives, libraries, museums and historical societies. The database does contain digitized material, but can be used to help you identify local institutions that hold primary source material that might be relevant to your research.
- Teaching History – National Resources – collects links for different national resources for history content (from US Coast Guard and National Institutes of Health, to Federal Highway Administration and the Architect of the Capitol) Each page has some framing text and points visitors to content on the site.
Activity 2.1.2: Scavenger Hunt
Apply the lessons learned in this section with a scavenger hunt for digital sources. Search the collections and resources you have explored in this section.
- Find a film clip depicting a historical event from your hometown or home state.
- Find a newspaper published in your hometown or a nearby community in the nineteenth century
Previous Section | Next Section