LibGuides: Primary Sources: Databases

Newspapers

Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers This link opens in a new window
19th Century U.S. Newspapers provides access to primary source newspaper content from the 19th century, featuring full-text content and images from numerous newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S. The collection encompasses the entire 19th century, with an emphasis on such topics as the American Civil War, African-American culture and history, Western migration and Antebellum-era life, among other subjects.
African American Newspapers, 1827-1998 This link opens in a new window
African American Newspapers enables users to search more than 270 African American newspapers published in the 19th and 20th centuries. Created in partnership with the Wisconsin Historical Society, the Kansas State Historical Society and the Library of Congress, African American Newspapers chronicles a century and a half of the African American experience.

Local History

Fulton Search This link opens in a new window
A searchable repository of historic newspapers published in New York State and the United States between 1795 and 2007, frequently updated. Also includes a handful of international newspapers. FultonSearch offers an alternative interface to FultonHistory.com, pointing to files hosted and indexed there. To browse a list of the newspapers included in this resource, (https://fultonsearch.org/papers/). ***This resource occasionally experiences technical issues that temporarily shut down service to the site.
Be advised that this resource does not follow SUNY accessibility standards especially for those with disabilities. Please reach out to a librarian for any further assistance.
NYS Historic Newspapers This link opens in a new window
The NYS Historic Newspapers project provides free online access to a wide range of newspapers chosen to reflect New York's unique history.
This collection contains 1,401,602 issues comprising 14,100,322 pages.
New York Newspapers This link opens in a new window
New York Newspapers provides access to full-text articles from the New York Times and other New York state newspapers. Full text articles are searchable from present date back to the late 1990s for most titles in this database.

Slavery in America

Slavery in America and the World This link opens in a new window
This HeinOnline collection brings together a multitude of essential 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.

Salem Press History Collection

Salem Press-History This link opens in a new window
Salem provides access to a growing number of reference works in its renowned historical content both in traditional, printed form and online. This resource includes access to The Reference Shelf: an online collection of current titles of historical significance. Also includes Defining Documents and Milestone Documents in American History and World History.

Defining Documents in American History: Eras

Defining Documents in American History: Themes

Defining Documents in World History

Grey House: Milestone Documents in American and World History

American Historical Periodicals

American Historical Periodicals
American Historical Periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society provides a history of the American people from the colonial period through to the twentieth century. The periodicals focused on American concerns and were predominantly published in the United States or Canada, though some were published overseas by Americans living abroad.

General Databases

Academic OneFile A source for peer-reviewed, full-text articles with extensive coverage of business, the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, literature and other subjects. There are millions of articles available in both PDF and HTML full-text and also includes some images and video files. Full-text coverage of the New York Times back to 1995 in also included.

Academic Search Complete Academic Search Complete is a comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary database that contains more than 7,000 full-text periodicals, including nearly 6,000 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 11,000 journals and a total of more than 11,600 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, multimedia files, etc. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1887.

MasterFILE Premiere This database features 5,000 full text Magill Book Reviews; nearly 500 full text reference books (including the World Almanac & Book of Facts), full text from 84,074 biographies, 86,135 full text primary source documents, American Heritage Dictionary (4th Edition), and an image collection of 188,323 photos, maps and flags. MasterFILE Premier offers PDF backfiles as far back as 1975 for key publications.

History in Context

U.S. History in Context This link opens in a new window
U.S. History in Context delivers comprehensive, contextual, media-rich search results from the most extensive online collection of historical information available today. Topic searches feature links to journal articles, primary sources, reports, biographies, reference materials and more.
World History in Context This link opens in a new window
World History in Context is a comprehensive online collection that uses an intuitive, web-like interface to provide multicultural, global and research-based dynamic content that supports today's history research requirements. Reference books, audio and video content, biographies, articles and more. Includes detailed biographical information on more than 100 famous historical figures.

eBook Collections

Gale eBooks This link opens in a new window
Gale eBooks is a database of encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research. Many of these titles will contain primary documents,
Project Gutenberg This link opens in a new window
Project Gutenberg offers over 57,000 free eBooks. Choose among free epub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online. You will find the world's great literature here, with focus on older works for which copyright has expired.
ProQuest Ebook Central This link opens in a new window
An interdisciplinary ebook collection of more than 140,000 books from trusted publishers in all academic subject areas. Search the entire collection or browse by subject.

Harp Week

HarpWeek This link opens in a new window
Access to full-text and images from Harper's Weekly magazine. Contains primary research material for the study of the American Civil War. Coverage: American Civil War period, 1857-1865.