Resources by Topic

United States History and Culture

Accessible Archives

Accessible Archives provides a comprehensive database of diverse primary resources related to 18th, 19th, and early-20th Century American history and culture.

African Americans and Jim Crow: Repression and Protest

African Americans and Jim Crow: Repression and Protest offers more than 1,000 fully searchable printed works critical for insight into African-American culture and life from the beginning of Jim Crow to World War I and beyond.

African Americans and Reconstruction: Hope and Struggle

African Americans and Reconstruction: Hope and Struggle provides nearly 1,400 fully searchable printed works essential for understanding the African-American struggle for identity from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of Jim Crow.

African History and Culture 1540-1921

African History and Culture, 1540-1921, features over 1,300 fully cataloged and searchable books, pamphlets, almanacs, broadsides, and ephemera that exploration the history, peoples, and socio-economic development of the African continent from the 16th century to the early 20th century.

America’s Historical Imprints

America’s Historical Imprints contains 3 collections and 2 supplements of books, pamphlets, broadsides and other scarce printed material.

American Political Prints 1766-1876

Harper's Weekly provides online access to digital images and descriptive text from Bernard Reilly’s annotated catalogue of political cartoons from 1766-1876.

Ancestry Library Edition

Ancestry Library Edition provides access to documents recording the lineage of individuals from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, and more.

Benjamin Franklin Papers

In a life spanning from 1706 to 1790, Benjamin Franklin's collected papers and correspondence present a panoramic view of the eighteenth century.

Black Authors 1556-1922

Black Authors, 1556-1922, encompasses over 550 works written by black authors from various regions, including the Americas, Europe, and Africa. The collection covers an extensive range of genres, including personal narratives, autobiographies, histories, novels, essays, poems, and musical compositions.

Caribbean History and Culture

Caribbean History and Culture, 1535-1920, is an extensive collection of over 1,200 cataloged and searchable items such as books, pamphlets, almanacs, broadsides, and ephemera related to the Caribbean region.

Digital Paxton

Digital Paxton is a digital collection, critical edition, teaching platform devoted to the 1764 pamphlet war.

Digital Shaw-Shoemaker

Published in cooperation with the American Antiquarian Society, the Shaw-Shoemaker Series provides online access to books, pamphlets, and broadsides from the 19th century.

In Her Own Right

A collaborative digitization project, In Her Own Right includes collections on women’s advocacy in moral reform, abolition, education, work, relief for the poor, healthcare, and women’s own rights from the Philadelphia area between 1820-1920.

JSTOR

JSTOR provides access to more than 12 million academic journal articles, books, and primary sources in 75 disciplines.

Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection

Collected by Lester S. Levy and donated to Johns Hopkins University beginning in 1976, the Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection comprises American sheet music from the 18th through 20th centuries.

Making of America (MoA)

Making of America (MoA) is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction.

Pennsylvania Civil War Era Newspapers

The Pennsylvania Civil War Era Newspapers database contains all the words and images from selected newspapers published during the pivotal years before, during, and after the U.S. Civil War.

Philadelphia Architects and Buildings

Historical data, digital images, and links to resources documenting buildings and structures within the city of Philadelphia or designed by Philadelphia architects.

PhillyHistory.org

PhillyHistory is an award-winning online archival project of historic photographs and maps directed by the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Records.

Samuel J. May Antislavery Collection

Cornell Library’s May Anti-Slavery Collection includes over 10,000 pamphlets and ephemera that document the anti-slavery struggle at the local, regional, and national levels.

The Annuity Museum

The Annuity museum allows visitors to learn online about the history of annuities, from their earliest origins in ancient Rome through the middle of the 20th century.

Watson’s Annals

This digital source, from the US GenWeb Archives on Philadelphia County, provides the full text of collection of memoirs, anecdotes, and incidents of early 18th and early 19th century Pennsylvanian life.