Introduction to History Research at MSU: Primary Source Collections

As a biographical resource, American History in Video will include hundreds of profiles of great American leaders and personalities. As an encyclopedia of history, it provides footage of seminal historic events. Compare Kennedy’s rhetorical flair with Nixon’s. Examine racial stereotypes as presented in newsreels featuring African Americans prior to 1950. Consider Ed Herlihy’s use of alliteration and other tropes of propaganda in WW2 newsreels. These and thousands of other searches are easy with American History in Video.

This digital edition of the American Antiquarian Society’s extraordinary holdings of slavery and abolition materials delivers more than 3,500 works published over the course of more than 100 years. The American Slavery Collection addresses every facet of American slavery—one of the most important and controversial topics in U.S. history. These diverse materials, all filmed in full-resolution color, include books, pamphlets, graphic materials, and ephemera; among them are a large number of invaluable Southern imprints.

AM Explorer provides a way to do a general search across many of Adam Matthew digital collections. Owned collections:


• African American Communities
• Age of Exploration
• America in World War Two
• American History
• American Indian Histories and Cultures
• American Indian Newspapers
• American West
• Archives Direct:
- Apartheid South Africa
- Central Asia, Persia and Afghanistan
- Confidential Print: Africa
- Confidential Print: Latin America
- Confidential Print: Middle East
- Confidential Print: North America
- Foreign Office Files for China
- Foreign Office Files for India, Pakistan and Afghanistan
- Foreign Office Files for Japan
- Foreign Office Files for the Middle East
- Foreign Office Files for Southeast Asia
- The Nixon Years
- Macmillan Cabinet Papers
- Women in The National Archives, Kew
• Children's Literature and Culture – https://www.childrensliterature.amdigital.co.uk
• China, America and the Pacific – https://www.cap.amdigital.co.uk
• China: Culture and Society – https://www.chinacultureandsociety.amdigital.co.uk
• China: Trade, Politics and Culture: https://www.china.amdigital.co.uk
• Church Missionary Society Periodicals – https://www.churchmissionarysociety.amdigital.co.uk
• Colonial America – https://www.colonialamerica.amdigital.co.uk
• Colonial Caribbean- https://www.colonialcaribbean.amdigital.co.uk
• Defining Gender – https://www.gender.amdigital.co.uk
• Early Modern England – https://www.earlymodernengland.amdigital.co.uk
• East India Company – https://www.eastindiacompany.amdigital.co.uk
• Eighteenth Century Journals Portal – https://www.18thcjournals.amdigital.co.uk
• Eighteenth Century Drama – https://www.eighteenthcenturydrama.amdigital.co.uk
• Empire Online – https://www.empire.amdigital.co.uk
• Ethnomusicology – https://www.ethnomusicology.amdigital.co.uk
• Everyday Life and Women in America – https://www.everydaylife.amdigital.co.uk
• First World War Portal – https://www.firstworldwar.amdigital.co.uk
• Food and Drink in History – https://www.foodanddrink.amdigital.co.uk
• Frontier Life – https://www.frontierlife.amdigital.co.uk
• Gender: Identity and Social Change – https://www.genderidentityandsocialchange.amdigital.co.uk
• The Gilded Age and Progressive Era – https://www.gildedage.amdigital.co.uk
• Global Commodities – https://www.globalcommodities.amdigital.co.uk
• The Grand Tour – http://www.grandtour.amdigital.co.uk
• India, Raj and Empire – https://www.indiaraj.amdigital.co.uk
• Interwar Culture - https://www.interwarculture.amdigital.co.uk
• J. Walter Thompson: Advertising America - https://www.jwtadvertisingamerica.amdigital.co.uk
• Jewish Life in America
• Leisure, Travel and Mass Culture: The History of Tourism
• Life at Sea
• Literary Manuscripts Berg
• Literary Manuscripts Leeds
• Literary Print Culture
• London Low Life
• Market Research and American Business
• Mass Observation Online
• Mass Observation Project
• Medical Services and Warfare
• Medieval Family Life
• Medieval Travel Writing
• Meiji Japan
• Migration to New Worlds
• Nineteenth Century Literary Society: The John Murray Publishing Archive
• Perdita Manuscripts
• Popular Medicine
• Popular Culture in Britain and America
• Poverty, Philanthropy and Social Conditions in Victorian Britain
• Race Relations in America
• Romanticism
• Service Newspapers of World War Two
• Sex and Sexuality
• Shakespeare’s Globe Archive
• Shakespeare in Performance
• Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice
• Socialism on Film
• Trade Catalogues and the American Home
• Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History
• Victorian Popular Culture
• Victorians on Film
• Virginia Company Archives
• World’s Fairs

Archives of Sexuality & Gender, the largest collection available in support of the study of gender and sexuality, enables scholars to make new connections in LGBTQ history and activism, cultural studies, psychology, health, political science, policy studies, and other related areas of research.

Includes: LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940, Parts I & II; Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century; and International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture.

Archives Unbound presents topically-focused digital collections of historical documents that support the research and study needs of scholars and students at the college and university level. Collections in Archives Unbound cover a broad range of topics from the Middle Ages forward--from Witchcraft to World War II to twentieth-century political history.

When complete, Black Thought and Culture will provide approximately 100,000 pages of monographs, essays, articles, speeches, and interviews written by leaders within the black community from the earliest times to 1975. The collection is intended for research in black studies, political science, American history, music, literature, and art.

Border and Migration Studies Online is a collection that explores and provides historical background on more than thirty key worldwide border areas, including: U.S. and Mexico; the European Union; Afghanistan; Israel; Turkey; The Congo; Argentina; China; Thailand; and others. Featuring at completion 100,000 pages of text, 175 hours of video, and 1,000 images, the collection is organized around fundamental themes associated with border and migration issues.

C19: The Nineteenth Century Index is a gateway, or portal, into a variety of primary sources for 19th Century studies, especially of the British Isles. Each resource or database may also be accessed/searched individually in the Electronic Resources pages: Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals,1824-1900,American Periodicals Series, Periodicals Index Online, NSTC, House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, Palmer's Index to the Times, Archives USA, U.S Congressional Serial Set. Results of searches in the Times newspaper, 1800-1870 link to full-text, as do most searches in Wellesley Index, APS, PIO, and House of Commons Parliamentary Papers. For results from NSTC searches, use our online catalog to see if we own the book.

Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800 is the definitive resource for information about every aspect of life in 17th- and 18th-century America, from agriculture and auctions through foreign affairs, diplomacy, literature, music, religion, the Revolutionary War, temperance, witchcraft, and just about any other topic imaginable. This resource consists of more than 37,000 books, pamphlets, and broadsides.

Covering every aspect of American life during the early decades of the United States, Early American Imprints, Series II (1801-1819) provides full-text access to the 36,000 American books, pamphlets and broadsides published in the first nineteen years of the nineteenth century. In addition to its books, pamphlets and broadsides, this comprehensive collection features many state papers and government materials, including published reports; presidential letters and messages; congressional, state and territorial resolutions.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) contains digital versions of 150,000 works published or printed from 1701-1800 in England, and other English-speaking places around the world (including the rest of the British Isles, the American colonies, and the early United States).

The HistoryMakers Digital Archive provides access to a collection of thousands of African American video oral histories.

Includes archive collections on British politics and society; Asia and the West; British Theatre, Music, and Literature; European Literature, 1700-1840; Europe and Africa; Photography; Science, Technology, and Medicine; Children's Literature; Maps and Travel Literature; and Religion, Society, Spirituality, and Reform.

This resource includes documents from the United States and Europe, as well as other parts of the world. In addition to newspaper collections and books published in the antebellum era, Slavery and Anti-Slavery contains documents from several archives. Includes:

Part I: Debates Over Slavery and Abolition
Part II: Slave Trade in the Atlantic World
Part III: The Institution of Slavery
Part IV: The Age of Emancipation