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Key Resources
Covers Canada and the United States.
Covers the rest of the world.
Provides access to the complete archives of major journals in a variety of subjects.
Multidisciplinary search for scholarly literature. Connect via the Library and seamlessly connect to the fulltext of articles that are in our collection.
Pick a research topic
- Read your assignment instructions carefully
- Pick a topic that interests you and meets the criteria of the assignment
- Identify key concepts of your research topic
- Need extra help? Click on Choosing an essay topic
- Developing strong research questions
- Do some background reading on your topic using Wikipedia
- Using Wikipedia wisely (video)
Use dictionaries and handbooks to find overviews on broad topics
- American Constitutional History: a brief introduction
- American History: a very short introduction
- A Companion to African American History
- Hutchison Dictionary of American history
- The Oxford companion to United States history
Search Omni, the library's main search box to easily find books and peer-reviewed journal articles or books on any topic. If you need help, use Omni Search Tips
- To find books using Omni
- To find journal articles using Omni
- To obtain high quality academic journal literature, remember to refine your search by selecting the following options: Peer-Reviewed Journals, Articles, Subject (optional).
Search subject-specific databases to find journal articles. They offer many advanced search features and search results tend to be more precise.
Key Journal Article Databases:
- America History and Life (covers North America)
- Historical Abstracts (covers the world, excluding North America)
- American Periodicals Series Online
- American State Papers, 1789-1838
- Avalon Project
- Bibliography of British and Irish History
- Bibliography of Indigenous Peoples in North America
- British History Online
- C19, The Nineteenth Century index
- Google Scholar - by connecting via the databases web page you will be able to seamlessly connected to Carleton's fulltext collection of journal articles
- HAPI Online
- History of Feminism
- JSTOR
- Periodicals Archive Online
- Readers Guide Retrospective
Dissertations Database
Begin with:
- Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources overview.
How to search for primary sources using Omni:
- Search your topic (or historical person of interest) on Omni to find primary sources (or reproductions) in our collection.
- Keyword searches with the following terms may help identify primary materials: Diar* (for diary or diaries), Correspondence. Letters, Memoir*, Personal narrative, Recollections, Reminiscences, Journal, Sources.
Other search tips:
- Use bibliographies and footnotes of secondary sources on your topic to help identify primary source material.
- Useful book: History beyond the text: a student's guide to approaching alternative sources
- Original documents can also be found by searching our archival collections or by contacting the Archives and Special Collections (ASC) staff for help. The library has many microform collections of primary sources as well.
Primary Sources on the web
- Digital Public Library of America
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online
- Eighteenth Century Journals
- Empire Online
- Hathi Trust Digital Library
- Library of Congress Digital Collections
- Making of America Digital Library
- New York Public Library Digital Collections
- Primary Sources for United States History (RUSA)
Newspapers
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
- Illinois Digital Newspapers
- New York Times Archives (1851-2005) How-to video: Using the New York Times Archives for primary sources
- Wall Street Journal (1889-1991)
- Washington Post (1877-1992)
- Times Digital Archive (1785-1992) [U.K.]
- The Guardian (1821-2003) [U.K.]
- The Observer (1791-2003) [U.K.]
Archives
Government Information
- American Government and Politics
- Library of Congress Digital Collections
- U.S. Congressional Serial Set (1817-1980) with American State Papers (1789-1838)
Other Media
Images
- ARTstor - digital library of art images. Includes approximately 500,000 images covering art, architecture and archeology.
- Digital History
- Digital Public Library of America
- Farber Gravestone Collection (American Antiquarian Society) - The Farber Gravestone Collection is an unusual resource containing over 13,500 images documenting the sculpture on more than 9,000 gravestones, most of which were made prior to 1800, in the Northeastern part of the United States.
- Images of African Americans from the 19th Century
- JCB Image Collections (Brown University)- includes Archive of Early American Images, Maps, and Political Cartoons
- Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Catalog
- Life Magazine
- LIFE Photos
- New York Public Library Digital Gallery
- Pictures of the Civil War (National Archives)
- Picturing U.S. History
- U.S. History Images
- USC Digital Library - provides access to over 100,000 photographs, maps, manuscripts, records, texts, and sound recordings owned by USC and collaborating institutions with particular emphasis on materials related to Los Angeles and the Southern California region.
- Wellcome Images: 2000 years of human culture
Audio Interviews
- American Archive of Public Broadcasting
- Behind the veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South
- Great Depression Interviews
- Oral Histories of the American South: The Civil Rights Movement
- The Roaring Twenties - provides visitors with an intriguing interactive experience about the urban soundscape and human responses to industrial, human, and transportation noise from January to June 1930. Supporting features such as complaints, documents, official responses, articles from the New York Times, newsreels, laws and Noise Abatement Commission (NYC) responses provide context to the historic view of the soundscape.
- Studs Terkel Radio Archive
- Who Speaks for the Negro - Interviews
Films and Videos
- Find Films and Videos at Carleton
Maps & Atlases
- America Discovered: A Historical Atlas of North American Exploration
- Atlas of African-American History
- Atlas of Hispanic-American History
- Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States
- British Atlantic, American Frontier (Canadian-American Center)
- Civil War Maps (Library of Congress)
- David Ramsey Historical Map Collection
Historical map collection
- France in America (Library of Congress)
- Historical Atlas of Native Americans
- Historical Atlas of the United States with original maps
- The Routledge Atlas of America History
- Hotchkiss Map Collection - Confederate Army Maps (Library of Congress)
- Map Collections: 1500-2004 (Library of Congress)
- Map History/History of Cartography
- Mapping the African American Past (Columbia University)
- Maps etc. Early America 1400-1800
