Cultural heritage materials gathered during the World Digital Library (WDL) project, including thousands of items contributed by UNESCO partner organizations worldwide as well as content from Library of Congress collections.
Primary sources from the 19th Century, covering Europe and Africa, Mapping the World, Photography, and Women.
Europe and Africa: Commerce, Christianity, Civilization, and Conquest
Monographs, manuscripts, and newspapers covering key issues of economics, world politics, and international strategy.
Mapping the World: Maps and Travel Literature
Selections from map repositories of the British Library and the National Archives at Kew representing the nineteenth century.
Photography: The World Through the Lens
Collections of photographs, photograph albums, photographically-illustrated books and texts on the early history of photography from libraries and archives from across the globe. Some images are well-known while many have rarely been viewed.
Women: Transnational Networks
Focuses on issues at the intersection of gender and class from the late 18th century to the era of suffrage in the early 20th century, through a transnational perspective. The collection contains sources on European and North American movements and collections from other regions.
All works printed in Europe before 1701, and all pre-1701 works in European languages printed elsewhere. Facsimile images are scanned directly from original printed sources.
Bibliographic records of printed works about the Americas written in Europe before 1750, covering the history of European exploration and portrayals of Native American peoples.
Growing consortium of North American institutions with collections of global premodern manuscripts, and dedicated to building an online national union catalog for manuscripts in US collections.
This website holds detailed information on over 6000 films showing images of life in the British colonies. Over 150 films are available for viewing online.
The Queen's Journals detailing household and family matters, affairs of state, meetings with statesmen and other eminent figures, and comment on the literature of the day. The journals are a valuable primary source for scholars of nineteenth century British political and social history, and for those working on gender and autobiographical writing.
Complete coverage of the sessional papers of the British House of Commons and the 19th Century House of Lords. Includes over 200,000 papers from 1715 to the present, with supplementary material back to 1688.
Hundreds of British periodicals in full text, from the 17th century through the early 21st. Topics include literature, philosophy, history, science, the social sciences, music, art, drama, archaeology and architecture.
Archive of over 30 periodicals covering the 20th-century history of the British Empire, decolonization, and the history and culture of former colonies.
The archive offers a mixture of British publications about the empire and titles published in Commonwealth countries (including Australia, New Zealand, India, Canada, South Africa, and Papua New Guinea).
Coverage spans over 150 years, ranging from the late-19th century to the 21st – these publications encompass the empire’s later phase and its post-independence legacies. It will support research in key events in colonial history, including the latter stages of the Scramble for Africa, the world wars, independence movements, the creation of the Commonwealth and more. While official publications contain valuable information about colonial administration and ideology, more popular titles, covering the arts, society, and general interests, provide insights into many facets of Commonwealth countries’ history and society before and after independence.
Primary source documents from 1520-1668 spanning the reigns of Elizabethan I and James I/VI. Covering English domestic politics, overseas events, interactions with other powers, reports of English ambassadors to European courts, and the network of overseas agents.
The Cecil Papers are a privately held archive of approximately 30,000 sixteenth and seventeenth-century manuscripts, consisting principally of the correspondence of William Cecil, Lord Burghley (1520-1598) and his son Robert, the 1st Earl of Salisbury (1563-1612). These two men dominated the administration of government during the reign of Elizabeth I and the first eight years under her successor, to the extent that critics suggested that England was becoming a regnum Cecilianum.
La Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes se constituye como Centro de Humanidades Digitales en la Universidad de Alicante en 2021. Primary sources in Spanish.
Large archive of the modern Jewish experience; Digital collection features rare books, children’s books, letters, maps, memoirs, posters, photographs, scrapbooks, oral histories and more.
Includes recordings dating back as far as 1904, sound files, graphics of record covers and labels, and details of the recordings and their contents. From Dartmouth College.
Please note, this is not a free music download site. If you are not a student at Dartmouth College or at Hebrew College, you will need to register and demonstrate a legitimate scholarly or research purpose. User accounts are good for 6 months and can be renewed if needed.
Official volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States that documents U.S. policy immediately before, during, and after the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Sources on anti-Semitism as an issue in politics, economics, religion, and education. German-language books and pamphlets, principally anti-Semitic and many directly connected with Nazi groups. Most writings date from the 1920s and 1930s. Some writings are on Jehovahs Witnesses, the Jesuits, and the Freemasons.
Digital repository of images from the Center for Jewish Art, a research institute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem devoted to the documentation and research of Jewish visual culture.
Traces the history and movement of Jewish books since the inception of printed books. Includes the history of individual copies of books printed between 1450 and 1800. From Columbia University.
Hundreds of newspapers available to read and search through online: Israeli press, Jewish press, Arabic press of Ottoman and mandatory Palestine, children press and daily press.
Documents related to the Holocaust and Nazi Germany, organized by A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust. From the Florida Center for Instructional Technology.
Primary sources collections, including photographs; diaries and letters; documents; testimonies; maps; and images of artifacts and artwork. Part of the larger Yad Vashem website.
The Bodleian holds what is probably still regarded as the best collection of Hebrew manuscripts in the world, alongside an extraordinarily rich collection of early Hebrew and Yiddish printed books. All fields of traditional Hebrew scholarship are represented in the collection, and the digitized items reflect this diversity.
The earliest manuscript accessions in Hebrew were received in 1601 and in the first catalogue of the library (1605) there are 58 books with titles in Hebrew script. The Library’s founder, Thomas Bodley, took a personal interest in Hebrew manuscripts, and after his death, the Library continued to enrich the Hebrew collections. In 1692 it purchased the collections of Dr Robert Huntington and Professor Edward Pococke. Among the 212 manuscripts in the Huntington collection is the Mishneh Torah of Maimonides (1155-1204) with the author’s signature.
The acquisition in 1817 of the manuscript collection which had belonged to the Venetian Jesuit, Matteo Luigi Canonici, represented the largest single purchase ever made by the Library. The collection contains over 110 valuable Hebrew manuscripts, chiefly on vellum. In 1829 the Bodleian bought the Oppenheim Library thought to be the most important and magnificent Hebraica collection ever accumulated. Rabbi David ben Abraham Oppenheim (1664-1736) was the Chief Rabbi of Prague and during his lifetime he had amassed 780 manuscripts and 4,220 printed books in Hebrew, Yiddish and Aramaic, many of which are the only surviving copies. Further significant collections of Hebrew manuscripts were added in 1848 and 1890.
The digitized items - most of which were digitized as part of the Polonsky Foundation Digitization Project - include MS. Kennicott 1, ‘the Kennicott bible’ a magnificently decorated 15th century Hebrew bible donated to the library by Benjamin Kennicott; and MS. Kennicott 3, a rare example of a dated and lavishly illustrated Ashkenazi Pentateuch.
Thousands of Yiddish books digitized as a project of the National Yiddish Book Center and the Internet Archive. Browse by turning pages or download as PDF files.
The Yiddish Theater developed as a uniquely American form in the Eastern European Jewish immigrant community in New York City and other urban centers during the early twentieth century. These unpublished manuscripts include light comedies and dramas. Manuscripts are in the original Yiddish characters and not transliterated.
Memorial books of communities destroyed in the Holocaust that describe daily life through essays and photographs. Most texts were published 1950s-1970s and are in Hebrew or Yiddish; some with English translations. From New York Public Library collection.
