13 History
Book Collections & Textbooks
- History in the Making: A History of the People of the United States of America to 1877: This textbook examines U.S. History from before European Contact through Reconstruction, while focusing on the people and their history; double blind peer reviewed by over thirty scholars for scholarly and high standard of quality. “This book provides a strong emphasis on critical thinking about US History by providing several key features in each chapter.”
- Pressbooks: U.S. History Textbooks: Pressbooks U.S. History (filtered); titles include U.S. History, US History II, U.S. History I: Pre-Colonial to 1865, U.S. History II: 1877 to Present, US History I & II YAWP
- Shingwauk Narratives: Sharing Residential School History: The Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre (SRSC) holds letter books of the first principal of the Shingwauk Residential School. The letters range in date from 1875-1904, and include a wealth of information about the early history of Shingwauk and Wawanosh.
The letter books incorporate topics such as funding, staffing, student life, religious missions to aboriginal communities, and more which is not known to the wider public. - OpenBook Publishers: History and Biography: “We are the leading independent Open Access publisher in the Humanities and Social Sciences in the UK: a not-for-profit Social Enterprise run by scholars who are committed to making high-quality research freely available to readers around the world.” CC BY
The Internet Archive began in 1996 and provides free access to a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts for use by researchers, historians, scholars, people with print disabilities, and the general public.
The archive contains 625 billion web pages, 38 million books and texts, 7 million videos, and 4 million images.
Repositories & Research
- Advisory Council on Historic Preservation: The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) is an independent federal agency that promotes the preservation, enhancement, and productive use of our nation’s historic resources, and advises the President and Congress on national historic preservation policy. [Federal Gov’t]
- The Crisis: “Founded in 1910 as the house magazine of the NAACP and edited by W. E. B. Du Bois, The Crisis quickly became the most important voice of the African-American struggle for cultural identity and civic justice in the U.S.” Many Public Domain images can be found within the volumes. [Public Domain]
- American Indian Boarding School: uses primary sources to explore American Indian boarding schools; DPLA Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States; created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA’s Education Advisory Committee [CC BY]
- UNESCO Digital Library: African History Books & Articles: The UNESCO Digital Library is the repository of UNESCO’s institutional memory and a source of information on UNESCO activities (in education, natural sciences, social and human sciences, culture, and communication and information), with more than 350,000 documents dating back to 1945. It includes the collections of the UNESCO Library and several documentation centres in UNESCO’s Field Offices and Institutes, as well as the UNESCO Archives.
- History Monographs: open monographs.
- Berghahn CC-Licensed Journals: History: “Berghahn Journals is the journals division of Berghahn Books, an award-winning independent publisher of distinguished scholarly books and journals in the humanities and social sciences. Founded in 1994, our program, which includes close to 40 journals and over 125 new titles a year, spans Anthropology, Migration & Refugee Studies, Geography, History, and Film Studies.”
- Open Access at The Met: The Met’s Open Access initiative is made possible through the continued generous support of Bloomberg Philanthropies and “all images of public-domain works in The Met collection are available under Creative Commons Zero (CC0). So whether you’re an artist or a designer, an educator or a student, a professional or a hobbyist, you now have more than 375,000 images of artworks from our collection to use, share, and remix—without restriction.”
- Auschwitz Memorial and Museum Historical Collection: This digital collection houses “tens of thousands of objects of a special nature, special meaning, and special symbolism.” Includes images of objects connected with the life of prisoners in the camp and the SS garrison. “A unique collection of items connected with the suffering of the people deported to Auschwitz.”
- Records of the American Colonies: Published documents–legislation, court proceedings, records, correspondence, etc.–from the 13 original colonies and their predecessors.
- UBC Library’s Open Collections: UBC Library acquires archival materials which document the economic, political, cultural, labour, and literary history of British Columbia and Canada, as well as the history of the University. Archival material which is born digital or digitized is included in Open Collections. Includes digital photos, books, newspapers, maps, videos, and theses.
- Humanities Commons: A network for people working in the humanities. Project of Modern Language Association (MLA); focused on providing a space to discuss, share, and store cutting-edge research and innovative pedagogy. [various CC licenses]
- HIS101 Western Civ:Antiquity-1650: Explores a number of events, peoples, groups, ideas, institutions, and trends that have shaped Western Civilization from the prehistoric era to 1650. Reflects the multiple perspectives of gender, class, religion, and ethnic groups.Materials have been librarian-curated from a variety of sources and vetted for content and alignment by subject matter experts.
- HIS121 US History to Reconstruction: Explores events, trends, peoples, groups, cultures, ideas, and institutions in North America and United States history, including the multiple perspectives of gender, class, and ethnicity, between the period when Native American Indians were the sole inhabitants of North America, and the American Civil War. Materials have been librarian-curated from a variety of sources and vetted for content and alignment by subject matter experts.
- HIS122 US History since Civil War: Explores events, trends, peoples, groups, cultures, ideas, and institutions in United States History, including the multiple perspectives of gender, class, and ethnicity, between the period of the American Civil War and the present. Materials have been librarian-curated from a variety of sources and vetted for content and alignment by subject matter experts.
- National Library of Ireland Online Catalogue: Printed collections including journals, magazines, and government publications; manuscripts catalogued since 1990; visual collections including prints & drawings, and photos
OER SPOTLIGHT: HISTORY
Flickr Commons: The Commons is an initiative, begun in 2008, to increase access to publicly-held photography collections, and to provide a way for the general public to contribute information and knowledge. Material with “no known copyright restrictions” is contributed by a vast array of participating institutions from all over the world including: 1930s-40s in Color; Washington Area Spark’s albums; Urban J. Kinet Collection; Roadside America, NYC-Philly Vintage Baseball, and more. The Imperial War Museum (IWM) Flickr Collections cover aspects of twentieth and twenty-first century conflict involving Britain and the Commonwealth.
Images
- Flickr Commons: The Commons is an initiative, begun in 2008, to increase access to publicly-held photography collections, and to provide a way for the general public to contribute information and knowledge. Material with “no known copyright restrictions” is contributed by a vast array of participating institutions from all over the world including: 1930s-40s in Color; Washington Area Spark’s albums; Urban J. Kinet Collection; Roadside America, NYC-Philly Vintage Baseball, and more.
- Imperial War Museum (IWM) Flickr Collections: The Imperial War Museum Collections cover aspects of twentieth and twenty-first century conflict involving Britain and the Commonwealth.
Video
- Smarthistory Videos: Videos on art and cultural objects that range from the paleolithic to the present. Go inside museums and engages in conversations about how to interpret and understand the art you are viewing. CC BY-NC-SA license seen at end of each video
- PublicResourceOrg: Videos provided under the FedFlix program by the National Technical Information Service under Joint Venture NTIS-1832. Many copied by the volunteer Master Scanners of the International Amateur Scanning League (IASL) with support of Archivist of the United States, the Honorable David Ferriero. Several hundred DVDs provided by the Department of Defense.
- Library of Congress Films & Videos: film and video collections from the Library of Congress.
- TED Talks: History: A collection of TED Talks on the topic of History [CC BY-NC-ND, unless otherwise noted]
- Exploring the Medieval Manuscript Book: Dr Irene O’Daly (Book and Digital Media Studies, Leiden University) teaches her students about the contents and materiality of medieval manuscript books. [CC BY]