History

This scholarly database contains over 3,600 peer-reviewed publications in full-text on every subject.

Primary source material from 18th and 19th Century publications, including The Liberator 1831-1865, Godey`s Lady`s Book 1830-1889, The Pennsylvania Gazette 1728-1800, The Civil War: A Newspaper Perspective, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, American County Histories to 1900, The Pennsylvania Genealogical Catalogue, The Pennsylvania Newspaper Record, and The South Carolina Gazette.
** On August 30, 2024, Accessible Archives moved to the History Commons platform **

The American Council of Learned Societies Humanities E-Book Collection contains 5,400 scholarly books from 250 publishers in the subject areas of anthropology, area studies, international history, literature, philosophy, political science, and women's studies.

This collection of U.S. State Department Central Classified Files relating to internal and foreign affairs contain a wide range of materials from U.S. diplomats.
This resource was made possible through the Class of '32 Library Fund.

The Africa Bibliography is an authoritative guide to works in African Studies published under the auspices of the International African Institute annually since 1984.
Coverage: 1984-2022.

There is a known issue preventing OpenURL queries from working correctly. To find full text, either copy and paste article titles into AU Library Search, or connect to the secure campus networ (includes AU VPN) and click on Google Scholar links.

Covers 270 newspapers from every region of the United States, including 7 from Washington DC.

Full text access to seven 19th century African American newspapers.

Declassified FBI reports dealing with every aspect of antiwar work carried out by the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). The collection also includes surveillance on a variety of other antiwar groups and individuals, with an emphasis on student groups and communist organizations. Covers the period 1967 to 1975.

An index of scholarly literature on the history and culture of the United States and Canada.

Searchable database of The Washington Evening Star from 1852 - 1981.
This resource was made possible through the Brown Fund.

American Doctoral Dissertations provides electronic access to the print index Doctoral Dissertations Accepted by American Universities. The enhanced database includes more than 153,000 theses and dissertations from 1902 to the present.

Among the topics covered are educational methods, expenses, Indian customs, treaties with the government, and the Indians' reactions to denying their heritage - often a condition of accepting new faith.

Formed in 1968, the American Indian Movement (AIM) expanded from its roots in Minnesota and broadened its political agenda to include a searching analysis of the nature of social injustice in America. These FBI files provide detailed information on the evolution of AIM as an organization of social protest and the development of Native American radicalism.

Includes two collections, American Periodicals Series Online (APS Online) and American Periodicals from the Center for Research Libraries (APCRL), that contain digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the middle of the 20th century.

This collection of photographs documents the early history of American University and its campus in northwest Washington D.C., near Ward Circle, at the intersection of Massachusetts and Nebraska Avenues.

Papers from the renowned and outspoken poet, playwright, and critic, born LeRoi Jones, who was a key member of the Beat Generation and the Black Power movement.

Coverage: 1300 to present. Updated: Weekly, often daily.
A large collection of census records, vital records, immigration records, family histories, military records, court and legal documents, directories, photos, maps, and more from the U.S., Canada, U.K., Germany, Russia, eastern Europe, and China. From Ancestry.com.
The U.S. collections contain census records; birth, death, and marriage records including the Social Security Death Index; and U.S. border crossing and trans-ocean ship records.

Anthrosource is a complete electronic archive of all American Anthropological Association journals through 2003. Additionally, current issues for eleven of the AAA's most critical peer-reviewed publications including American Anthropologist and Cultural Anthropology are available at the site.

ArchiveGrid is a database of archival finding aids from libraries, museums, and archives. It helps identify archival materials such as historical documents, personal papers, and family histories and where they are.

Historical documents covering a broad range of topics. Strengths include U.S. foreign policy, U.S. civil rights, gender, sexuality, and women's studies, the Holocaust, and modern history of Africa, America, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.

Archive Finder is an index of over 206,000 manuscript collections as well as a directory of primary source repositories in the United States, United Kingdom, and Ireland. Researchers can use it to determine whether a collection contains material useful to their work. Archive Finder is comprised of ArchivesUSA and the cumulative index to the National Inventory of Documentary Sources in the UK and Ireland (NIDS UK/Ireland).

Bibliographic and citation information from over 1,700 scholarly arts and humanities journals from around the world.

This three part collection includes News Features & internal communications from 1848-2000, Washington, D.C. Bureau records from 1938-2009, and U.S. City Bureaus from 1931-2004).
This resource was made possible through the Samuel & Lucy Keker Endowed Library Fund.

A digitized version of the complete Atlanta Constitution newspaper starting in 1868 and running to 1945. Every year three additional years of content will be added.

Contains more than 15 million citations covering nearly 5 million people. Contains names, birth/death dates and bibliographic references.

Presents quantifiable statistical data that provides a systematic way to evaluate science, social science, and humanities books and their scholarly impact and influence. Book Citation Index has citation data from 2005 to present.

Online version of over 300 volumes of the Cambridge Histories book series published since 1960. Covers the history of the ancient and modern world, literature, language and linguistics, philosophy and religion, political thought, music and theater, science, economic history, and law in America.

A digitized version of the complete Chicago Tribune newspaper starting from 1849 to 1990.

Declassified by the State Department, the Records of the Office of Chinese Affairs, 1945-1955, provide valuable insight into numerous domestic issues in Communist and Nationalist China, U.S. containment policy as it was extended to Asia, and Sino-American relations during the post-war period.
This resource was made possible through the Class of '32 Library Fund.

English translations of news articles published in the Soviet Union and Russia from 1949 to 2010. Includes translations of Soviet government documents, laws and treaties, five-year plans and reports of their implementation, as well as speeches by leaders.
Note that we do not have access to The Current Digest of the Russian Press, 2011-present.

The DDRS contains about 700,000 declassified documents from 1900 to 2008. These documents are from the U.S. presidential libraries and the National Archives, and deal with nearly every major foreign and domestic event.
This resource was purchased in part through the generous support of Ronald Hamowy and Clement Ho.

Declassified documents central to US foreign and military policy since 1945. Documents include presidential directives, memos, diplomatic dispatches, meeting notes, independent reports, briefing papers, White House communications, emails, confidential letters, and other secret materials.

Access full text of dissertations and theses in PDF format authored by American students. Access includes digitized and electronic dissertations and theses from 1916 until present. To see other formats, check our library catalog.

Coverage: UK government documents from 1898 to 1950s. Updated: Regularly.
A collection of over 50,000 U.K. government documents from 1898 to 1950s relating to Britain's international relations, including foreign policy instructions, letters and memos, business reports, and more. They have been selected by the official historians of Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office and many were formerly classified. The British equivalent to the U.S. Foreign Relations of the United States.

A collection of 2000+ streaming documentaries by Icarus Films, Bullfrog Films and other premier documentary distributors. Over 500 topic areas including anthropology, cultural studies, environmental health, social justice, and women's history.

The collection presented here consists of Pearson's syndicated Washington Merry-Go-Round column published between 1932 and 1969. American University Library Special Collections Unit holds the typescript copies for the column that the syndicate sent to Pearson's office at the same time the typescripts were distributed to newspapers around the country.

This primary source collection contains digitized images of nearly every extant book, pamphlet, and broadside published in America from 1639 to 1819. Series I is based on a definitive work called the American Bibliography by Charles Evans and covers 1639-1800. Series II, based on the authoritative bibliography by Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker, covers 1801-1819.

This resource contains digitized images of nearly every extant book, pamphlet, and broadside published in America from 1639 to 1800. Early American Imprints consists of more than 36,000 works and 2,400,000 images; it is an important resource for information about every aspect of life in seventeenth and eighteenth-century America.

Full images of over 36,000 books, pamphlets and broadsides published in the U.S. in the early 19th century covering all aspects of American life. Based on the "American Bibliography 1801-1819" by Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker.
This resource was made possible through the Roger H. and Nancy Brown Endowed Library Fund.

Contains full-page images of nearly 500 historic colonial and U.S. newspapers, based on the collection of the American Antiquarian Society.

A collection of over 125,000 titles, from the first book published in English, through 1700. Disciplines covered include literature, history, philosophy, theology, music, and the sciences.

U.S. Department of State records relating to the internal affairs of East Germany
This resource was made possible through the Class of '32 Library Fund.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) features the digitized format of 150,000 printed works -- nearly every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas.

Citations to more than 32,000 printed material about the Americas written in Europe before 1750. It covers the history of European exploration as well as portrayals of native American peoples. This database is the online version of the 6 volumes "European Americana: A Chronological Guide to Works Printed In Europe Relating to The Americas, 1493-1750," edited by John Alden and Dennis Landis (New York: Readex Books, 1980-1988).

The Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church includes information on the establishment of indigenous churches, educational facilities, hospitals, orphanages, and seminaries. Includes correspondence, sermons, diary accounts, receipts of sale, and field accounts.

FBI files on radical U.S. figures and organizations. Documents cover 1956 to 1971.

Contains files of the FBI Counterintelligence Program (CONTELPRO) from 1956 to 1971 on prominent black Americans and their organizations.

The FIAF International Film Archive Database is published by the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) and contains several databases: the International Index to Film Periodicals, the International Index to Television Periodicals, the List of Periodicals Indexed, the Treasures from the Film Archives, the FIAF Affiliates Publications and the Film and TV Documentation Collections.

Choose from over 7500 streaming films in the humanities and social sciences, business, science and mathematics, health, and newsreels. About 50% of content has captioning available. No transcripts are provided.

The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports are U.S. government transcriptions and translations of radio broadcasts from foreign countries. Annexes comprise an additional 7,000 transcripts to the Daily Reports. The modern successor to the FBIS Daily Reports is the World News Connection.

This collection covers a wide range of viewpoints on political, social, and economic issues. It sheds light on the foreign relations interactions between Central American and South American countries. In the Caribbean, Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic are represented. This collection includes cables, memoranda, correspondence, reports and analyzes, and treaties.

Fuente Academica Premier is a rapidly expanding collection of over 570 scholarly journals from Latin America, Portugal and Spain. All major subject areas are covered with particular emphasis on agriculture, biological sciences, economics, history, law, literature, philosophy, psychology, public administration, religion and sociology. The database is updated weekly.

Searchable resource of 70+ years of public opinion data and analysis compiled by Gallup, Inc. Includes answers to more than 125,000 questions, and responses from more than 3.5 million people interviewed by the Gallup Poll since 1935. Data is available from the United States as well as 160 countries dating from 2005. User can create custom tables and export data.

Provides historic economic and financial data for more than 200 countries, with some data sets tracked as far back as the 13th century.

This collection documents the broad range of 19th century religious missionary activities, practices and thought in the U.S. by reproducing pivotal personal narratives, organizational records, and biographies of the essential leaders, simple missionaries, and churches. Includes missionary activities among Native Americans, African Americans, Africa, Fiji and the Sandwich Islands, India, China, Southeast Asia, Japan, and Hawaii.

Streaming video collection of over 150 famous speeches given by key contemporary and historical figures. Includes many speeches by U.S. politicians and former presidents.

An interactive database of Harper's Weekly magazine from the Civil War Era through the Gilded Age.
Coverage: 1857-1912

Bibliographic database covering the world's scholarly literature in history, excluding the United States and Canada. Equivalent to the printed version of Historical Abstracts.

Social and economic statistics of the United States from colonial times to 2000.

Citations to English-language articles, book reviews, and feature stories in over 190 journals devoted to Jewish affairs.

Collection of Department of State and CIA documents concerning South and North Vietnam.
This resource was made possible through the Class of '32 Library Fund.

This collection includes Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees subject files on virtually every group of racial, religious and political refugees from 1938 to 1947.
This resource was made possible through the Class of '32 Library Fund.

Collection of U.S. diplomatic and consular documents concerning Japan during the 1930s and 1940s.
This resource was made possible through the Class of '32 Library Fund.

This is a collection of 25 newspapers in Japanese-American internment camps run by the War Relocation Authority from 1942 to 1945. Most of the articles are in English, but many are in Japanese. Many of the titles are complete or substantially complete. Editions have been carefully collated and omissions are noted.

Documents of the Kennedy Administration (1961 to 1963) taken from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library related to international affairs. The documents span from 1958 to 1964.

Presents quantifiable statistical data that provides a systematic way to evaluate science and social science journals and their impact and influence. JCR Web has the latest five-year data on a journal.

Full-text of back issues of core journals in the humanities, social sciences and sciences, plus a collection of more than one million digital art images for teaching and research.

American University is participating in JSTOR’s interactive research tool beta testing. View our FAQ for details.

Provides access to the literature on the left, with a primary emphasis on politically and culturally engaged scholarship inside and outside the academy and a secondary emphasis on significant but little known sources of news and ideas.

An excellent source of up-to-date news, business and legal information. News stories date back to the late 1970s. U.S. and international sources are available for most content areas. Includes Company Dossier content.

Index to international literature on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender issues.

Composed of FBI surveillance files on the activities of the African Liberation Support Committee and All African People's Revolutionary Party; this collection provides two unique views on African American support for liberation struggles in Africa, the issue of Pan-Africanism, and the role of African independence movements as political leverage for domestic Black struggles.

A digital collection of Greek and Latin works of history, literature, medicine, philosophy, political science, religion, the sciences, and theater, translated into English.

Access to the Los Angeles times from 1881 through 2012.

Images from 61,000 works of literature on economics and business published from 1450-1945.
Part I, Goldsmith-Kress Collection 1450-1850; Part II, 1851-1914; Part III, 1890-1945; Part IV, 1800-1980.

Includes diaries, journals, and narratives of explorers, emigrants, military men, Native Americans, and travelers are complemented by accounts of the development of farming and mining communities, family histories, and folklore.

Access to the New York Times from 1851 to 2017.

Over 50,000 biographies of people who shaped all aspects of the British past, from the earliest times to the year 2000. All the people included in this work died before 31 December 2000.

The PAIS International database from ProQuest contains references to more than 634,401 journal articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, research reports, conference reports, publications of international agencies, microfiche, Internet material, and more. Includes publications from over 120 countries throughout the world. In addition to English, some of the indexed materials are published in French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.
PAIS Archive is a retrospective conversion of the PAIS Annual Cumulated Bulletin, volumes 1-62, published 1915-1976.

Coverage: 1941-1961.
Updated: None. Includes the most significant letters, memoranda, cables, and directives written or dictated by Eisenhower from prior to World War II through his presidency. The documents, many previously classified, were selected from private collections and public archives in the U.S. and U.K., as well as papers from the Eisenhower Presidential Library. This is the online version of the 21-volume The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower.

Over 6.9 million papers included in every congress, conference, exposition, workshop, symposium and meeting received at the British Library.

Transcribed text of the Pennsylvania Gazette, a prominent early American newspaper.

Periodicals Archive Online is a major online periodical archive that makes the back files of periodicals in the humanities and social sciences available electronically, providing access to the full text of a growing number of digitized periodicals that have been indexed in its sister database, Periodicals Index Online. Currently, Periodicals Archive Online contains over 600 journals, providing access to over 14 million article pages - representing over 2.8 million articles.

Periodicals Index Online is an electronic index to millions of articles published in over 6,400 periodicals in the humanities and social sciences. Periodicals Index Online was formerly known as Periodicals Contents Index (PCI). As of April 2010, Periodicals Index Online indexes over 15 million articles going as far back as 1665 and every article in each journal is indexed, from volume 1 issue 1 to recent times.

This collection contains the documents of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first U.S. lesbian rights organization, and its founders, Phillis Lyon and Del Martin. Covering the 1950s to 1980s, it also includes materials related to homophile and gay liberation organizations, lesbian mothers, and violence against women. The magazines The Ladder and Sisters are also included.

Polling the Nations is a database of public opinion polls containing the full text of 500,000 questions and responses from 15,000 surveys conducted from 1986 to the present in the United States and 90 other countries.
**Access limited to 4 concurrent users.**

A worldwide index of conference proceedings. Covers conference proceedings, congresses, exhibitions, meetings, symposiums, and workshops received by the British Library Document Supply Centre.

Full-text articles from journals in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics, published by university presses.

Multi-subject reference source covering general and academic periodicals; full-text is available for many articles.

An index to 369 U.S. popular magazines and journals published from 1890 to 1982. This is the online version of the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature.

Contains bibliographic and citation information for 3,000 international scholarly journals across 50 disciplines.

Coverage: 1864 to present. Updated: Monthly. An Annual summary of information on the history, politics, economics, trade and infrastructure for each country of the world. Now updated more frequently. Includes brief biographies of government officials and chronology of events starting with 1999.

The complete London Times newspaper with coverage from 1785 and rolling forward one year each year from 2019.
Note: This resource does not include the Sunday Times, a publication separate from the London Times.
This resource was made possible through the Lee Somers Endowed Library Fund.

The TLS (Times Literary Supplement) Historical Archive includes over 300,000 reviews, poems, letters, and other articles - The complete run from 1902 to 2006. A major cultural resource.
This resource was made possible through the Class of '32 Library Fund.

An index of U.S. television news broadcasts beginning in 1968. NBC broadcasts from 1968 and CNN broadcasts from 1995 are available for viewing online. ABC and CBS broadcasts from 1968 and Fox News broadcasts from 2004 are available through video loan, for which Vanderbilt University charges a fee to recover costs. There are no transcripts or captioning provided.

Indexes academic journals and books on topics relevant to metropolitan studies. Subjects covered include urban affairs, community development, and urban history.

Complete run of Vogue from 1892 to the present, with high resolution page images.

Consists of letters to and from the War Department. Includes speeches to Native Americans, proceedings of conferences in Washington, licenses of traders, passports for Indian Country, and instructions to officials.

Access to the Washington Post from 1877 through 2007.

Declassified FBI files on the group of civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated South in 1961 to test the United States Supreme Court decision in Boynton v. Virginia.

A combined citation index that comprises several databases: Web of Science Core Collection, BIOSIS Citation Index, Current Contents Connect, Data Citation Index, Derwent Innovations Index, KCI-Korean Journal Database, MEDLINE®, SciELO Citation Index, and Zoological Record databases, which can be searched in the aggregate or singly.
Web of Science Core Collection contains several components: Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Conference Proceedings Index, Book Citation Index, Emerging Sources Citation Index, Current Chemical Reactions, and Index Chemicus. To search in a subset of the components, select the database then select the desired index or indices in the 'Editions' dropdown menu.

The earliest texts in this comprehensive collection on witchcraft date from the 15th century and the latest are from the early 20th century.
This resource was made possible through Donald D. Dennis American History Fund.

Contains documents from The National Archives, Kew on the Suffrage Question in Britain, the Empire, and Colonial Territories, dating from 1904 to 1962. Includes a finding aid to all sources related to women housed at the archive of the government of the UK.
This resource was made possible through the Roger H. and Nancy Brown Endowed Library Fund.

Documents of Patricia Lindh's and Jeanne Holm's liaison activities with women's groups and their advocacy within the White House during the Ford Administration on issues of special interest to women. Includes material accumulated by presidential counselor Anne Armstrong and Office of Women's Programs Director Karen Keesling.

OCLC WorldCat is a catalog of holdings from libraries around the world - containing entries for books, videos, journals, recordings, and more - over 43 million records. Each record has a link to the American University interlibrary loan request form.
NOTE: WorldCat is NOT a database of research articles.

Worldwide Political Science Abstracts is a major political science index providing citations and abstracts to journal articles, book chapters, books, and websites on subjects including international relations, law, and public administration and policy. Dating from 1975 and updated monthly, the WPSA is built on two indices: Political Science Abstracts and ABC POLSCI. Roughly 1,510 titles are being monitored for coverage; of these, 67% are published outside the United States.