Your Librarian
Digital Collections Online
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Digital Public Library of AmericaA discovery tool that searches public domain and openly licensed content across multiple collections.
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EuropeanaCreated by the European Union to provide digital access across multiple museum and institution collections across Europe.
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Google BooksGoogle's book search engine searches the full text of books that have been scanned and stored.
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HathiTrust Digital LibraryA collaborative repository of digital content that is available to subscribers. Some public domain content is available to anyone.
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Internet ArchiveProvides public access to digitalized materials including archived website content.
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Library of Congress: Digital CollectionsThe national library of the United States.
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Project GuttenbergA collection of ebooks available to the public.
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Smithsonian Open AccessThe Smithsonian is committed to releasing images and data for use by the public.
Newspaper Archives Online
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Chronicling America"Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1777-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress."
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Community History ArchiveNewspaper digitization that you can browse by state or newspaper title. Can be really helpful if you are looking for newspaper articles from a specific town.
Using Google to support your research
While many of these aggregates will pull in archived materials from various collections, if the person you are researching is lesser-known, you might come up empty in these big searches. Have no fear! You just have to find it yourself. There are people interested in documenting these historic greats, but you'll have to dig to find them.
Here are a few searching tips to try.
- Try searching for your person and adding "archives" or "special collection" or "museum" to your search terms. This might make you aware of a collection of materials dedicated specifically to this person. For example, "Fredrika Bremer" AND museum leads me to an American Swedish Historical Museum with information about her. I can search this entire website by limiting my search to only that website site:.americanswedish.org/ "Fredrika Bremer."
- Try a Google Search with additional characteristics of your person. For example, "Ruby Sutton" AND "civil rights" will bring up some great newspaper articles remembering her after her death. You may find other pieces of her life within those articles you want to search independent of her name.
- Consider limiting your searches to a particular domain. For example, "Maria Pearson" site:.edu will return any .edu website that uses her name. This may lead you to publications written by or about your person.