Awesome Digital History

Find primary sources online and learn how to research history digitally.

Finding aids for textual and multimedia primary sources with a focus on the western hemisphere and the 19th and 20th centuries. Courses and learning tools to explore history digitally.

📢 Announcement

🎉 Check out our new website at awesome-digital-history.pages.dev with more information, filters, and a search function. 🎉

Contents

• Archives and primary sources
  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Austria
  • Europe
  • France
  • Germany
  • Global
  • Great Britain
  • Netherlands
  • North America
  • Switzerland
• Learning
• More Awesome
• Contribute

Archives and primary sources

Africa

• PARC - Portal for African Research Collections: PARC is the new meta-catalogue for the Africana collections at the research location Basel.
• West African Arabic Manuscript Database - A comprehensive collection of manuscripts that provides insight into the Islamic scholarly tradition in West Africa.

Asia

• FOCAL - The Asia Directories and Chronicles is a reference work for foreign traders in the Asian region, published annually by the Hong Kong Daily Press, annually between 1863 and 1941.

Austria

• ANNO - Austrian Newspapers online.
• Digitarium - Digital edition of the historical Wiener Zeitung.
• Österreichische Mediathek - The Austrian archive for sound recordings and videos from cultural and contemporary history.
• Wien Geschichte Wiki - It is based on the Historical Dictionary Vienna by Felix Czeike, currently there are 50,156 contributions and 12,510 images.

Europe

• Archives Portal Europe - European archives search engine.
• Encyclopédie d’histoire numérique - European History through renewed historiographic objects and major contemporary challenges.
• EuroDocs – Online Sources for European History - A curated directory of online primary sources for European history, organized by country and period, with many items hosted by reputable institutions and using Dublin Core metadata.
• Europeana - Search engine for European textual and non-textual archival sources.
• handrit.is - Catalogue of more than 15’000 manuscripts (12th–20th century) in Icelandic, Old Norse, Danish and Latin (plus a few other languages) with more than 4’000 manuscripts digitally available.
• islandskort.is - Digitized maps of Iceland, Greenland and the Arctic region (1545–1949).
• ÍSMÚS - Icelandic musical heritage collection (including recordings and sheet music), legends and fairytales.
• Mapire - Interactive historical maps.
• Monasterium - Deeds from all over Europe.
• Project Gutenberg - A library of over 60,000 free eBooks.
• tímarit.is - Digitized newspapers and magazines from Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands.
• Visual Archive Southeastern Europe - Historical and contemporary visual materials from Southeastern Europe.

France

• Gallica - Digital library of the National Library of France.
• Institut national de l’audiovisuel - INA is a repository of French radio and television audiovisual archives.

Germany

• Archivportal - German archives search engine.
• Bavarikon - Collection of Bavarian maps, places, newspapers etc.
• Computerarchiv Muenchen - South German Museum for History of Digital Development.
• Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek - Over 12 million objects.
• Deutsches Zeitungsportal - Discover historical newspapers from 1671 to 1950.
• Digitale Sammlungen - Collections of the Munich Digitization Center.
• Digitales Deutsches Frauenarchiv - An interactive portal on the history of women’s movements in Germany.
• Docupedia - Terms, methods, and debates in contemporary history research.
• historicum.net - A specialized information service for historians that offers access to research tools and services.
• leo bw - Platform of the State Archives of Baden-Württemberg.
• LexM - Encyclopedia of musicians persecuted during the Nazi era.
• MARCHIVUM - Collection of Mannheim newspapers and historical printed matter on the history of Mannheim.
• Projekt Gutenberg - Contains 10’000 works by over 2’000 authors in German.
• SLUB Dresden - Over 1.8 million graphic media (photographs, maps, drawings).
• Spiegel Online - SPIEGEL archive since 1947.
• UB Heidelberg - Manuscripts, documents, maps and literature.
• Uni Frankfurt - Rare prints, manuscripts, bequests and more.
• Zefys - Historical German newspapers.
• ZLB - Collections of the Berlin Central and State Library.

Global

• Atlas of Mutual Heritage - Database with sources relating to VOC (Dutch East India Company) and WIC (Dutch West India Company).
• Bitsavers.org - Computer code, reference manuals, and magazines.
• Classic Computer Magazine Archive - Preserving information from early personal computer magazines.
• Fxtop - Forex rate history since 1953.
• Got Papers? - Resources on the history of games, cracking, and the demoscene.
• HMML - Hill Museum & Manuscript Library. Digital collection of manuscripts from around the world.
• Internet Archive - Non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.
• Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog - Book search engine for finding hundreds of millions of media in catalogs worldwide.
• Marxist Internet Archive - Everything you ever wanted to know about Marx (and other important socialists).
• Mementoweb - Find archived web pages in Internet Archive, Archive-It, British Library, archive.today, and GitHub.
• OldMapsOnline - Maps, starting in the 17th century.
• OpenCat - Search engine for libraries around the globe.
• OpenHistoricalMap - A time travel map created by a community of mappers and historians.
• Public Books Database - Open access academic literature.
• United Nations Archive - Archives and records from the United Nations regarding Secretaries-Generals, departments and missions.
• WayBackMachine - Explore more than 486 billion web pages saved over time.
• World Historical Gazeteer - Collection of content and services that permit world historians to do spatial and temporal reasoning and visualization in a data rich environment at global and trans-regional scales.

Great Britain

• British Library - Maps, manuscripts and sounds.
• National Records of Scotland - Repository for the public and legal records of Scotland.
• NLS - Data collections from the National Library of Scotland.
• The National Archives - A non-ministerial department, and the official archive and publisher for the UK Government, and for England and Wales.
• The Proceedings of the Old Bailey - London’s Central Criminal Court, 1674 to 1913.

Netherlands

• Delpher - Dutch newspapers, books and magazines.
• Nationaal Archief - Rich collection of the National Archives of the Netherlands.
• Topotijdreis - Browse and compare Dutch topographic maps (1815 until today).

North America

• Ad*Access - U.S. and Canadian advertisements covering five product categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda - dated between 1911 and 1955.
• Chronicling America - America’s historic newspapers from 1777-1963.
• Computer Gaming World Museum - Archive of various magazines on gaming.
• David Rumsey Map Collection - Historical maps collection.
• Digital Public Library of America - Discovery tool, or union catalog, for public domain and openly licensed content held by the United States’ archives, libraries, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions.
• Digital Transgender Archive - Wide range of trans-related digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world.
• Eugenics Archive - Scholars, survivors, students, and community partners in challenging eugenics.
• HathiTrust - A not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving and making accessible millions of digitized items.
• National Archives - The official archives regarding veteran records, founding documents and presidential libraries of the United States.
• Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection - Online collection of scanned maps.
• Women Working 1800-1930 - An exploration of women’s impact on the economic life of the United States between 1800 and the Great Depression.
• World Digital Library - WDL is an international digital library operated by UNESCO and the United States Library of Congress.

Switzerland

• Amtsdruckschriften - Federal Gazette, Administrative Case Law of the Federal Authorities and more documents from the Swiss Federal Archives.
• Année Politique Suisse - Sources and database for swiss socio-political topics.
• arCHeco - Index of economic collections in archives of Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
• Archives Online - Archival search engine for Switzerland.
• chgov - Minutes of the Federal Council (1848-1963).
• COSMOV - COSMOV includes a digital edition of the events of the Zurich summer of 1968.
• DigiBern - Bernese culture and history on the Internet.
• Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland - Diplomatic documents of Switzerland.
• e-codices - Virtual manuscript library of Switzerland.
• e-gs - Online web portal of the ETH Zurich Graphics Collection.
• e-manuscripta - Manuscript material from Swiss libraries and archives.
• e-newspaperarchives.ch - Swiss newspapers.
• E-Periodica - Swiss journals.
• e-rara - The platform for digitised rare books from Swiss libraries.
• histHub - The platform manages authority files on Swiss history.
• Historical Encyclopedia of Switzerland - Encyclopedia on Swiss history.
• HSSO - Historical statistics of Switzerland online.
• impresso - Historical newspaper collections of the Swiss National Library, the National Library of Luxembourg, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Le Temps, the Valais State Archives and the Swiss Economic Archives.
• Industriekultur - Swiss national inventory of industry artifacts.
• infoclio.ch Edition projects - A database containing current historical edition projects in Switzerland.
• Kartenportal - Search engine for maps.
• Le Temps - Archive of Gazette de Lausanne et du Journal de Genève.
• map.geo.admin.ch - Journey through time via maps of Switzerland.
• MEMOBASE - Provides access to audiovisual documents from Swiss memory institutions.
• Sammlung Schweizerischer Rechtsquellen online - Retrodigitalisierte und digitale Editionseinheiten der Schweizerischen Rechtsquellen. Ediert wird rechtshistorisches Quellenmaterial vom Mittelalter bis in die Frühe Neuzeit (1798).
• Schweizerisches Wirtschaftsarchiv - This collection comprises over 500 business archives from the period 1750 to the present day, with a focus on the Basel region.
• SKKG Digital Collection - The Foundation for Art, Culture, and History (SKKG) provides online access to its collection of approximately 100,000 objects, ranging from artworks to historical artifacts spanning from the Stone Age to the present.
• Sources Online - A platform for digital scholarly text editions, integrating TEI Publisher and IIIF in Switzerland.
• swisscollections - Meta search engine for historical and modern collections in Swiss libraries and archives.
• timeSTAT Cubes - The Federal Council reports to parliament on income and expenditure for the past years.
• transcriptiones - Create, share and access transcriptions of historical manuscripts.

Learning

• AdFontes - An Introduction to Working with Sources in the Archive.
• Clio Guide - A handbook on digital resources for the historical sciences.
• Crafting Digital History - A Workbook for Methods and Readings in Digital History.
• Digital History Guide - Introduction to the web for historians, who wish to produce online historical work.
• Geospatial Historian - Open HGIS Lessons and Resources.
• HIST 7370 - Online course for Methods and Readings in Digital History.
• History Toolkit - History Toolkit for Students.
• Introduction to Digital History - This guide, created in the fall semester of 2022, accompanies the introductory courses in history at the University of Basel and is intended to provide a first insight into the field of digital history.
• Introduction to Python for Humanists - A textbook offering a comprehensive introduction to Python programming, tailored for researchers and students in the humanities.
• Local Linkages - Professional development curriculum to introduce to historical research methods and digital history skills.
• Python für Historiker:innen - The Jupyter Book (in German language) is aimed at historians who are looking for a first application-oriented and interactive introduction to the Python programming language.
• The CTP Book - A book for teaching Computational Thinking and Programming skills to people with a background in the Humanities.
• The Programming Historian - Novice-friendly, peer-reviewed tutorials that help humanists learn a wide range of digital tools, techniques, and workflows to facilitate research and teaching.
• UCI Digital History - Overview on the field of Digital History and Digital Humanities.
• We think History - News about and innovations from digital history.

More Awesome

• Computer History - An Awesome List of computer history videos, documentaries and related folklore.
• Data Visualization - A curated list of awesome open-source data visualizations frameworks, libraries and software.
• Digital Humanities - Tools, resources, and services supporting the Digital Humanities.
• Research Tools - A list of tools for research.
• Scientific Writing - Scientific writing can extend beyond LaTeX, made possible by formats, such as Markdown (and its many flavours), reStructuredText and Jupyter notebooks.
• Tempopedia - Digital History Directory.

Contribute

Contributions welcome! Read the CONTRIBUTING.md first.

digitalhistory.md Github