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.
• Europeana - Search engine for European textual and non-textual archival sources.
• Mapire - Interactive historical maps.
• Monasterium - Deeds from all over Europe.
• Project Gutenberg - A library of over 60,000 free eBooks.
• 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

• 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.

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.
• 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.