Turning the Pages
Developed by the British Library, Turning the Pages allows you to virtually turn the pages of treasured books. You can magnify details, read or listen to expert commentary on each page, and store or share your own notes.
The British Library offers 14 masterpieces from its collections including Mozart's musical diary, Ramayana, India's great epic in 17th-century paintings, and a selection of sketches from Leonardo da VInci.
Finding Digital Collections Online
Search Tip: Search Google with your subject terms and the keywords "digital collections" or "digital library" to find digital collections.
Digitized Primary Sources
Digitizing has made it possible for libraries, archives, historical societies, museums and individuals to share their collections with the world. Researchers today have unprecedented access to images of primary source materials with descriptive metadata that, in the pre-digital age, were available only to those who could visit a collection in person.
There are many different types of digital collections online, both freely available on the web, and via subscription databases available through libraries. These include:
- Highlights from a library's holdings, often displayed as an online exhibit, such as Le Moyne College Archives' Dolphin Newspaper, the New-York Historical Society's Slavery in New York and New York African Free School Collection, The Tamiment Library's Labor & The Holocaust: The Jewish Labor Committee and the Anti-Nazi Struggle and Cornell University Library's Triangle Factory Fire exhibit.
- Library and Archival Exhibitions on the Web is a wonderful site and a public service of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries that links to more than 3,000 online exhibits of library and archival materials posted by non-commercial institutions. This resource is keyword-searchable by title, subject, and the name of the sponsoring institution.
- Selected Digital Collections from the New York State Library -The Digital Collections of the New York State Library include a large array of 18th and 19th century historical materials from many subject areas, including the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, Native American materials, New York State laws and natural history.
- Library and Archival Exhibitions on the Web is a wonderful site and a public service of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries that links to more than 3,000 online exhibits of library and archival materials posted by non-commercial institutions. This resource is keyword-searchable by title, subject, and the name of the sponsoring institution.
- One-of-a-kind resources like the stellar Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, a fully searchable database containing a wealth of information on the voyages, the captives, and the places from which slave ships sailed and landed. It contains maps, a timeline, images, and essays that place the data in context. There are reams of statistics in tables, timelines, and maps, and researchers can search the data and create custom xy graphs, bar graphs, and pie-charts. This online database and the accompanying printed Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade are the "culmination of several decades of independent and collaborative research."
- Regionally-oriented digital projects such as Peel's Prairie Provinces (Western Canada), Documenting the American South, Alaska's Digital Archives, and the New York Heritage Digital Collections, among many others.
- Complete collections, often with transcriptions of documents and searchable databases. Examples of freely available collections include the University of California Berkeley's Mark Twain Papers Project, the Library of Congress's American Memory Project, and the New-York Historical Society's Digital Collections.
- Digitized books and serials on the Web in the Internet Archive, Making of America (Cornell), Making of America (Michigan), Google Books, Hathi Trust, and other digital repositories. Some sites, such as the Marxists Internet Archive, AMDOCS Documents for the Study of American History, and the Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, provide transcriptions of documents.
- One category of digitized texts on the web is early printed books. The German blog Archivalia maintains a comprehensive list of digital libraries of Pre-1800 Printed Books in Western Languages.
- One category of digitized texts on the web is early printed books. The German blog Archivalia maintains a comprehensive list of digital libraries of Pre-1800 Printed Books in Western Languages.
- Complete runs of newspapers and journals, both scanned in PDF (and showing illustrations), and full text. The vast majority of full text newspapers and journals online are found within subscription databases made available through commercial vendors in libraries, but there are also some stellar free resources, such as the Brooklyn Daily Eagle online, 1841-1902, British Newspapers, 1800-1900, the Library of Congress's Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers and the Nineteenth-Century in Print: Periodicals.
- Government documents, including books, pamphlets, reports, statistics, serials, maps, and other items published by local, state, and federal government agencies represent a rich source of information for researchers on a vast range of topics. Much of the information is availalbe online. Consult the U.S. federal government's GPO Access gateway site, along with federal, state and local government websites to find materials.
Digital Collections from the Library of Congress
City of New York / sketched and drawn on stone by C. Parsons.
Published by N. Currier, c1856.
Map Collections (Library of Congress)
Digital ID: cph 3g02106
A Guide to the Golden State from the Past to the Present by Benjamin Sheer. Work Projects Administration Poster Collection (Library of Congress).
Digital ID: (color film copy slide)
cph
3b48864
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3b48864