History E-Reference Ratings

Accessible Archives. Accessible Archives. www.accessible.com
Accessible Archives is a publisher of full-text historical databases of 18th- and 19th-century American newspapers, magazines, books, and county histories, including significant genealogical records. Particularly beneficial for those studying the diverse perspectives of the period, primary source material focuses on African Americans, Colonial America, the American Revolution, and the American Civil War. Offerings include their initial venture, The Pennsylvania Gazette, along with The Liberator, African American and abolitionist newspapers, and a growing selection of “American County Histories.” Recent key enhancements include full imaging for all newspaper databases. 

America: History & Life. ABC-CLIO. www.ebscohost.com
Published since 1964, this is the definitive bibliographic reference covering the history, culture, area studies, and current affairs literature of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. With indexing for 2000-plus journals, the file also includes citations and links to book/media reviews and relevant dissertations. The principally English-language journal coverage (90 percent) includes abstracts in English of articles published in 40-plus languages. As with Historical Abstracts (below), this has only gotten better since being acquired by EBSCO, which has added enhanced functionality and direct linking through its new platform. A full-text version is projected for fall 2009. 

Archive of Americana. Readex. www.readex.com
This family of historical collections contains books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, government documents, and ephemera printed in America over three centuries. Collections include digital reproductions with searchable full text, giving researchers access to early American history through the advertisements, Bibles, broadsides, catalogs, speeches, literature, and more. A well-designed and integrated interface also facilitates an easy search/browse as a single collection or full-text searches across multiple collections, although three subscriptions are needed to have the multiple search tool activated. 

Black Studies Center. ProQuest. www.proquest.com
Black Studies Center offers a respectable foundation for scholars of Africana Studies, combining important historical and contemporary material with the inclusion of the Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, a collection of essays, articles, and multimedia files; 250 journals from the International Index Black Periodicals (IIBP); and much more. Optional add-on modules include ProQuest's Dissertations for Black Studies, Black Newspapers, and an exciting new collection of 100 oral history videos with fully searchable transcripts from The HistoryMakers. 

Cambridge Histories Online. Cambridge Univ. histories.cambridge.org
Newly launched in 2008 and available as an institutional one-time-only purchase, Cambridge Histories Online is an impressive resource for history scholars, with access to 254 Cambridge volumes published since 1960. The file is well organized into 15 academic subject areas, from American History to Warfare, with fully searchable text and downloadable PDFs. Enhanced functionality includes searching and browsing across all subject areas, personal and shared workgroup bookmarks, OpenURL, and CrossRef linking. 

Daily Life Online. Greenwood. dailylife.greenwood.com
Daily Life Online's suite of social history products comprises three separate modules, available on their own or in a customized and integrated combination based on an institution's subscription: Daily Life Through History (Basic or Premium), World Folklore and Folklife, and Daily Life America. With material spanning Ancient History through post-9/11, features of interest include Tours Through Time, Spanning the Globe, and thousands of folk and fairy tales. 

Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale Cengage. www.gale.com
Another of the latest “hot” products to wow scholars, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, a comprehensive digital edition of The Eighteenth Century microfilm resource, includes nearly every significant English-language title and edition published between 1701 and 1800 in the UK, along with thousands of important works from the Americas—amounting to full-text searching of some 33 million pages of material. A wonderful addition of primary source material to have readily accessible. 

Electronic Enlightenment. Oxford Univ. www.e-enlightenment.com
Prepare to be enlightened! This research project of the Humanities Division of the University of Oxford will be a welcome addition for historians seeking online access to rare 17th- through 19th-century primary sources. Letters, manuscripts and early editions, and critical annotations from writers, scientists, philosophers, politicians, and political thinkers illustrate the integrated sources available. Find biographical content, along with original textual and editorial notes, annotations, and supporting material, as well as a collection of related documents and external links to other scholarly resources including biographies, encyclopedias, newspapers, and literary journals. 

The Gerritsen Collection of Women's History Online. ProQuest. www.proquest.com
Like no other offering to date, Gerritsen's is a comprehensive, cross-cultural collection of women's historical primary material, spanning the 16th through 20th centuries. In its online incarnation, the collection consists of an amazing two million–plus digitized pages from books, periodicals, bibliographies, pamphlets, letters, and diaries collected by Dutch physician and feminist Aletta Jacobs and her husband, Carl V. Gerritsen. Topics reflect the evolution of feminist consciousness and the movement for women's rights, covering education, suffrage, prostitution, family planning, marriage, politics, divorce, and more. 

HarpWeek. HarpWeek. harpweek.com
In a class of its own, HarpWeek is the web-based version of Harper's Weekly, one of the first archival newspaper projects to digitize and make available electronically what is clearly recognized by historians as the “definitive newspaper” of the 19th century. Nine segments chronicle American History from 1857 to 1912 through news stories, illustrations, cartoons, editorials, advertisements, and literature. In a major enhancement, HarpWeek now provides a searchable full-text index in addition to the existing manually created thesaurus-based index. 

Historical Abstracts. ABC-CLIO. www.ebscohost.com
Serving as the standard indexing tool to the world's periodical literature in history and related social sciences and humanities for over 50 years, Historical Abstracts has only gotten better for researchers and students of history since EBSCO purchased the ABC-CLIO database, adding all the enhanced functionality and full-text direct linking through the new platform. With annotated references from over 2100 core academic journals published in 90 countries and in over 40 languages, the file also includes a targeted selection of social sciences and humanities titles of special interest. A full-text version is projected for fall 2009. 

History Reference Center. EBSCO. www.ebscohost.com
Designed specifically for the secondary school/public library markets, History Reference Center will not disappoint users, with its impressive full-text coverage of 2400-plus reference and nonfiction books, 130-plus periodicals, 61,000 historical documents, 66,000-plus biographies of historical figures, 110,200-plus historical photos and maps, and more than 80 hours of historical streaming video. Video clips are properly cited, with the inclusion of linked subject headings and pertinent metadata. As with other EBSCO products, the new interface pulls corresponding images clearly onto the results page. 

History Reference Online. ABC-CLIO. www.abc-clio.com
Institutions have three flexible subscription options when considering this expanding collection of history titles (encyclopedias, handbooks, dictionaries, chronologies, bibliographies) from ABC-CLIO, perfect for smaller institutions or public libraries establishing a core set of history titles: “Complete” currently includes 580 titles; “Premier” includes 475 titles; and “Elite” includes 329 titles. Titles are added quarterly at no additional charge (minimum 50 titles annually). Features include unlimited 24/7 access and searching across the collection. 

History Resource Center: US. Gale Cengage. galenet.galegroup.com
This file provides a wealth of material from pre-Columbian America through the current Bush administration, with integrated searching and cross-linking access to 5000-plus primary source documents, 39 reference titles, 110-plus full-text journals, 200-plus country overviews, and scores of images, topic overviews, and commentaries with analysis of historical significance. Citations from an additional 180-plus history journals indexed in ISI's Arts & Humanities Citation Index, as well as the entire “American Journey Online” series are seamlessly incorporated. These can be combined with History Resource Center: World (below). Search them independently or cross-search for an in-depth global perspective. 

History Resource Center: World. Gale Cengage. galenet.galegroup.com
Created by area specialists, history scholars and librarians, History Resource Center: World offers a multicultural perspective and scholarly analysis for the study of international relations and global history, integrating coverage of European, Asian, African, Indian, and Latin American History. With recent interface improvements, this file includes over 10,000 pages of primary source documents, 36 reference titles, 150-plus scholarly full-text journals, over 3600 historical maps and atlases, 200-plus country overviews, a searchable Timeline, “day-in-history” reviews, and images. As with History Resource Center: US (above), this file links to ISI's history coverage in the Art & Humanities Citation Index and allows seamless cross-searching via a pull-down menu. 

International Medieval Bibliography. Brepols. www.brepolis.net.
Produced by scholars worldwide, this comprehensive file covering Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa from 400 to 1500 is justifiably promoted as the leading interdisciplinary bibliography on its time period. All citations include full classification details, with brief annotations and subject links to Brepols Medieval Encyclopaedias if subscribed. It can be cross-searched with the Bibliographie de civilisation medieval (separate subscription) to provide scholars with a current bibliography of monographs in the field of medieval studies. 

19th Century Masterfile. Paratext. www.paratext.com
Presented in five series, this fairly priced file is technically an “index of indexes” and is the largest resource for historical research prior to 1925, encompassing 60-plus remarkable subject indexes and more than eight million citations to periodicals, newspapers, books, patents, and government documents. Searches can be limited to an individual series or any combination of products licensed, and OpenURL facilitates seamless linking to external full-text sources. An entirely new interface is planned for release in fall 2008. 

Oxford African American Studies Center. Oxford Univ. www.oxfordaasc.com
Over 4000 international scholars have contributed to this product, which is evident from its coverage of historical, biographical, and scholarly materials on African American and African history and culture. Among the all-inclusive collection of biographies, primary documents, images, thematic maps, multimedia, and film clips lies the backbone of this file: five major encyclopedias and scholarly content from 18 additional resources, all from Oxford. Combined with regular updates and a technically snazzy interface with a set of powerful tools for navigation, this is a first-rate package that won't disappoint. 

ProQuest Historical Newspapers. ProQuest. proquest.com
This digital archive offers full-text and full-image articles for 14 significant national and international newspapers dating back to the 18th century. Researchers can quickly place key events in historical context with regional, national, and worldwide coverage, and each title includes complete back files with fully searchable ASCII text. Black Newspapers Collection and the Civil War Era are the latest additions to the platform. All titles are cross-searchable with the American Periodicals Series Online and ProQuest's Historical Annual Reports. 

Social and Cultural History: Letters and Diaries Online. Alexander St. asp6new.alexanderstreet.com/ladd
What an amazing project Alexander Street has undertaken—to index and provide full field search and browse capabilities across thousands of oral history and personal narrative collections, including those freely available online, still in archives worldwide, and the current and forthcoming Alexander Street family of content that comprise the letter, diary, and oral history databases. Too much content to specify, the file currently integrates seven databases, including Oral History Online, on a single cross-searchable platform. Still in the preliminary stages, the database includes nearly 100,000 documents and pointers to thousands of audio and video files. 

World History Collection. EBSCO. www.ebscohost.com
Geared toward academic institutions, World History Collection affords a global look at history with content from Africa, Asia, North and South America, Europe, and the Middle East. Of its cover-to-cover full text for 150 mostly peer-reviewed history journals, the majority are available in native (searchable) PDF, or scanned-in-color. Although 30 titles are not available in Academic Search Elite (EBSCO's multidiscipline full-text database), the file is best suited for institutions without access to either Academic Search product, as there is almost 100 percent overlap with Premier.