The Gale Primary Sources and [Proquest] History Vault databases hold large collections of digitized primary sources organized by particular subjects and/or formats. Many of the particular databases listed below belong to these broader collections (even though they can also be accessed directly). Because there is so much material in these large databases, they can be challenging to navigate. Because of that, lengthy (but hopefully helpful!) suggestions for searcrhing are provided below.
Gale Artemis unites Gale's digital archives, allowing researchers to uncover primary source documents in archives where they may not have thought to look. Includes term frequencies, term clusters, and basic visualizations.
Gale Primary Sources allows you to search or browse through ALL of the collections and content included, or search or browse more selectively among a particular group of or one collection(s).
Unless you are already familiar with the Gale Primary Sources and know that you want to look in a particular database, subject group, or collection, carrying out basic searches (starting at the most general level) and then narrowing down by subject may be the better strategy to inadvertently cut out content in a database or sub-collection that seems irrelevant or which you have not yet discovered.
Thus, to begin with ALL of the collections, carry out a basic or an advanced search from the Gale Primary Sources homepage.
If you carry out a basic search (by simply putting in your keywords in the searchbox at the top), after receiving the initial list of results from your keywords (on the left of the screen) you will be able to narrow down the results by a series of filters displayed as boxes to the right. Filters include the “databases” holding the material (these are displayed as squares on the initial page of the Gale Primary Sources and include particular newspapers or periodicals; subject groups of archival material such as “Archives of Latin American and Caribbean History”); document type (such as monographs, manuscripts, or newspapers; subjects and more.
If you run an advanced search (by scrolling down clicking on “View all limiters in advanced search” below the search box and options to limit the date) you will be able to use the filters to narrow your search before you type in your keywords.
Alternatively, you can begin to narrow your search from the Gale Primary Sources home page, either by selecting one or more of the “databases” displayed visually with a square box (such as Latin American and Caribbean History; Archives Unbound (which has different groups of documents including “Latin American and Caribbean studies”); or a particular periodical (e.g. Financial Times Historical Archive) or group of periodicals (e.g. Burney Newspapers Collection). You can select one or more of the “databases” by using the checkboxes to the left of their visual display and then run the search. Or you can click on one of the databases (such as Latin American and Caribbean History) and then plug your keywords into the searchbox. To explore one database, you can click on it, which will take you into a landing page with information on its content.
Depending on the nature of a particular database collection, you will be able to review contents using icons on the right. These may include a grid (called “Collections) which will allow you to view subject-based collections within that “database”; publications, which will provide a list of the various publications included – such as books, periodicals, manuscript or archival collections, etc.) ; “browse” which may allow you to browse a periodical by date or provide a list of periodicals in a collection.
Once you have narrowed down the search to your liking, you can resort the material only after selecting a particular content type (such as monographs). At this point, a Sort by: drop down box will appear.
It is also important to be aware that the database “Archives Unbound” has a series of sub-collections with content that supplement (but does not overlap) with the “databases” grouping content by subject. For example, the Archives Unbound “Latin American and Caribbean Studies” collection has different material than the Gale Primary Sources “Latin American and Caribbean History” database. Similarly the “Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies” Archives Unbound collection has different material than the Gale Primary Sources “Archives of Sexuality and Gender.”
As with the “databases,” you can see the contents of a particular Archives Unbound collection by using the grid / collections icon. And you can run basic or advanced searches within Archives Unbound as a whole, a particular group of content joined by subject (such as “Latin American and Caribbean Studies”) or a particular Collection within the subject group.
[Proquest] History Vault allows you to search or browse through ALL of the collections included, or search or browse more selectively among a particular group of or one collection(s).
To search the entire database, click on basic or advanced search (advanced will help you conduct a more nuanced, specific and tailored search) and after you receive the results, you can resort by date (so the results appear in chronological order) and narrow down to a particular collection title (and opening the drop down collection title menu will give you an idea of how the contents are organized) as well as by other factors (such as collection title, subject, location, historical event, etc.)
If you click on browse, the collections will come up in alphabetical order with descriptive information about the contents. From there, you will be able to access more collection information by clicking on the collection name, “More,” or “Explore collection.” You will find the contents displayed in a particular collection in the “original archive order” (IE the way the contents are organized and shelved in the physical archive) but you can also resort this by date and narrow results by other factors (such as subject or historical event or location) on the left.
From this page, you can do a basic or advanced search of the collection.
Alternatively, you can begin to narrow your search from the database landing page, first, by selecting a group of collections brought together into a subject group (such as International Relations and Military Conflicts OR LatinX History) found underneath the search box. Once you go into this subject, you can carry out a basic or advanced search and then resort the results by date and narrow by other factors (such as subject or historical event or location) on the left.
Alternatively, if you prefer to see a list of collections within this subject grouping, click on browse You can click on any of these to go into and search to that specific collection" and you can then resort by date and narrow by other factors (such as document type, subject or historical event or location) on the left.
[Brazil] Brazilian Popular Groups [Part of World Scholar]
Digitized collection of pamphlets, serials, posters, news clippings, newsletters and reports of grassroots organizations covering political and social movements during the time of Brazil's military rule (1964-1984), followed by the New Republic.
"The documents published in this collection (often abbreviated DII), 42 volumes (1864-1884), were selected by a team of Spanish historians as representative of the glories of their country's history in the Americas. Drawn exclusively from the Patronato Real group of the AGI, the transcribed versions of the original manuscripts include correspondence between Spanish monarchs and many of the major figures of the early European contact with the Americas. This collection and a successor set, published between 1885 and 1932, were selected for the breadth of their coverage of the early Spanish period in the Caribbean, and North and South America and for the accuracy of the paleography."
[Latin America] Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969
The documents of Confidential Print: Latin America are full text records of the British Foreign Office covering the whole of South and Central America, plus the non-British islands of the Caribbean, from just after the final Spanish withdrawal from mainland America in the 1820s to the height of the Cold War in the 1960s.
[Latin America] Confidential Print: North America, 1824-1961
This collection consists of the Confidential Print for the United States, Canada and the English-speaking Caribbean, with some coverage of Central and South America, and covers such topics as slavery, This collection consists of the Confidential Print for the United States, Canada and the English-speaking Caribbean, with some coverage of Central and South America, and covers such topics as slavery, Prohibition, the First and Second World Wars, racial segregation, territorial disputes, the League of Nations, McCarthyism and the nuclear bomb.
[Latin America] Latin American Women Writers
Latin American Women Writers is an extensive searchable collection of prose, poetry, and drama composed by women writing in Mexico, Central America, and South America. Also included are essays by Latin American feminists and about the feminist movement that address both the universal concerns of women in every age and the distinctive issues of their struggles in the region. The database features 103,624 pages of prose, poetry and drama.
[Mexico] Colección Revolución, 1910-1921
This collection reproduces documents from various archives, under the protection of the Archivo General de la Nacion, and is divided into the following series: (1) The Flores Brothers revolutionary activities MAGO (movement in Baja California) (2) Revolution and regime Madero (3) Emiliano Zapata (4) Revolution and the Constitutionalist Regime (5) Sovereign Revolutionary Convention
[Mexico] Emiliano Zapata, 1901-1919
This collection comprises documentation related to the activities of Emiliano Zapata and the Materials on the Mexican Revolutionary Liberation Army of the South. Includes correspondence exchanged between the headquarters and the camps and regional commands and with municipal or federal authorities; requests for economic aid; guarantees to people for jobs and food; complaints of abuses; reports, promotions, and notifications to the troops and brigades; information on pay; and . The documentation also includes acts or proceedings on revolutionary and civil trials.
[Mexico] Cuartel General del Sur, 1910-1925
Contains correspondence addressed to Emiliano Zapata; combat reports; relations with troop commanders and officers; promotion and appointment requests; allegations of abuses committed by military personnel; applications for food, uniforms and ammunition; letters and telegrams on the transfer of prisoners.
Adam Matthew publishes unique primary source collections from archives around the world. The categorized collections cover many contemporary subjects such as culture, war, lifestyles, business technology and sociopolitical development in the Americas, Asia and Europe. Adam Mathews Explorer also provides text and data mining access to licensed Adam Matthew databases.
Adam Matthew Explorer Includes:
Frontier Life: Borderlands, Settlement & Colonial Encounters
This collection includes primary sources can be used to examine the various frontiers that arose from the movements of Europeans to Africa, Australasia and North America. Document types include correspondence, diaries, government papers, business records, land transactions, legal documents, speeches, books and pamphlets. The earliest documents are from the seventeenth century and the latest the mid-point of the twentieth century.
Afro-Americana imprints, 1535-1922
Includes more than 12,000 books, pamphlets and broadsides spanning over 400 years, from the early 16th to the early 20th century. Critically important subjects covered include the West's discovery and exploitation of Africa; the rise of slavery in the New World along with the growth and success of abolitionist movements; the development of racial thought, including political protest and resistance to racism; descriptions of African American life throughout the Americas; and slavery and race in fiction and drama.
Global Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy from the Classical Era to the Present.
Contains approximately 1,462 plays by 233 playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, and production companies, as well as selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays.
Black Short Fiction and Folklore from Africa and the African Diaspora
Constitutes the most comprehensive collection yet created of stories from Africa and the African Diaspora, offering short stories and folktales, ranging thematically from oral traditions that date back many hundreds of years to contemporary tales of modern life. In addition to these works, the database includes complete runs of selected literary magazines
Border and migration studies online
A collection that explores and provides historical background on more than thirty key worldwide border areas, including: U.S. and Mexico; the European Union; Afghanistan; Israel; Turkey; The Congo; Argentina; China; Thailand; and others. Featuring at completion 100,000 pages of text, 175 hours of video, and 1,000 images, the collection is organized around fundamental themes associated with border and migration issues.
Cambridge Companions to Literature
Includes over two hundred volumes in the Cambridge Companions to Literature series with surveys of the research on various aspects of an individual writer's work and the full text of more than 350,000 works of poetry, drama and prose.
China, America, and the Pacific
Explores the cultural and trading relationships that emerged between America, China and the Pacific region between the 18th and early 20th centuries. Sourced from twelve North American libraries that include the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum and the Massachusetts Historical Society, China, America and the Pacific offers unique insights into the history of North American trade. Coverage includes the Old China Trade, the Pacific Northwest fur trade, the whaling industry and the development of Pacific trading centres such as Hawaii. Manuscripts, rare printed sources, visual images, objects and maps from international libraries and archives document
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
Search and read newspaper pages from several states 1900-1910 (including California); search a directory (including library holdings) for U.S. newspapers published from 1690-present.
When complete, will consist of all 1,450 volumes of the CO 5 series of Colonial Office files held at The National Archives in London. Includes material on piracy and seaborne rivalry with the French and Spanish.
Indexes U.S. congressional materials from 1789-present. Includes access to U.S. legislative information, including bills and pending legislation, legislative history, hearings, testimony, reports, documents, Congressional Record, CRS Reports, public laws, etc.
Find reporting, analysis on US Congressional issues in the news and coverage of the status of bills, votes and amendments, floor and committee actiity and backroom maneuvering. Includes: CQ Almanac, CQ Researcher Plus Archive, CQ Weekly, Political Handbook of the World, Politics in America, and Supreme Court Yearbook. All include information on Latin America particularly in the context of US-Latin American relations.
U.S. Declassified Documents Online
Full text of documents from various government agencies: the White House, the CIA, the FBI, the State Department and others, declassified by the U.S. government, and obtained from Presidential Libraries.
Digital National Security Archive
Nearly 40,000 declassified government documents from 1945 to present, organized into collections, each focused on a single topic.
Early English Books Online [EEBO]
Although this is an electronic collection of full text and page images of books published in England from 1475-1700, some of the books included are non-English-language and many deal with subjects beyond England, including the conquest and colonization of the Americas.
Economist Intelligence Unit Portal
Searchable online archive (1996- ) and feed of Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) global country publications. Strong on current political, economic, and business affairs worldwide.
Archaeological and other texts that are indexed by tradition and subjects. Former title: eHRAF Collection of Archaeology. As of January 2009, includes texts on 55 different cultures.
Searchable and browsable database with access to correspondence between the greatest thinkers and writers of the 17th-19th centuries, and their families and friends, bankers and booksellers, patrons and publishers. Coverage includes letters and documents, manuscripts and early printed editions, scholarly annotations, and links to biographies, dictionaries, encyclopedias, newspapers, and other online resources. With 79,254 letters and documents and 10,232 correspondents (as of Winter 2018–2019) EE is the most wide-ranging online collection of edited correspondence of the early modern period, linking people across Europe, the Americas and Asia from the early 17th to the mid-19th century.
Access to essays (secondary sources), chronologies (reference tools) and documents (primary sources) relating to empire studies, divided into 5 sections: Cultural Contacts 1492-1969; Empire Writing/the Literature of Empire; The Visible Empire; Religion; and Race, class, imperialism and colonialism 1607-2007.
Ethnographic Video Online (Volumes I, II and III)
Database of anthropological documentary films, covering every region of the world, featuring the work of many influential documentary filmmakers of the 20th century. Includes transcripts, interviews, previously unreleased raw footage, field notes, study guides, etc. As of August 2015, has 1,844 videos (1,319 hours). Individual films are also cataloged in roger.ucsd.edu - search on title "Alexander Street Press. Ethnographic online videos"
Foreign Relations of the United States
Official diplomatic record of U.S. relations with other countries. Contains important speeches, communiques, and other communications of State Department officials and diplomats. There is a delay (approximately 30-40 years) in the release of information as it becomes declassified.
Gale Artemis unites Gale's digital archives, allowing researchers to uncover primary source documents in archives where they may not have thought to look. Includes term frequencies, term clusters, and basic visualizations.
With 102 collections of archival primary sources spanning American social and diplomatic history, plus China, Latin America, Germany, Spain, Korea, Laos, Thailand, Pakistan, and Japan. Gale Archives Unbound is one component of Gale Primary Sources. Collections of material from different archives, newspapers, personal papers, et. are organized into thematic clusters. To see these individual collections, click on the Collections Grid/Word in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
The Making of Modern Law: Trials, 1620-1926
Includes not only published trial transcripts, but also popular printed accounts of sensational trials for murder, adultery and other scandalous crimes.
Online primary sources that track the development of the modern, western world. Full-text searching across 12 million pages of works published 1450-1914. Great starting place for primary source material from this period.
Open Access National Security Archive website (which also provides the subscription-based Digital National Security Archive – listed above). The National Security archive is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University, collects and publishes declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. It provides the most comprehensive collection available of significant primary documents central to US foreign and military policy since 1945. Its supplementary database, the Digital National Security Archive, provides additional information.
Digital primary sources modules (50) drawn mostly from U.S. archival collections. One particularly relevant collection for US involvement in Latin America is the Confidental US State Department Files for Europe and Latin America
Schomburg Black Studies Center
Includes fulltext journals and indexing from the International Index of Black Periodicals, newspapers and essays from the Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience.
World History in Video (Alexander Street Press)
Interesting material can be found by keyword searching (for example, Mexico)
World Newsreels Online: 1929–1966 (Alexander Street Press)
Interesting material can be found by keyword searching (for example, Mexico)
This is a multi-volume project capturing imprints from major Latin American Collections in Latin America and Beyond on microfilm (much of which is now digitized). Most (parts) of the collection are held at one of the UC Libraries, as indicated below. In the few cases that they are not, the best way to locate them is by using WorldCat (OCLC)'s consortial global catalog. Please note that the link provided here is different from (and has more functionality than) clicking the WorldCat radio button in UC Library Search. Select "Accession Number" from the Search Index Drop-down options, and paste in the number indicated below.
Available online at UCSD
OCLC/WorldCat Accession Number: 785645835
Latin American history and culture: an archival record. Series I, Part 1, The Andean Collection
Available online at UCSD
OCLC/WorldCat Accession Number: 1381483712
Series I, Part 2, The Mexico CollectionLatin American history and culture: an archival record. Series I, Part 2, The Mexico Collection
Available online at UCSD
OCLC/WorldCat Accession Number: 1417638178
Latin American history and culture: an archival record. Series I, Part 3, The Spain Collection
Available online at UCSD
OCLC/WorldCat Accession Number: 1418815541
Available online at UCSD
OCLC/WorldCat Accession Number: 1418972399
Latin American history and culture: an archival record. Series I, Part 5, The Caribbean Collection.
Available online at UCSD
OCLC/WorldCat Accession Number: 1418873438
Available online at UCSD
OCLC/WorldCat Accession Number: 1418974903
Available online at UCSD
OCLC/WorldCat Accession Number: 1418817928
133 Reels Stored Offsite at the Southern UC storage facility (SRLF) F1760 .L38 2000
OCLC/WorldCat Accession Number: 45811515
No Local Holding OCLC/WorldCat Accession Number: 56099356
No Local Holding OCLC/WorldCat Accession Number: 54108910
Latin American history and culture. Series 5, Civil War, society and political transition in Guatemala
Stored Offsite at the Southern UC storage facility (SRLF) XF 2776 reel 1-112 (See also XF 2776 guide at SRLF)
OCLC/WorldCat Accession Number: 61728183
246 Reels held at UC Berkeley
OCLC/WorldCat Accession Number: 65215712
100 microfilm rolls held at UC Berkeley
OCLC/WorldCat Accession Number: 639971648
