LibGuides: History: American

Selected Journals

Your Faculty Librarians

Ciara Murray
Paul Newnham

Ciara Murray

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Paul Newnham

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Independent Voices

Independent Voices This link opens in a new window
An open access digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.

Recommended Resource: Oxford Very Short Introductions

Online Resources: Specialist Subject Collections

For more information about what each of these collections contains, please click the (i) info icon!

America : History and Life This link opens in a new window An index of journal literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. Literature indexed dates back to 1910.
American History, 1493-1945 This link opens in a new window This unique collection documents American History from the earliest settlers to the mid-twentieth century. It is sourced from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, one of the finest archives available for the study of American History. Module I Settlement, Commerce, Revolution and Reform: 1493-1859 Module II Civil War, Reconstruction and the Modern Era: 1860-1945
American National Biography This link opens in a new window From missionaries to musicians, social workers to statisticians, cowboys to chemists, and Vikings to astronauts, the portraits in the American National Biography Online (the ANB) reflect the rich diversity of American life from pre-colonial times to the present day.
Featuring thousands of illustrations, and tens of thousands of hyperlinked cross-references and links to other (select) websites, the ANB is a powerful research tool for all levels of study.
Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Federal Government Records This link opens in a new window The focus of the Federal Government Records module is on the political side of the freedom movement, the role of civil rights organizations in pushing for civil rights legislation, and the interaction between African Americans and the federal government in the 20th century.
Major collections in this module include the FBI Files on Martin Luther King Jr.; Centers of the Southern Struggle, an exceptional collection of FBI Files covering five of the most pivotal arenas of the civil rights struggle of the 1960s: Montgomery, Albany, St. Augustine, Selma, and Memphis; and records from the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations, detailing the interaction between civil rights leaders and organisations and the highest levels of the federal government.
Colonial America This link opens in a new window Colonial America consists of all 1,450 volumes of the 5 series of Colonial Office files held at The National Archives in London, plus all extracted documents associated with them. This unique collection of largely manuscript material from the archives of the British government is an invaluable one for students and researchers of all aspects of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century American history and the early-modern Atlantic world.
Covering the period 1606 to 1822, CO 5 constitutes the original correspondence of the colonial governments with the Board of Trade, the Secretary of State for the Southern Department and the Secretary of State for the Colonies, together holding responsibility for the British possessions in mainland North America and the Caribbean.

Module 1: Early Settlement, Expansion and Rivalries
Module 2: Towards Revolution
Module 3: The American Revolution
Module 4: Legislation and Politics in the Colonies
Module 5: Growth, Trade and Developement
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice This link opens in a new window Designed for both teaching and research, this resource brings together documents and collections from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world covering an extensive time period from 1490. Close attention has been given to the varieties of slavery, the legacy of slavery, the social justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery today.
In addition to the primary source documents there is a wealth of useful secondary sources for research and teaching; including an interactive map, scholarly essays, tutorials, a visual sources gallery, chronology and bibliography.
U.S. Declassified Documents Online This link opens in a new window U.S. Declassified Documents Online provides immediate access to a broad range of previously classified federal records spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The collection brings together over 700,000 of the most sensitive documents from all the presidential libraries and numerous executive agencies in a single, easily searchable database.
The collection is a comprehensive compilation of declassified documents from the executive branch. The types of materials include intelligence studies, policy papers, diplomatic correspondence, cabinet meeting minutes, briefing materials, and domestic surveillance and military reports. The collection editors have actively monitored the release of formerly classified documents from presidential libraries. They have also added numerous major releases of declassified documents from the Department of State, Department of Defense, Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other executive agencies.

American Newspaper Archives

Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers This link opens in a new window As a new American nation emerged in the 1800s, the first draft of history was written by those who experienced it and recorded it in newspaper pages from coast to coast. Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers provides an as-it-happened window on events, culture, and daily life in nineteenth-century America.
With 1.8 million pages available, the collection features publications of all kinds, from the political party newspapers at the beginning of the nineteenth century to the mammoth dailies that shaped the nation at the century's end. Major newspapers stand alongside those published by African Americans, Native Americans, women’s rights groups, labor groups, and the Confederacy. Titles were selected by leading scholars of the nineteenth-century American press, and headnotes have been included for the individual titles.
Newspaper titles include:
New York Herald (NY)
Lynchburg Virginian (VA)
Pacific Commercial Advertiser (HI)
Rocky Mountain News (CO)
Southern Illustrated News (VA)
Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago)
Milwaukee Sentinel (WI)
The Bee (OH)
The Mountaineer (SC)
New York Review of Books This link opens in a new window From the 1960s into the 21st Century, The New York Review of Books has posed the questions in the debate on American life, culture, and politics. "The New York Review of Books is where the most important issues are discussed by writers who are themselves a major force in world literature and thought. Every two weeks, these writers publish essays and reviews of books and the arts, including music, theater, dance, and film."
New York Times with Index (ProQuest Historical Newspapers) This link opens in a new window Coverage: 1851-2013. Offers full page and article images with searchable full text of the New York Times back to the first issue. The collection includes digital reproductions providing access to every page from every available issue.
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Researchers can study the progression of events over time by browsing issues of The New York Times, including news articles, photos, advertisements, classified ads, obituaries, cartoons, and more.

For the full collection of our newspaper archives please see the Guide below:

Newspapers and Magazines
by Andy Holgate Last Updated Oct 14, 2024 1697 views this year

Using Gale collections in your research

Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window A search portal allowing searching across all Gale databases: 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection, British Library Newspapers (1732-1950), 19th Century UK Periodicals, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, The Economist Historical Archive (1843-2013), The Financial Times Historical Archive (1888-2010), and The Times Digital Archive (1785-2008).
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American Historical Periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society

Learn about life in America from colonialism through the twentieth century. Includes American Antiquarian Society periodicals.

Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers

Search newspaper content from the nineteenth century, featuring a range of urban and rural regions throughout the United States.

Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive

Research, study, and discover endless teaching possibilities on understanding slavery from a multinational perspective.

U.S. Declassified Documents Online

Access government documents covering major policy issues from before World War II into the twenty-first century.

Browse the full list of Gale collections we have access to here, or type in keywords for your research question to search across all collections.

History: American

Selected Journals

Your Faculty Librarians

Independent Voices

Recommended Resource: Oxford Very Short Introductions

Online Resources: Specialist Subject Collections

American Newspaper Archives

Using Gale collections in your research

Recently acquired books in the Library...

The Birth of Psychological War

On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe

Three Mothers: how the mothers of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and James Baldwin shaped a nation

People's Diplomacy

The US Graphic Novel

The Rediscovery of America

Winds of Hope, Storms of Discord: The United States Since 1945