Free E-Resources: Digital Collections

DPLA connects people to the riches held within America’s libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions.

Relying on the expertise of distinguished curators and scholars, Digital Schomburg provides access to trusted information, interpretation and scholarship on the global black experience. From The New York Public Library.

Digitized historic photographs, advertisements, texts & more from Duke's unique library collections.

"Universal knowledge and creativity, preserved for future generations."

"Famous artists, when they weren't painting the covers for the magazines, paid their bills by doing art for advertisers. Some of the things they did can stand up with the best of their covers, and much of it is fascinating today for what it tells us about life and popular culture of the past."

Explore over 390,000 works of art from the museum's encyclopedic collection.

The National Gallery of Art has an open access policy for images of works of art in our permanent collection which the Gallery believes to be in the public domain. Images of these works are available for download free of charge for any use, whether commercial or non-commercial.

Online exhibit including photo images and full-text letters and manuscripts. Online exhibit presented by Special Collections at Middlebury College.

Open-access library of images from libraries, archives, and museums around the world. Powered by Artstor.

Digital Collections from Holt-Atherton Special Collections.

Almost 4,500 of 82,000 ancient manuscripts have been digitized.

Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language. It acts as a common repository for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, but you do not need to belong to one of those projects to use media hosted here. The repository is created and maintained not by paid archivists, but by volunteers.

Historical documents in law, history and diplomacy. Ancient documents (4000bce) to 21st Century (2001).

Project MUSE is providing free access to more than a dozen journal articles and books focused on understanding and preventing gun violence. The goal is to encourage the broadest possible engagement with current research and expertise on the topic as the latest round of gun policy debates and discussions continue in the wake of shootings in California, Texas, and Ohio (8-15-19)

The collection features titles such as Private Guns, Public Health, by David Hemenway, and After Gun Violence: Deliberation and Memory in an Age of Political Gridlock, by Craig Rood. Also included is the contributed work, Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis, edited by Daniel W. Webster and Jon S. Vernick.

“MUSE in Focus: Contextualizing Pandemic” is a small sampling of temporarily free scholarship from Project MUSE publishers on the broad topic of pandemic and its effects throughout history, in culture, and on humanity as a whole. We hope that bringing these pieces together will help to bring historical and cultural context to the current crisis, so that we may look to the knowledge of the past to guide us forward.

“Humanity’s ‘Code Red’ on Climate Change” explores the human causes and effects of climate change, and the urgency of action to avert future catastrophe.

"Roots of the Attack on Democracy” explores the history of American right-wing extremism and the modern forces that culminated these attitudes in our current moment. Understanding the nature of these challenges provides the best chance to overcome them.

From ProQuest, "featuring select primary source documents related to critical people and events in African American history. Our intention is to support a wide range of students (see examples for using in teaching and learning), as well independent researchers and anyone interested in learning more about the foundation of ongoing racial injustice in the U.S. – and the fights against it."

A database of fugitives from American Slavery.

"The articles, published over the course of JSTOR Daily’s five years try to provide such context vital both in and out of the classroom. (Note: Some readers may find some of the stories in this syllabus or the photos used to illustrate them disturbing. Teachers may wish to use caution in assigning them to students.)

MUSE in Focus: Confronting Structural Racism is a selection of temporarily free books and articles from a wide range of Project MUSE publishers and perspectives about the history of racism in America, its endurance throughout society, and how the country can respond now to enact meaningful and lasting reform.

From the James E. Walker Library at Middle Tennessee State University, this database provides access to digital collections of primary sources that document the history of women in the United States. These diverse collections range from Ancestral Pueblo pottery to interviews with women engineers from the 1970s.

Women Working, 1800–1930 is a digital exploration of women's impact on the economic life of the United States between 1800 and the Great Depression. Working conditions, workplace regulations, home life, costs of living, commerce, recreation, health and hygiene, and social issues are among the issues documented in this online research collection from Harvard University.

As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote in the United States, we also must acknowledge that the 19th Amendment’s passage was just one victory in a much larger and ongoing political struggle for women and other marginalized peoples demanding their democratic rights. “MUSE in Focus: Commemorating the 19th Amendment” is a curated selection of content from Project MUSE’s publishing partners and offers a broad range of perspectives about the history of the women’s suffrage movement in the US and its continued relevance to the ongoing struggle for true democracy around the globe.

The Bicentennial Commemorative Volume of The American Physical Society 1976, from the Center for the History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics.

Listen to this collection of 78rpm records and cylinder recordings released in the early 20th century. These recordings were contributed to the Archive by users through the Open Source Audio collection.

Free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity. These materials, from the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions, chronicle historical events, people, places, and ideas that continue to shape America, serving the public as a resource for education and lifelong learning.

From the Library of Congress (LOC), over 7,200 are available.

Curated by Maya Cade, audience strategist at the Criterion Collection. Some films require a subscription.

"For many years, Netflix has allowed teachers to screen documentaries in their classrooms.

However, this isn’t possible with schools closed. So at their request, we have made a selection of our documentary features and series available on our YouTube channel."