Digital History

Awesome Digital History ¶

Find primary sources online and learn how to research history digitally.

Finding aids for textual and multimedia primary sources with a focus on the western hemisphere and the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Courses and learning tools to explore history digitally.

📢 Announcement

🎉 Check out our new website at awesome-digital-history.pages.dev with more information, filters, and a search function. 🎉

Archives and primary sources¶

Africa¶

PARC - Portal for African Research Collections: PARC is the new meta-catalogue for the Africana collections at the research location Basel.
West African Arabic Manuscript Database - A comprehensive collection of manuscripts that provides insight into the Islamic scholarly tradition in West Africa.

Asia¶

FOCAL - The Asia Directories and Chronicles is a reference work for foreign traders in the Asian region, published annually by the Hong Kong Daily Press, annually between 1863 and 1941.

Austria¶

ANNO - Austrian Newspapers online.
Digitarium - Digital edition of the historical Wiener Zeitung.
Österreichische Mediathek - The Austrian archive for sound recordings and videos from cultural and contemporary history.
Wien Geschichte Wiki - It is based on the Historical Dictionary Vienna by Felix Czeike, currently there are 50,156 contributions and 12,510 images.

Europe¶

Archives Portal Europe - European archives search engine.
Encyclopédie d'histoire numérique - European History through renewed historiographic objects and major contemporary challenges.
Europeana - Search engine for European textual and non-textual archival sources.
Mapire - Interactive historical maps.
Monasterium - Deeds from all over Europe.
Project Gutenberg - A library of over 60,000 free eBooks.
Visual Archive Southeastern Europe - Historical and contemporary visual materials from Southeastern Europe.

France¶

Gallica - Digital library of the National Library of France.
Institut national de l'audiovisuel - INA is a repository of French radio and television audiovisual archives.

Germany¶

Archivportal - German archives search engine.
Bavarikon - Collection of Bavarian maps, places, newspapers etc.
Computerarchiv Muenchen - South German Museum for History of Digital Development.
Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek - Over 12 million objects.
Deutsches Zeitungsportal - Discover historical newspapers from 1671 to 1950.
Digitale Sammlungen - Collections of the Munich Digitization Center.
Digitales Deutsches Frauenarchiv - An interactive portal on the history of women's movements in Germany.
Docupedia - Terms, methods, and debates in contemporary history research.
historicum.net - A specialized information service for historians that offers access to research tools and services.
leo bw - Platform of the State Archives of Baden-Württemberg.
LexM - Encyclopedia of musicians persecuted during the Nazi era.
MARCHIVUM - Collection of Mannheim newspapers and historical printed matter on the history of Mannheim.
Projekt Gutenberg - Contains 10'000 works by over 2'000 authors in German.
SLUB Dresden - Over 1.8 million graphic media (photographs, maps, drawings).
Spiegel Online - SPIEGEL archive since 1947.
UB Heidelberg - Manuscripts, documents, maps and literature.
Uni Frankfurt - Rare prints, manuscripts, bequests and more.
Zefys - Historical German newspapers.
ZLB - Collections of the Berlin Central and State Library.

Global¶

Bitsavers.org - Computer code, reference manuals, and magazines.
Classic Computer Magazine Archive - Preserving information from early personal computer magazines.
Fxtop - Forex rate history since 1953.
Got Papers? - Resources on the history of games, cracking, and the demoscene.
HMML - Hill Museum & Manuscript Library. Digital collection of manuscripts from around the world.
Internet Archive - Non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.
Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog - Book search engine for finding hundreds of millions of media in catalogs worldwide.
Marxist Internet Archive - Everything you ever wanted to know about Marx (and other important socialists).
Mementoweb - Find archived web pages in Internet Archive, Archive-It, British Library, archive.today, and GitHub.
OldMapsOnline - Maps, starting in the 17^th century.
OpenCat - Search engine for libraries around the globe.
OpenHistoricalMap - A time travel map created by a community of mappers and historians.
Public Books Database - Open access academic literature.
United Nations Archive - Archives and records from the United Nations regarding Secretaries-Generals, departments and missions.
WayBackMachine - Explore more than 486 billion web pages saved over time.
World Historical Gazeteer - Collection of content and services that permit world historians to do spatial and temporal reasoning and visualization in a data rich environment at global and trans-regional scales.

Great Britain¶

British Library - Maps, manuscripts and sounds.
National Records of Scotland - Repository for the public and legal records of Scotland.
NLS - Data collections from the National Library of Scotland.
The National Archives - A non-ministerial department, and the official archive and publisher for the UK Government, and for England and Wales.
The Proceedings of the Old Bailey - London's Central Criminal Court, 1674 to 1913.

Netherlands¶

Delpher - Dutch newspapers, books and magazines.
Nationaal Archief - Rich collection of the National Archives of the Netherlands.

North America¶

Ad*Access - U.S. and Canadian advertisements covering five product categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda - dated between 1911 and 1955.
Chronicling America - America's historic newspapers from 1777-1963.
Computer Gaming World Museum - Archive of various magazines on gaming.
David Rumsey Map Collection - Historical maps collection.
Digital Public Library of America - Discovery tool, or union catalog, for public domain and openly licensed content held by the United States' archives, libraries, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions.
Digital Transgender Archive - Wide range of trans-related digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world.
Eugenics Archive - Scholars, survivors, students, and community partners in challenging eugenics.
HathiTrust - A not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving and making accessible millions of digitized items.
National Archives - The official archives regarding veteran records, founding documents and presidential libraries of the United States.
Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection - Online collection of scanned maps.
Women Working 1800-1930 - An exploration of women's impact on the economic life of the United States between 1800 and the Great Depression.
World Digital Library - WDL is an international digital library operated by UNESCO and the United States Library of Congress.

Switzerland¶

Amtsdruckschriften - Federal Gazette, Administrative Case Law of the Federal Authorities and more documents from the Swiss Federal Archives.
Année Politique Suisse - Sources and database for swiss socio-political topics.
arCHeco - Index of economic collections in archives of Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
Archives Online - Archival search engine for Switzerland.
chgov - Minutes of the Federal Council (1848-1963).
COSMOV - COSMOV includes a digital edition of the events of the Zurich summer of 1968.
DigiBern - Bernese culture and history on the Internet.
Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland - Diplomatic documents of Switzerland.
e-codices - Virtual manuscript library of Switzerland.
e-gs - Online web portal of the ETH Zurich Graphics Collection.
e-manuscripta - Manuscript material from Swiss libraries and archives.
e-newspaperarchives.ch - Swiss newspapers.
E-Periodica - Swiss journals.
e-rara - The platform for digitised rare books from Swiss libraries.
histHub - The platform manages authority files on Swiss history.
Historical Encyclopedia of Switzerland - Encyclopedia on Swiss history.
HSSO - Historical statistics of Switzerland online.
impresso - Historical newspaper collections of the Swiss National Library, the National Library of Luxembourg, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Le Temps, the Valais State Archives and the Swiss Economic Archives.
Industriekultur - Swiss national inventory of industry artifacts.
infoclio.ch Edition projects - A database containing current historical edition projects in Switzerland.
Kartenportal - Search engine for maps.
Le Temps - Archive of Gazette de Lausanne et du Journal de Genève.
map.geo.admin.ch - Journey through time via maps of Switzerland.
MEMOBASE - Provides access to audiovisual documents from Swiss memory institutions.
Sammlung Schweizerischer Rechtsquellen online - Retrodigitalisierte und digitale Editionseinheiten der Schweizerischen Rechtsquellen. Ediert wird rechtshistorisches Quellenmaterial vom Mittelalter bis in die Frühe Neuzeit (1798).
Schweizerisches Wirtschaftsarchiv - This collection comprises over 500 business archives from the period 1750 to the present day, with a focus on the Basel region.
Sources Online - A platform for digital scholarly text editions, integrating TEI Publisher and IIIF in Switzerland.
swisscollections - Meta search engine for historical and modern collections in Swiss libraries and archives.
timeSTAT Cubes - The Federal Council reports to parliament on income and expenditure for the past years.
transcriptiones - Create, share and access transcriptions of historical manuscripts.

Learning¶

AdFontes - An Introduction to Working with Sources in the Archive.
Clio Guide - A handbook on digital resources for the historical sciences.
Crafting Digital History - A Workbook for Methods and Readings in Digital History.
Digital History Guide - Introduction to the web for historians, who wish to produce online historical work.
Geospatial Historian - Open HGIS Lessons and Resources.
HIST 7370 - Online course for Methods and Readings in Digital History.
History Toolkit - History Toolkit for Students.
Introduction to Digital History - This guide, created in the fall semester of 2022, accompanies the introductory courses in history at the University of Basel and is intended to provide a first insight into the field of digital history.
Introduction to Python for Humanists - A textbook offering a comprehensive introduction to Python programming, tailored for researchers and students in the humanities.
Local Linkages - Professional development curriculum to introduce to historical research methods and digital history skills.
Python für Historiker:innen - The Jupyter Book (in German language) is aimed at historians who are looking for a first application-oriented and interactive introduction to the Python programming language.
The CTP Book - A book for teaching Computational Thinking and Programming skills to people with a background in the Humanities.
The Programming Historian - Novice-friendly, peer-reviewed tutorials that help humanists learn a wide range of digital tools, techniques, and workflows to facilitate research and teaching.
UCI Digital History - Overview on the field of Digital History and Digital Humanities.
We think History - News about and innovations from digital history.

More Awesome¶

Computer History - An Awesome List of computer history videos, documentaries and related folklore.
Data Visualization - A curated list of awesome open-source data visualizations frameworks, libraries and software.
Digital Humanities - Tools, resources, and services supporting the Digital Humanities.
Research Tools - A list of tools for research.
Scientific Writing - Scientific writing can extend beyond LaTeX, made possible by formats, such as Markdown (and its many flavours), reStructuredText and Jupyter notebooks.
Tempopedia - Digital History Directory.

Contribute¶

Contributions welcome! Read the CONTRIBUTING.md first.