Digital Archives

Ask the Library

The South

These digital collections of primary source materials are available at no charge to researchers thanks to funding from the sponsering library, archive or museum.

South Carolina Digital Library
Provides access to digital collections related to South Carolina cultural heritage or created by South Carolina institutions. Also includes resources to guide institutions undertaking digital library projects. Features include...
more...less...
"South Carolina in the American Revolution" and "South Carolina Memory".
Georgetown County Digital Library
Includes photographs, newspapers, booklets, diaries, etc. covering local families, institutions, and events from Georgetown, SC and the surrounding county.
Lowcountry Digital Library
Materials on the Lowcountry, available through College of Charleston.
Nineteenth Century Documents Project
Representative primary texts of the 19th Century, with a particular focus on South Carolina. (archived in the WayBack Machine)
Documenting the American South
Access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes twelve thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.

Library of Congress: Digital Collections
Extensive digital collections on topics, people, and events in American history from the wide-range of Library of Congress primary resources.
FBI Records: The Vault
The FBI's FOIA Library, containing 6,700 documents and other media. Searching can be done by topic or keyword. Original documents include people, events and occurrences such as...
more...less...
the American Nazi Party, Louis Armstrong, animal mutilation, Lucille Ball, "Machine Gun" Kelly, the Beatles, the Black Panther Party, Al Capone, Columbine High School, FBI undercover operations, Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemingway, the Hindenburg Disaster, the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, the Ku Klux Klan, Marilyn Monroe, Will Rogers, Roswell, the Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion, UFOs and Watergate.
Making of America
Digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction, located at the University of Michigan and Cornell University
National Archives
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) collects documents of historical importance to the US. Collections include service records, photos, documents, and online exhibits of digitized materials from the vaults.ariety of online exhibits focusing on documents from the NARA collections. Documents include papers, letters, official documents, photographs, and posters.
Worlds of Change (formerly Colonial North America)
Digital resources from the Harvard Library collections from the 17th and 18th century.
Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition
Full-runs of five Nineteenth-Century periodicals (Monthly Repository, Unitarian Chronicle, Northern Star, Leader, English Woman's Journal, Tomahawk) and a decade of the Publishers' Circular.
Chronology of American History
Primary sources from pre-Colonial to the present day. Site may be browsed by time period.
The Gazette: Official Public Record
The Gazette covers 1665 to current, providing official notice of news and despatches for Great Britain.
Life Magazine
Complete run of all issues from the 1930's to 1970's of the prominent American newsmagazine. Excellent source for images, ads, and articles that reflect the period.
Norman B. Leventhal Map Center
Over 7,700 digitized maps, with a focus on Colonial and Revolutionary America.

Focused Topics

Runaway Slaves in Britain: bondage, freedom and race in the eighteenth century
"searchable database of well over eight hundred newspaper advertisements placed by masters and owners seeking the capture and return of enslaved and bound people who had escaped."