History: Online Resources

Digital Library of South Dakota 

The Digital Library of South Dakota is a collaboration of the college and university libraries across the state of South Dakota. Member libraries include: Black Hills State University, Dakota State University, Dakota Wesleyan University, Northern State University, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, South Dakota State University, and the University of South Dakota.

Digital Scriptorium 

Digital Scriptorium is a growing consortium of American libraries and museums committed to free online access to their collections of pre-modern manuscripts.

Archive Grid

ArchiveGrid includes over 5 million records describing archival materials, bringing together information about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more. 

New York Public Library Digital Collections 

Explore 901,677 items digitized from The New York Public Library's collections. New materials are added every day, featuring prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, and more. 

Smithsonian Institution Archives: Digitized Collections

Search the Smithsonian Institution Archives’ collections, which contain the official records of the Smithsonian, as well as personal papers, special collections, records of professional societies, and oral/video histories relating to the history of the Smithsonian. 

National Park Service: Open Parks network

Since 2010, Clemson University and the National Park Service have collaborated on the Open Parks Network, an Institute of Museum and Library Services funded project that has resulted in the digitization of over 350,000 cultural heritage objects and 1.5 million pages of gray literature housed in the libraries, museums, and archives of our nation’s parks, historic sites, and other protected areas. More than 20 national parks and other protected sites are represented in these diverse collections, as well as 2 state park systems and 3 university libraries. The Open Parks Network provides public access to high-resolution, downloadable files.

Perseus Digital Library 

Since planning began in 1985, the Perseus Digital Library Project has explored what happens when libraries move online. Two decades later, as new forms of publication emerge and millions of books become digital, this question is more pressing than ever. Perseus is a practical experiment in which we explore possibilities and challenges of digital collections in a networked world.

Harvard Library's Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930

This digital collection of historical materials from Harvard's libraries, archives, and museums documents voluntary immigration to the United States from the signing of the Constitution to the start of the Great Depression. Concentrating heavily on the 19th century, the collection includes over 400,000 pages from more than 2,200 books, pamphlets, and serials, over 9,600 pages from manuscript and archival collections, more than 7,800 photographs.

Europeana

Europeana works with thousands of European archives, libraries and museums to share cultural heritage for enjoyment, education and research. This website gives you access to millions of books, music, artworks and more – with sophisticated search and filter tools to help you find what you’re looking for.

United States Constitution Annotated

The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation ("Constitution Annotated" or "CONAN") provides a legal analysis and interpretation of the United States Constitution based on a comprehensive review of Supreme Court case law and, where relevant, historical practices that have defined the text of the Constitution. This regularly updated resource is written in "plain English" and useful for a wide audience: from constitutional scholars to those just beginning to learn about the nation's most important legal document.

Influenza Encyclopedia: The American Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919

An estimated 650,000 Americans lost their lives to the infamous and tragic 1918-1919 influenza epidemic, a small but significant fraction of the approximately 50 million deaths the disease caused worldwide. Countless more were left without parents, children, friends, and loved ones. These pages contain the stories of the places, the people, and the organizations that battled the American influenza epidemic of 1918-1919.

Discovering American Women's History Online

This database provides access to digital collections of primary sources (photos, letters, diaries, artifacts, etc.) that document the history of women in the United States. The database offers the following features: detailed descriptions and links to more than 700 digital collections, quick access to basic and advanced searches on every page, options for browsing by subject (300+ entries), place, time period, and primary source type, and options for narrowing search results by subject, time period, place, and primary source type.

Colonial North America at Harvard Library

Colonial North America at Harvard Library provides access to remarkable and wide-ranging materials digitized as part of an ongoing, multi-year project. When complete, the project will make available to the world approximately 650,000 digitized pages of all known archival and manuscript materials in the Harvard Library that relate to 17th- and 18th-century North America. 

Today in History from the Library of Congress

Today in History is a Library of Congress presentation of historic events illuminated by items from the Library’s Digital Collections. 

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of South Dakota

Explore the Library of Congress's collection of Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Online Checklist provides a searchable database of the fire insurance maps published by the Sanborn Map Company housed in the collections of the Geography and Map Division. 

David Rumsey Map Collection 

The David Rumsey Map Collection was started over 30 years ago and contains more than 150,000 maps. The collection focuses on rare 16th through 21st century maps of North and South America, as well as maps of the World, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. The collection includes atlases, wall maps, globes, school geographies, pocket maps, books of exploration, maritime charts, and a variety of cartographic materials including pocket, wall, children's, and manuscript maps. Items range in date from about 1550 to the present.

Library of Congress: Photos, Prints, and Drawings

Explore the digitized collections of photographs, prints, and drawings from the Library of Congress. Search also within collections containing these materials. 

United Nations: Maps & Geospatial Services

Maps have been produced under the auspices of the United Nations since the founding of the Organization in 1946. Maps can form the principal part of a United Nations document, be ancillary to other materials, or a part of proceedings of meetings in the Organization. Maps, whether traditional digital maps or web-maps, are the main medium to present and visualize geospatial information. Today, maps and geospatial services provide Member States and territories an acute awareness in the context of global, regional, and national challenges.

West Point Atlases of War

In 1938 the predecessors of today's Department of History at the United States Military Academy began developing a series of campaign atlases to aid in teaching cadets a course entitled, "History of the Military Art." Since then, the Department has produced over six atlases and more than one thousand maps, encompassing not only America’s wars but global conflicts as well. In keeping abreast with today's technology, the Department of History is providing these maps on the internet as part of the department's outreach program. The maps were created by the United States Military Academy’s Department of History and are in most cases digital versions of maps in the atlases printed by the United States Defense Printing Agency.