History Research Guide

Need help finding primary sources for your research project? Need help focusing your topic or optimizing your database searches? Schedule a 1-on-1 research consultation to get the assistance you need.

This is an NEIU-specific interface for searching OCLC's WorldCat, a catalog that unifies thousands of libraries from across the country and around the world. It's ideal for searching out books rare or obscure enough that they cannot be found in our 75 member I-Share network here in Illinois, which this catalog also encompasses.

Available in print in the 2nd floor periodicals section of NEIU's Ronald Williams Library.

Reviews in American History helps scholars and students of American history stay up to date in their discipline. Each issue presents in-depth reviews of more than twenty of the newest books in American history. Retrospective essays examining landmark works by major historians are also regularly featured. Project MUSE offers Vol. 23 (1995) through the current issue.

A range of organizations, including the Library of Congress, HathiTrust, and the Internet Archive, have successfully built resources that provide books, images, historic records, and audiovisual materials to anyone with Internet access. Many universities, public libraries, and other public-spirited organizations have digitized materials, but these digital collections often exist in silos. The DPLA brings these different viewpoints, experiences, and collections together in a single platform and portal, providing open and coherent access to our society’s digitized cultural heritage.

The Internet Archive is a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. It contains 279 billion web pages, 11 million books and texts, 4 million audio recordings (including 160,000 live concerts), 3 million videos (including 1 million Television News programs), 1 million images, and 100,000 software programs.

The Library of Congress has made digitized versions of collection materials available online since 1994, concentrating on its most rare collections and those unavailable anywhere else. It provides a gateway to a growing treasury of digitized photographs, manuscripts, maps, sound recordings, motion pictures, and books, as well as "born digital" materials such as Web sites.

Chicago is home to a diverse range of organizations with extensive resources about the city's history and culture. Researchers often have to visit more than one archive to do in-depth research about Chicago. Most libraries and museums provide detailed guides to their archives that researchers can consult on the web prior to visiting in person. Until now, researchers had to know (or guess) in advance which libraries were likely to have relevant materials. Explore Chicago Collections brings those guides together into a single gateway to Chicago resources. By searching Explore Chicago Collections, you can easily tell which archives you'll need to consult to research your subject, and you may even discover resources in unexpected places.

Located on the third floor of the Chicago Public Library's main downtown branch, the Harold Washington Library Center.

The Global Database Search will examine all databases on the Illinois State Archives website, including the Illinois Regional Archives Depository located on the lower level of the NEIU Library.