Related Guide
Guides to Archives
- ArchiveGrid This link opens in a new windowArchival collection descriptions and finding aids from over 1,000 institutions.
- National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections This link opens in a new windowBibliographic records of archival and manuscript collections throughout the United States and its territories.
- Historical Research in EuropeA guide to collections in European libraries and archives.
- MERLOTMultimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Teaching Online
UD Library Special Collections
- Visiting Special Collections
NOTE: Visits to Special Collections will be restricted during the fall 2020 semester. Please contact the Special Collections staff for more information. - Special Collections & Museums Exhibitions OnlineDigital content from present, past, and archived exhibitions.
- Manuscript and Archival Collection Finding AidsThis database provides access to finding aids that describe and inventory the manuscript and other archivally-managed holdings of the University of Delaware Library Special Collections.
- DELCAT Discovery This link opens in a new windowTo find records for books and other imprints located in Special Collections, enter your keywords and limit your search location to Special Collections.
Primary Source Collections
- NEW! Adam Matthew CollectionsThe Library recently added over 50 primary source collections by Adam Matthew. While staff work to link to these resources from the main databases page, please use this spreadsheet to access the collections.
- Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new windowSearch or browse more than 40 of Gale’s digital archives, 1500-present, including:
- Amateur Newspapers from the American Antiquarian Society
- American Fiction, 1774-1920
- American Historical Periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society
- British Library Newspapers
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online
- Nineteenth Century Collections Online
- Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers
- Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals
- Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926
- Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection
- Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Nichols Newspapers Collection
- The Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive, 1902-2014
- Gerritsen Women's History Collection of Aletta H. Jacobs This link opens in a new windowMonographs and periodicals, 1543-1945, collected by Aletta Jacobs Gerritsen, reflecting the evolution of a feminist consciousness and women’s rights.
- LitFinder This link opens in a new windowMore than 150,000 full-text poems and 800,000+ poetry citations, as well as short stories, speeches, and plays.
- Black Drama (2nd edition) This link opens in a new windowFull text of 1,462 plays written by 233 playwrights from North America, Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries, together with selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays.
- Parker Library on the Web This link opens in a new windowHigh-resolution copies of pages in the Corpus Christi College Library’s collection of 538 manuscripts spanning the sixth to the sixteenth centuries.
- Dime Novels and Penny Dreadfuls | Stanford UniversityOver 8,000 items from British and American dime novel series and story papers.
- The Digital Scriptorium | University of California, BerkeleyUnites scattered resources from many institutions into a national digital platform for teaching and scholarly research.
- American Periodicals This link opens in a new windowDigitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals, 1741-2005.
- ProQuest History Vault This link opens in a new windowProvides primary source materials on The Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century, including letters, papers, photographs, scrapbooks, financial records and diaries.
- Literature, Culture, & Society in Depression Era America: Archives of the Federal Writers' Project This link opens in a new windowPresents the publications of all 47 states involved in the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP), the most controversial and contentious program of the Work Projects Administration (WPA), which ran from 1933 to 1943
- Making of America This link opens in a new windowA digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction: 1840-1900 (Cornell University), 1850-1877 (University of Michigan).
- North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new windowA comprehensive bibliography of over 2,000 women's diaries and letters, including published and unpublished items in digital formats and microform.
- American Verse Project | University of MichiganAn electronic archive of volumes of American poetry prior to 1920.
- Documenting the American South | University of North Carolina at Chapel HillPrimary source material documenting the cultural history of the American South from the viewpoint of Southerners, including diaries, autobiographies, travel accounts, works on slavery, and regional literature.
- Library of Congress Digital CollectionsFreely available digitized materials from the Library of Congress, including the collections formerly called American Memory.
- British Literary Manuscripts This link opens in a new windowFacsimile images of literary manuscripts, divided into two collections: British Literary Manuscripts Online, Medieval and Renaissance and British Literary Manuscripts Online, c. 1660-1900.
- British Periodicals This link opens in a new windowSearchable full text of hundreds of periodicals, 1680s-1930s.
- British & Irish Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new windowThe letters and diaries of approximately 500 women.
- British Theater Playbills | Trinity CollegeNearly four hundred 18-19th Century British theater playbills given to Trinity College's Watkinson Library by Nathan H. Allen in 1916.
- Eighteenth Century Drama: Censorship, Society and the Stage This link opens in a new windowA unique archive of almost every play submitted for license between 1737 and 1824, and hundreds of documents that provide social context for the plays, including The London Stage, 1660-1800.