Research Guides: History: Getting Started

Highlighted Resources

American Historical Periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society

Magazines focus on colonial life and the growing tensions between colonists and their oversea rulers leading up to the American Revolution and coverage moves into the 20th Century covering a variety of topics including art, commerce, education, health and medicine, military history, and politics.
Part of Gale Primary Sources
Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922: From Library Company of Philadelphia
A record of African American history, literature, and culture, this collection of books, broadsides, and pamphlets spans the nearly 400-year arc of the fight for freedom and equality.
Part of America's Historical Imprints.
Indigenous Histories and Cultures in North America

Includes manuscripts, artwork and rare printed books dating from early European colonization up to photographs and Indigenous newspapers from the mid-twentieth century.

Note: This collection is owned in perpetuity by Davidson College.
Archives of Sexuality & Gender
Research a robust and significant collection of primary sources for the historical study of sex, sexuality, and gender.

Includes Archives of Sexuality & Gender: LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940, Parts I & II, and the Archives of Sexuality & Gender: Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century
Making of Modern Law: American Civil Liberties Union Papers
Drawing from the records of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), it focuses on civil rights, race, gender, and issues relating to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The papers are held at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library at Princeton University.
African American Historical Serials Collection
This unique resource documents the history of African American life and religious organizations from 1829 and 1922.

Reference sources

Gale eBooks Reference Library
Encyclopedias and reference sources that cover a variety of topics.
Oxford Reference

Oxford Reference contains short-entry and general reference to more in-depth articles on specialized subjects from entries across Oxford University Press’s Dictionaries, Companions and Encyclopedias.

While we do not have access to all of the titles in the full collection, the default search covers the titles that Davidson owns.
HeritageQuest
Genealogy research database. Includes historical census, PERSI, Revolutionary War records, and more.
Oxford Bibliographies
A collection of online, annotated bibliographies and provides citations to the key literature on a topic.

The library has the following collections:
--African Studies
--Art History
--Atlantic History
--Biblical Studies
--Chinese Studies
--Cinema and Media Studies
--Classics
--Islamic Studies
--Latin American Studies
--Latino Studies
--Psychology
--Public Health
--Renaissance and Reformation
Biography Index Retrospective 1946-1983
An archive index covering notable individuals from antiquity through 1983. Indexing and citations include book reviews, interviews, obituaries, diaries and memoirs.

American National Biography
Discover biographies of significant, influential or notorious figures from American history written by prominent scholars.

The bibliographies are great tools for finding primary and secondary sources; they contain information about published and unpublished primary sources and evaluative comment on notable secondary sources.