The main catalog of books at Indiana University is IUCAT. Watch the video below if you need help finding e-books in IUCAT. Note that materials in IUCAT may be primary sources or secondary sources!
The Indiana University online catalog. Find books, magazines, journals, movies, sound recordings, government publications, digital collections, and more.
Provides access to materials exploring important aspects of LGBTQ life 1940-Present. Includes periodicals, newsletters, manuscripts, government records, organizational papers, correspondence, an international selection of posters, and other primary source materials.
The first two modules include historical records of political and social organizations founded by LGBTQ individuals, as well as publications by and for lesbians and gays, and coverage of governmental responses to the AIDS crisis. The archive also contains personal correspondence and interviews with numerous LGBTQ individuals, among others. The archive includes gay and lesbian newspapers from more than 35 countries, reports, policy statements, and other documents related to gay rights and health, including the worldwide impact of AIDS, and materials tracing LGBTQ activism in Britain from 1950 through 1980.
The third module, Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century, covers topics such as patterns of fertility and sexual practice; prostitution; religion and sexuality; the medical and legal construction of sexualities; and the rise of sexology. Includes digital access to items from the Special Subject Units from Sex Research: Early Literature from Statistics to Erotica, a collection from the Alfred C. Kinsey Institute for Sex Research dating from 1700 to 1860. This is a portion of Dr. Kinsey’s original library which he used to study human sexual behavior from a variety of academic and literary viewpoints.
The fourth module, International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture, examines diversity in underrepresented areas of the world such as southern Africa and Australia, highlighting cultural and social histories, struggles for rights and freedoms, explorations of sexuality, and organizations and key figures in LGBTQ history. Among many diverse and historical 20th century collections, materials include: the Papers of Simon Nkoli, a prominent South African anti-apartheid, gay and lesbian rights, and HIV/AIDS activist; Exit newspaper (formerly Link/Skakel), South Africa's longest running monthly LGBTQ publication; Geographic Files, also known as "Lesbians in…" with coverage from Albania to Zimbabwe; and the largest available collection of digitized Australian LGBTQ periodicals.
Epistolae is a collection of letters to and from women dating from the 4th to the 13th century AD. These letters from the Middle Ages, written in Latin, are presented with English translations and are organized by the women participating. Biographical sketches of the women and descriptions of the subject matter or the historic context of the letter is included where available.
Provides access to primary source material from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History, Duke University and The New York Public Library. Includes monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes.
Primary sources documenting the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations from the nineteenth century to the present. Includes sources for the study of women's suffrage, the feminist movement, the men’s movement, employment, education, the body, the family, and government and politics.
Material has been sourced from across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. Key areas represented in the material include: employment and labor, education, government and legislation, the body, domesticity and the family. Includes records from men’s and women’s organisations and pressure groups, detailing twentieth-century lobbying and activism on a wide array of issues to reveal developing gender relations and prevalent challenges.
HistSex.org is the home of an interdisciplinary, interinstitutional, and international resource for information on the history of sexuality. HistSex, a common abbreviation for ‘History of Sexuality,’ was founded by Brian M. Watson in 2020. This page lists various digital projects, most of which include primary sources and focus on the United States. The list of research collections will also point researchers to digitized primary sources.
Since the 1970s, the LHA has sought "to gather and preserve records of Lesbian lives and activities so that future generations will have ready access to materials relevant to their lives." In addition to the LHA's digitized newsletters dating from 1975, the archive has several other digitized collections, including an impressive collection of photographs.
Contains full-color images of the original medieval manuscripts that comprise the Paston, Cely, Plumpton, Stonor, and Armburgh family letter collections, along with full-text searchable transcripts from printed editions
Also includes: a chronology, a visual sources gallery, an interactive map, a glossary, family trees and links to other scholarly free to access digital resources for researching the medieval period.
Only five major letter collections exist from fifteenth century England and they are all available digitally via this resource.
The Paston letters have long been a subject of both literary and historical interest and are the largest of the collections and the best known of the five families. Their letters document the life of a gentry family during the War of the Roses. Hundreds of documents and letters exchanged between different family members cover in microcosm the dilemmas of a nation beset by war, disease and legal disputes.
The Celys were a merchant family, and crucial players in the wool trade between England and the Channel ports. This collection covers every aspect of their commercial dealings.
The Stonors were a well-established gentry family in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. These documents cover the longest time period of any of the collections and throw light on both business and domestic issues.
The Plumptons were a dominant northern family. Their documents, which continue right through to the early sixteenth century, reveal a family entangled in the social and economic affairs of the region.
The Armburgh family material is primarily concerned with a dispute over a family inheritance.
ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives is the oldest active Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning (LGBTQ) organization in the United States and the largest repository of LGBTQ materials in the world. Founded in 1952, ONE Archives currently houses over two million archival items including periodicals, books, film, video and audio recordings, photographs, artworks, organizational records and personal papers.
A small subset of this material has been digitized and is available online.
Housing the personal papers of Betty Friedan, Pauli Murray, and Angela Davis, and the organizational records of the National Organization for Women (to name just a few), the Schlesinger Library is one of the foremost repositories for the history of women in the United States. Click here for a list of digitized collections.
Explores changing attitudes towards human sexuality, gender identities and sexual behaviors throughout the twentieth century. Produced in collaboration with the Kinsey Institute Library and Special Collections, the resource includes the work of leading American sexologists, sex researchers, and organizations.
Users will be prompted to confirm that they are over the age of consent to access this resource. Please be aware that this resource contains material of a sexually explicit nature. Content includes, but is not limited to, descriptions and imagery of sexual violence; non-consensual sexual activity; sexual activity including minors; surgery and suicide.
Includes research papers and records spanning the tenures of the first three Institute directors; Dr Alfred C. Kinsey (1947-1956), Dr Paul H. Gebhard (1956-1982) and Dr June Reinisch (1982-1993).
Digital collections of the library of the Wellcome Collection in London
For more options, see this much longer list of primary source databases or click on the History Research Guide link below. Contact me if you need help.
The Ancient World Digital Library (AWDL) is an initiative of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) at New York University. AWDL will identify, collect, curate, and provide access to a broad range of scholarly materials relevant to the study of the ancient world. It includes both secondary sources and primary sources.
Calisphere is a gateway to digital collections from California's great libraries, archives, and museums. Discover over 1,725,000 images, texts, and recordings—and counting.
This database offers complete citation information and page images from every book published in England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and the United States between 1475-1700.
Database covering source material dating from 1106 until 1960, aggregating indexes, catalogs, collections, and other finding aids.
Eight Centuries (formerly 19th Century Masterfile) is a database covering source material dating from 1106 until 1960 (varies by source). 8C aggregates indexes, catalogs, collections, and other finding aids, and includes citations to 9,000 periodicals in 30+ languages. 8C provides access to articles, newspapers, books, U.S. patents, government documents, and images. Links to open access and subscription full-text sources are included where available.
The World Digital Library (WDL) is a project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with the support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world.
The WDL makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from all countries and cultures.
Although IU has access to newspapers from around the world, most of our large collections of historical newspapers center on the United States. Check out the "Old News" link below for non-American newspapers.
Includes electronic editions of hundreds of large and small U.S. newspapers and titles worldwide.
Source types include print and online-only newspapers, blogs, newswires, journals, broadcast transcripts and videos. Offers coverage at local, regional, national and international levels. Covers a range of disciplines, including political science, journalism, English, history, environmental studies, sociology, economics, education, business, health, and social sciences. Enables researchers to track subjects geographically and over time, analyze trends and statistics.
Digital access to 64 newspapers from throughout Africa, all published before 1901.
Includes the following titles: Egyptian Gazette (Cairo), Journal Franco-Ethiopien (Djibouti); Central African Times (Blantyre, Malawi), Commercial Gazette (Port Louis, Mauritius), Times of Marocco (Morocco), St. Helena Guardian (Jamestown, St. Helena) and Express en Oranjevrijstaatsch Advertentieblad (Bloemfontein, South Africa).
Access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages. Search historic newspaper pages from 1789-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
Produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). NDNP, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages.
Digitized copies and content of local Indiana Newspapers, including Bloomington Evening World (1907-1923), Indiana Daily Student (1867-1923), Madison Herald, Indianapolis State Sentinel, Indianapolis Star, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette,Terre Haute Star and Indianapolis Sun.
If you are just starting a research project and need to know some basic information to get started, encyclopedias and historical dictionaries are great tools.
Reference resources from the Oxford University Press that include English dictionaries and thesauruses, English language reference books, bilingual dictionaries, quotations, maps and illustrations, timelines and subject reference sources.
This link takes you to a list of hundreds of encyclopedias that are available as e-books
Most databases allow you click a box with a name like "scholarly articles," which does a reasonably good job of limiting your results to high-quality, academic articles.
Bibliographic database focusing on the history and life of the United States and Canada, indexing more than 1,800 journals published, dissertations and reviews.
In addition to the principle English language sources in the field, it includes some (about 10%) in other languages, as well as some state and local history journals. All aspects of historical inquiry are represented: diplomatic, ecclesiastical, agricultural, cultural, economic, political, military and others. The index also provides citations to book and media reviews from about 100 journals and references to abstracts of dissertations in the field. All abstracts are in English.
