Primary Source Databases Research Guide

The AAS Historical Periodicals Collection includes scanned and searchable pages and articles from over 6,500 magazines, trade journals, and science journals published between 1690 and 1910. This is the most comprehensive database of its kind.

The American Periodicals Series brings the early days of U.S. history alive through more than 7,000,000 digitized page images from over 1,000 periodicals spanning 200 years. The wide variety of content ranges from Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine, first published in 1741, to literary and professional journals, specialized titles, and such well-known magazines as Vanity Fair, Ladies' Home Journal, Scientific American, and The Dial.

Periodicals Archive Online contains PDF copies of articles published in 800 journals and magazines primarily spanning 1850-2000. The database emphasizes academic titles, but it also includes comprehensive runs of important political and commentary magazines such the Spectator and New Statesman.

British Periodicals provides access to the searchable full text of hundreds of periodicals from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth, comprising millions of high-resolution facsimile page images. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the social sciences, music, art, drama, archaeology and architecture.

The nineteenth century was a time of revolutionary change and expansion. Britain was one of the world's first industrial, urban superpowers and developed a press to feed the demands of its increasingly literate population. The Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals series covers the events, lives, values, and themes that shaped the nineteenth century world. It provides an invaluable, fully-searchable facsimile resource for the study of British life in the nineteenth century—from art to business, and from children to politics. Few of the materials in this extensive collection have ever been reissued, in any format since original publication. Titles included have been identified and selected by leading scholars in nineteenth century studies; their choices reflect the broad scope and thrust of research and teaching in the twenty-first century.

HarpWeek enables you to directly experience the richness and historical significance of Harper’s Weekly, America's leading 19th century illustrated newspaper.

Liberty: A Weekly for Everybody was founded in 1924 by Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, which he called WGN, the world's greatest newspaper, and his cousin Joseph Patterson, with whom he established the New York Daily News. McCormick and Patterson set out to make the magazine more topical, daring, and exciting than any competitors. Information was presented in a style heavily influenced by the emerging motion-picture industry and focused on the most sensational and popular issues.

The magazine's ongoing circulation of more than three million was founded on the high quality and originality of its art, stories, and other features, as well as upon the strength of its guest contributors.

The National Geographic brings the world of geography--in its broadest sense--to some 60 million readers around the globe each month. With comprehensive, timely articles and legendary photographs and maps, the magazine documents life on our planet and beyond, and interprets the world's sweeping changes through the lens of personal experience. Through the decades, National Geographic has brought its readers gripping first-person accounts of epic exploration and discovery.

In more than 8,000 issues since its first publication in 1843, The Economist has presented timely reporting, concise commentary and comprehensive analysis of global news every week. With objective authority, clarity and wit, The Economist presents the worlds political, business, scientific, technological and cultural developments and the connections between them. Because of its global editorial perspective, it is read by more of the worlds political and business leaders than any other magazine.

The Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive contains every page of every copy of the TLS published from 1902 onward. The archive runs five years behind with a new year added annually.

The Listener was a weekly publication, established by the BBC in 1929 as the medium for reproducing radio - and later, television - programes in print. It is our only record and means of accessing the content of many early broadcasts. With major contributors including E. M. Forster, George Orwell and Bertrand Russell, it also provided an important platform for new writers and poets; W. H. Auden, Sylvia Plath and Philip Larkin being notable examples.

The Picture Post Historical Archive comprises the complete archive of the Picture Post from its first issue in 1938 to its last in 1957 - all digitized from originals in full colour. Picture Post’s innovative use of photo-journalism captured the imagination of the British people, with readership at its peak estimated at 80% of the population. In the era before television, it became the window on the world for ordinary people, bringing the major social and political issues of the day into popular consciousness.

This database offers an online archive of the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, which for many decades has been a major index to articles published in news magazines such as Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report as well as popular magazines like Good Housekeeping and Reader's Digest.