U.S. History and American Studies 

The New York Review of Books

The New York Review of Books is a great publication; I recommend adding it to your regular reading. But for the purposes for this class, it could well be that articles in the NYRB provide good overviews of scholarly debates surrounding your proposed topic. I find that the keyword search is the best way to use this database, even if you're looking for a known author or book.  The payoff is when you find articles such as Edmund Morgan reviewing Gordon Wood's Radicalism of the American Revolution or Gordon Wood reviewing Joyce Appleby's Inheriting the Revolution.  You also find scholarly contretempts in the letters to the editor, such as JGA Pocock taking issue with Wood's review of Appleby.

JSTOR

JSTOR is great; it's easy to use and it provides full-text access to hundreds of important journals. But it's always out-of-date (on an average of five years) and you'll want to supplement JSTOR searches with America History and Life for more recent items.  

America History and Life

America History and Life is fabulous. It indexes far more journals than JSTOR, and also includes books and dissertations. It's the essential database for historical literature reviews.

GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS

American State Papers, 1789-1838 U.S. Congressional materials from 1789 through 1838. Precedes and somewhat overlaps with the U.S. Congressional Serial Set (which began in 1817).

U.S. Congressional Serial Set - Comprised of the bound, sequentially numbered volumes of all the reports, documents, and Journals of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. It constitutes a rich source of primary source material on all aspects of American history.

House and Senate Journals Series 1 (1789-1817)

Journals of the House of Representatives and Senate 1789 to 1817, covering the first 14 Congresses of the United States.

Senate Executive Journals (1789-1980)

Executive Journals of the United States Senate 1789 to 1866, covering the first Congress through the first session of the 39th Congress.

Colonial Connecticut Records

NEWSPAPERS & MAGAZINES

America's Historical Newspapers, 1690-1922 including Early American Newspapers Series 1 - 5

American Periodical Series is a full-text-/full-image resource which contains 1000 magazines published between 1741 and 1900.

British Periodicals Collection I British Periodicals Collection I consists of journals spanning the late 17th through early 20th centuries, and covering a range of topics such as literature, philosophy, history, science, the fine arts and the social sciences.

British Periodicals II 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 of

17th - 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers  Newspapers, pamphlets, and books gathered by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817). The collection contains full runs of 48 newspapers specially selected by the British Library to best represent 17th - 18th century Britain.

Times of London Historical Newspapers Online's index to The Times (London) is based on Palmer's Index to the Times, from 1790 to 1905. Palmer's Full Text Online covers 1785-1870, providing access to the full articles referenced in Palmer's Index to The Times.

The Pennsylvania Gazette (part of Accessible Archives) was published in Philadelphia from 1728 through 1800. It is often referred to as the national newspapers of the 18th century.

BOOKS

American Broadsides and Ephemera

American Broadsides and Ephemera, based on the American Antiquarian Society's collection, offers searchable facsimile images of broadsides printed between 1820 and 1900 and pieces of ephemera printed between 1760 and 1900.

Evans Digital Edition 1 (1639-1800) (Early American Imprints, Series I. Evans, 1639 - 1800) is based on the American Bibliography by Charles Evans and the Early American Imprint Series I. Upon completion, Evans Digital will consist of more than 36,000 works and 2,400,000 images.

Evans Digital Edition 2 (1801-1819)

A continuation of Early American Imprints, Series 1 above.

Liberty Fund Online Library

A large collection of full-text reproductions of collected works of the Founding Fathers.

ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS

Ancestry.com

The Ancestry Library Edition collection has approximately 4,000 databases including key collections such as U.S. Federal Census images and indexes from 1790 to 1930; the Map Center containing more than 1,000 historical maps; American Genealogical Biographical Index (over 200 volumes); Daughters of the American Revolution Lineage (over 150 volumes); The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1630; Social Security Death Index (updated monthly); WWI Draft Registration Cards;

Footnote.com

A large number of archival documents from the National Archives in Washington, D.C.  Includes FBI files, government records on UFO sightings, and a number of other collections.  

Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment is a database assembled from hundreds of primary sources that document the relationships among peoples and with the environment in North America from 1534 to 1850.

North American Women's Letters and Diaries, Colonial-1950 includes the immediate experiences of 107 women, as revealed in more than 9,000 pages of diaries and letters.

Religion and the Founding of the American Republic - a Library of Congress exhibition.

Virginia Company Archives - Includes full-text images from the papers related to the creation and activities of the Virginia Company, which shed light on the early years of the British Colonies in the Americas. This online project presents those Ferrar Papers which are in Magdalene College, Cambridge.