Hi Historians! This semester I am writing my History capstone for my BA in history and I’m not entirely pleased with the source list on my schools website because most of it revolves are pre-20th century United States, and I was hoping to do a topic that does not involve the US. So, what are some great online historical databases that I can look around in? I’m not exactly sure what I’m hoping to do for a topic yet, but I do know I don’t want it to be focused on the US. Thank you for any and all help.
This census database is from Nevada, so it is outside what you're asking for, but the state had more foreign born for most of the nineteenth century than any other state in the nation, so this is a springboard to anywhere in the world. With this database, you can do original research on an immigrant group (or on several for comparison), write on their homeland and take a look at how immigration affected them, who came and what happened to them. Several of my books and articles have been assisted with this database. This for example is an article I wrote on Manx immigrants to the West. I often pointed out to my students that I became an expert in Manx immigration in 45 seconds. That's not entirely true, but I was able to extract this information quickly - before this database, it would have taken months of eye-crossing work at a microfilm machine to glean this information. And Nevada is the only state in the nation with a fully-searchable federal census database like this. It represents a unique opportunity to conduct original research and write something that can make a mark.
And here's the deal, if you decide to use this and arrive at a topic based on this, I can assist you and if the final product is good enough, I am certain we can have it placed in the Nevada Historical Society Quarterly. Fame and fortune is right around the corner.
Here's just a completely random list of free resources I've had reason to look at at some point. So totally biased towards things I'm interested in and languages I can read, but maybe you'll find something interesting or inspiring.
Digitized texts
Digitale Sammlungen - the digitized collections of German libraries, in particular the Bavarian State Library.
University of Cologne manuscripts
Saxon State and University Library
E-rara.ch - digitized rare (printed) books from Swiss libraries
e-codices.unifr.ch - Swiss Medieval manuscripts, mostly monastic. Well-catalogued.
Gallica - the French National Library's database of digitized stuff. From medieval manuscript to 1930s issues of Le Figaro. Tons of stuff there, although often in somewhat mediocre black-and-white scans. Often OCR:ed too, but with bad reliability for old stuff.
Belgica - like the above but with more frites.
Flandrica - like the above but just the northern part.
British Library digitized manuscripts online. Well cataloged but a pity there's no way to get a thumbnail view of pages. Far from everything's digitized.
Cambridge Digital Library - They never have what I'm looking for
Early Manuscripts at Oxford University - neither do they.
Vatican Library - You pretty much need to know the shelfmark of what you're looking for beforehand. But if you have that and it's digitized, obviously very useful.
Biblioteca Digital Hispánica - Spanish National library
AECID Digitized Collections - Lots of Latin American stuff.
Catalog of digitized catalogs of MSSs
Museum collections
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Lots of 17th century prints.
British Museum, London. Lots of everything.
V & A Museum, London. Also prints.
Danish National Museum, Copenhagen
Swedish Historic Museum, Stockholm (not quite working right ATM)
Digitaltmuseum.no and Digitaltmuseum.se - digitized collections of a number of Norwegian and Swedish museums.
Epigraphy
Corpus des inscriptions de la France médiévale - French medieval inscriptions. (tons of other publications free at persee.fr too)
Deutsche Inschriften Online - German ones
Nordic Rune Text Database - Ones made by bearded guys in horned helmets.
Totally random stuff
Campbell Bonner Magical Gems Database
Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams
Fleuron - A Database of Eighteenth-Century Printers' Ornaments
Emblematica Online - Emblem books
Papyri.info - Papyrology
It depends on what databases your university/college is subscribed to. Some ones I used a lot were JSTOR and ProQuest, but again your university might not have those. I'd start looking through what is all available to you and search through there.