CMU LibGuides: History: 79-240: Development of American Culture: Books, Collections, Documents, Essays

Books, Documents, Essays

Worldcat is a comprehensive catalog of books and other materials held in libraries throughout the United States and even some international libraries. The Center for Research libraries' catalog contains more than 500,000 monographs in all formats and subject areas. The European Library searches European national libraries.

NOTE: Due to Covid many libraries are restricting access. Currently the University of Pittsburgh requires a Pitt ID to enter their libraries while the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh is open and requires masks.

Early Encounters in North America This link opens in a new window
Narratives, diaries, journals, and letters of traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials.
HathiTrust This link opens in a new window
Digitized books, journals, and government documents from all countries and time periods.
Text-mine (full text search) over 17 million digitized works and create customized collections. HathiTrust is a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries. Offers reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. copyright law, computational access to the entire corpus for scholarly research, and other emerging services based on the combined collection.
History Vault This link opens in a new window
Access to millions of primary source, cross-searchable, full-text/full-image documents on the most widely studied topics in 19th and 20th-century American history. Search or browse digitized letters, papers, photographs, scrapbooks, financial records, diaries, and many more primary source materials. Database Guide
Legal Classics This link opens in a new window
1,800 works from some of the greatest legal minds in history.
Sabin Americana, 1500-1926 This link opens in a new window
Works about the North, Central & South America, the Arctic & Antarctica and the West Indies.
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice This link opens in a new window
Thousands of original materials related to slavery, abolition, and social justice ranging from 1490-2007.
Twentieth Century Advice Literature: North American Guides on Race, Gender, Sex, and the Family This link opens in a new window
Search the full text of handbooks, manuals, textbooks, etiquette guides, self-help books, instructional pamphlets, and how-to books describing American attitudes towards family dynamics, gender roles, sexual relationships, and race relations.
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 This link opens in a new window
Documents, sources, and other material related the history of women in social movements. Scholar's Edition.

Searching Catalogs

The resources listed here are not the only ones available. Many others are in print or microform and can be found by searching library catalogs, like CMU's library catalog, or Worldcat, a database of library holding thoughout the world (though mainly U. S.). Use some of these terms combined with your topic:

personal narratives
diaries
sources
correspondence
interviews
pamphlets
speeches
early works to 1800

For example:

women and diaries
slavery and "early works"

History Librarian

Charlotte Kiger Price

she/her

Contact:

Hunt Library 109E
Pittsburgh, PA

Subjects: Education, Ethnic & Gender Studies, First Year Writing, History, Language & Linguistics, Law & Legal, Reference, Religion, Women's Studies