Books
Library catalogs
English Short Title Catalog (Wing) - The Wing Short Title Catalog is the essential bibliographic database of extant books, pamphlets and broadsides printed in English between 1641 and 1700. The Catalog lists the title, author name, imprint and physical format as well as including bibliographic information and listings of selected libraries and institutions that hold a copy of the work.
Morris - Yale Law School's Catalog. Contains bibliographic records of books, databases, and other materials available through the law library.Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue. - The NSTC Project aims to provide increasingly complete listings of British books printed between 1801 and 1919. British books are taken to include all books published in Britain, its colonies and the United States of America; all books in English wherever published; and all translations from English.
Orbis - Yale University Catalog. Contains bibliographic records of books and other materials available through the Yale University libraries.
WorldCat - Union catalog. Contains bibliographic records of material held by many libraries worldwide. A Yale IP address is required to gain access to this resource.
WorldCat.org - Free version of the above union catalog.
Full-text books
Early American Imprints, Series I (Evans) - Early American Imprints, Series I (1639 - 1800) is based on the American Bibliography by Charles Evans and the Early American Imprint Series I. Upon completion, it will consist of more than 36,000 works and 2,400,000 images
Early American Imprints, Series II (Shaw-Shoemaker) - Early American Imprints, Series II (1801-1819) provides full-text access to the 36,000 American books, pamphlets and broadsides published in the first nineteen years of the nineteenth century.
Early English Books Online (1475-1700) is based on the Bell & Howell microfilm collections Early English Books 1475-1640 and Early English Books 1641-1700. The bibliographies behind these collections are the Short Title Catalogues compiled by Pollard and Redgrave (STC I) and Wing (STC II). The later collection also includes the Thomason tracts. Eighteenth Century Collections Online - Digital edition of The Eighteenth Century, the world’s largest library of the printed book on microfilm, it contains 138,000 English-language titles and editions published between 1701 and 1800.
HeinOnline - more than 1,200 works from some of the greatest legal minds in history, including Joseph Story, Louis Brandeis, Benjamin N. Cardozo and Edwardo Coke. In addition to many "classics", this collection includes rare items that are found in only a handful of libraries around the world. The collection focuses on constitutional law, political science, and other classic topics.
The Making of America is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from antebellum through reconstruction, including books, journals, and original manuscripts.
Making of Modern Law - Contains legal treatises published from 1800-1926, from the Nineteenth-Century Legal Treatises and Twentieth-Century Legal Treatises microfilm collections.
Making of the Modern World - The Making Of The Modern World: The Goldsmiths'- Kress Library of Economic Literature 1450-1850 (formerly The Making of the Modern Economy) provides digital facsimile images on every page of works of literature on economic and business published in Europe and North America from 1450 through 1850.
Scholarly and other Periodicals
19th Century Index - The Nineteenth Century Index (C19 Index) searches established indexes such as the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, The Wellesley Index, Poole's Index to Periodical Literature, and Periodicals Index Online to create integrated bibliographic coverage of books and official publications, and articles published in journals, magazines and newspapers.
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 - Full text of hundreds of periodicals from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth. HeinOnline - Searchable full-text page images of the main American Legal Periodicals from their inception to within a year or so.
Index to Legal Periodicals and Retropective - Main American Legal Periodical Index with coverage from 1918 - present.
Jones-Chipman Index to Legal Periodicals - 1786 - 1922 - Legal Periodical Index for the 19th Century.
The Nineteenth Century Masterfile - The 19th Century Masterfile is an accumulation of indexes to printed materials from the nineteenth century with coverage from about 1774 to 1920, depending on the index selected
Periodicals Contents Index (PCI) is an electronic index to the contents of thousands of periodicals in the humanities and social sciences, from their first issues to 1995.
Periodicals Index Online is an electronic index to the contents of thousands of periodicals in the humanities and social sciences.
Readers Guide to Periodical Literature - Readers Guide offers comprehensive indexing and abstracting of some 375 of the most popular general interest periodicals published in the United States and Canada since 1890.
Historical Newspapers
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.
Access Newspapers - A large number of fully searchable newspapers, mainly from smaller towns.
Accessible Archives - Accessible Archives is a searchable collection of American newspapers, containing African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, The Civil War: A Newspaper Perspective, and Godey's Ladys Book 1830-1880.
American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I - Facsimile images of broadsides printed between 1820 and 1900 and pieces of ephemera printed between 1760 and 1900. The subjects of these broadsides range from contemporary accounts of the Civil War, unusual occurrences and natural disasters to official government proclamations, tax bills and town meeting reports and pieces of ephemera that include clipper ship sailing cards, early trade cards, bill heads, theater and music programs, stock certificates, menus and invitations documenting civic, political and private celebrations.
America's Historical Newspapers, 1690-1922 including Early American Newspapers Series 1 - 5.
Early American Newspapers Series I, 1690-1876 - Historic newspapers listed in Clarence Brigham's authoritative bibliography and in additional subsequent bibliographies.
Newspaperarchive - A database of over 50 million pages of newspaper articles mostly from small-town newspapers throughout the United States in the 1800s and 1900s.
Proquest Historical Newspapers - Select Newspapers to search by clicking on the "select multiple databases" link.
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.
Federal Government
American State Papers, 1789-1838 - Search or browse these legislative and executive documents, many originating from the important period between 1789 and the beginning of the U.S. Congressional Serial Set
Century of Lawmaking - From the Library of Congress; page images of material related to the Constitutional Convention (Journals of the Continental Congress, Letters of Delegates to Congress, Elliot's Debates, and Farrand's Records) and Congressional material to 1875.
HeinOnline - United States Reports, Statutes at Large, Congressional Record, Federal Register, and more.
House and Senate Journals, Series I, 1789-1817 - Journals of the House of Representatives and Senate 1789 to 1817, covering the first 14 Congresses of the United States.
LexisNexis Congressional - Indexes to Congressional Material including legislative histories for roughly the past 20 years.
Senate Executive Journals, Series I, 1789-1866 - Executive Journals of the United States Senate 1789 to 1866, covering the first Congress through the first session of the 39th Congress. in 1817.
U.S. Congressional Serial Set, 1817-1980 - Search or browse the Reports, Documents, and Journals of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, originally published in approximately 13,800 bound volumes.
Archives
Archive Finder - Archive Finder is a current directory which describes over 206,200 collections of primary source material housed in thousands of repositories across the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Archive Grid - Locate relevant research institutions, arrange visits, or request copies from libraries, museums, and archives worldwide.
Connecticut State Archives Finding tools
National Archives and Records Administration - US Archives
New York State Archives finding tools
Cases
Books Databases, above, especially for the colonial period
Lexis - Contains many databases including all reported (and many unreported) federal cases and most state cases (check the database scope note for coverage of state databases).
Westlaw - Contains many databases including all reported (and many unreported) federal cases and most state cases (check the database scope note for coverage of state databases).
Statutes
HeinOnline, see above.
LexisNexis Congressional, see above.
Additional Research Guides
U.S. History and American Studies Guides at Yale University
Comments/Questions? Contact john.nann(at)yale.edu