This page provides you with some of the archival databases for American Cultural Interest.
These are not all the resources for archival research. To see other helpful resources, click on Databases on the homepage and select Primary Sources or Newspapers under Browse by Type.
Search for subjects, writers, stories, or events.
1. Be aware that spelling and word usage have changed over time.
2. In some databases, fuzzy searches allow you to look for words that have different spellings. For example, fairy (faerie) and harbor (harbour) can be spelled a number of ways in older text.
3. Periodicals can change names and editors. Publication information and history can be very valuable. When looking at publication information, look to see if your publication may have changed names so that you can look at its continuing issues. Often, these publications are linked in the databases. Look for the primary subject of the publication. Did that subject change over time? Who were the editors and/or the main contributors? This information can clue you into a large amout of social history of a periodical.
4. Stories are serialized. Sometimes, chapters or pieces of works appear in the same periodical over a period of time. Search the periodical to see if the rest of the story may be published in several issues.
Most of our archival databases can be found under the following database categories:
Newspapers
Primary Sources
Another resource for Texas is TARO (Texas Archival Resource Online). TARO makes descriptions of the rich archival, manuscript, and museum collections in repositories across the state available to the public. The site consists of the collection descriptions or "finding aids" that archives, libraries, and museums create to assist users in locating information in their collections. In most cases, the collections themselves are NOT available online.
Many museums, libraries, historical centers, and universities offer online digital collections that can be accessed. Below are a list of online, open-access databases that can provide digital images of periodicals and newspapers. The databases are usually browsable or searchable.
These databases provide not only large, urban newspapers, but they also include smaller, rural area newspapers, newsletters, major periodicals, and periodicals that societies, libraries, and religious dominations produced.
Newspapers from all over the country, including rural areas
Databases for particular periodicals
