LibGuides: History: Home

Guide Introduction

Use the blue tabs, above, or the Table of Contents in the middle column to find:

primary sources (letters, diaries, historical newspapers, etc.)
books (monographs) and peer-reviewed journal articles (i.e., secondary sources)
reference works (bibliographies, encyclopedias, historical biography, etc.)

Featured E-Book

Humanities in the Time of AI by Laurent Dubreuil
Call Number: Gitenstein Library E-BOOK

ISBN: 9781452972800

Publication Date: 2025-04-01

"If humanistic research consists of the generation of consensus positions, simple expression, summarized texts, or passable translations, then we have arrived at the place where AI is able to accomplish these different missions to a convincing degree. However, Laurent Dubreuil argues, such tasks do not, in any way, constitute the humanities. On the contrary, he posits, a maximalist take on scholarship would not focus on generation but on creation, as a subject and as an object. Dubreuil seizes the opportunity of what AI reveals about the meaning of humanistic inquiry to offer a path for the renewal of the humanities on transhistorical, transcultural, and transdisciplinary grounds" (Project MUSE).

See also "These College Professors Will Not Bow Down to A.I." by Jessica Grose in the opinion pages of the New York Times, published August 6, 2025.

Featured Primary Sources

Global Commodities New!
Gitenstein Library database

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Global Commodities consists of primary documents relating to the history of 15 commodities: chocolate (cacao), coffee, cotton, fur, oil, opium, porcelain, silver and gold, spices, sugar, tea, timber, tobacco, wheat, wine and spirits. Document types include advertisements, company records, correspondence, diaries, leaflets, maps, mercantile papers, paintings, pamphlets, port records, prices current, private papers and scrapbooks among others. The collection can be searched by theme (e.g., advertising and consumption, production, trade and commerce). Other features include a chronology for each commodity, data and visual resources. This collection will be useful for assignments on the Early Atlantic World, British colonialism, etc.
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice New!
Gitenstein Library database

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Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice — “Designed for teaching and research, this resource brings together [primary] documents from libraries and archives across the Atlantic World, covering an extensive time period from 1490” (database homepage).
Highlights include: African forts and the Gold Coast; Materials on Brazil; Education and social justice; Family Papers, Correspondence, Bills and Plantation Journals; Local court records relating to slavery; Resistance and Revolts; Testimony of enslaved people; Slavery in the Early Americas; Songs that recall the Transatlantic Slave Experience; Urban Slavery in New York and Philadelphia; The Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania; Zanzibar and the Indian Ocean Slave Trade

Don't miss the Primary Sources Online page of this libguide. It features all of the library's primary source databases arranged by country, topic, and source type (e.g., newspapers); a selection of primary sources in library e-books; and vetted primary sources available on the open web. See also this list of Gitenstein Library primary source databases.

Featured Website

The Mapping American Social Movements Project at the University of Washington "produces and displays free interactive maps showing the historical geography of dozens of social movements that have influenced American life and politics since the late 19th century, including radical movements, civil rights movements, labor movements, women's movements, and more.

Humanities Librarian

David C. Murray

he/him/his

Subjects: International Studies