Research Guides: UO Libraries Resources in partnership with the LRP Black Cultural Center: Digital Archives & Primary Source Collections

Digital Archives

There are many open digital archives on the internet. Find them by adding "digital archive" to your web searches on your topic. Below you can find a list of digital archives the UO Libraries subscribes to, or creates.

Black thought and culture This link opens in a new window
Black Thought and Culture is a landmark electronic collection of approximately 100,000 pages of non-fiction writings by major American black leaders—teachers, artists, politicians, religious leaders, athletes, war veterans, entertainers, and other figures—covering 250 years of history. In addition to the most familiar works, Black Thought and Culture presents a great deal of previously inaccessible material, including letters, speeches, prefatory essays, political leaflets, interviews, periodicals, and trial transcripts. The ideas of over 1,000 authors present an evolving and complex view of what it is to be black in America.

Caribbean Women Healers
The Caribbean Women Healers Project: Decolonizing Knowledge Within Afro-Indigenous Traditions, is a collaborative research project built as a result of our journeys within Caribbean communities throughout the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Pacific Northwest region. Created by a team of faculty and staff at the University of Oregon.

Colonial Africa in official statistics, 1821-1953 This link opens in a new window
These statistics cover the history of thirteen colonies across Africa. The date range of statistics for each colony depends on who ran it at the time. Most colonial statistics cover that colony's funds, population, names of its officers, public services, as well as countries each colony was trading with and what they bought or sold. Some topics, such as numbers of slaves and military spending, appear only during the time periods that they are pertinent.
Empire Online This link opens in a new window
Spanning five centuries, and charting the rise and fall of empires around the world, Empire Online enables students and researchers to explore colonial history, politics, culture and society. With primary source material from American, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, German and British perspectives, Empire Online provides varying points-of-view for comparative research. Documents from Africa, India and North America are also featured.
Gale in Context. U.S. history This link opens in a new window
If searches in this database retrieve incorrect results, clear cache/cookies to resolve the problem.
Coverage - scholarly articles, primary sources, encyclopedia entries, audio, video, - of topics in U.S. History, from the arrival of Vikings to Vietnam, Watergate and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
HistoryMakers This link opens in a new window
By recording, preserving and sharing the life stories of thousands of African Americans, from President Barack Obama to the oldest living black cowboy, The HistoryMakers is a leader in helping to educate and enlighten millions worldwide through refashioning a more inclusive record of American history.
Oregon Digital This link opens in a new window
Oregon Digital provides discovery of and access to unique digitized and born-digital materials, including photographs, articles, sheet music, manuscripts, ephemera, and more. Materials in the broad collection are contributed from the University of Oregon and Oregon State University.
ProQuest history vault: Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle. This link opens in a new window
Access to federal documents relating to African-American history and social movements. Includes material from different Presidential administrations, the FBI, and federal agencies such as the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa This link opens in a new window
Struggles for Freedom is a collection of more than 20,000 objects that
relate to liberation movements in six southern African countries. The objects
include oral histories, speeches, nationalist publications, fully
digitized books, and pamphlets.

Umbra Search: African American History
Publicly available digital archive of African-American history. Contains more than 400,000 items from more than 1,000 libraries and cultural organizations.

World Heritage Sites: Africa This link opens in a new window
World Heritage Sites: Africa links visual, contextual, and spatial documentation of African heritage sites. The collection includes more than 50,000 photographs, 3D models, GIS data, site plans, aerial and satellite photography, images of rock art, excavation reports, manuscripts, traveler's accounts, historical and antiquarian maps, books, articles, and other scholarly research.

Image Databases

ARTstor This link opens in a new window
Search over one million digital images in the fields of the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences.
As of August 1, 2024 the former Artstor website is now completely incorporated into JSTOR. All content is now located there.

Historic News Sources

Nineteenth century U.S. newspapers This link opens in a new window
If searches in this database retrieve incorrect results, clear cache/cookies to resolve the problem.
Includes major newspapers as well as those published by African Americans, Native Americans, women's rights groups, labor groups, the Confederacy, and other groups and interests.
African American Newspapers This link opens in a new window
This enormous collection of African American newspapers contains a wealth of information about cultural life and history during the 1800s and is rich with first-hand reports of the major events and issues of the day, including the Mexican War, Presidential and Congressional addresses, Congressional abstracts, business and commodity markets, the humanities, world travel and religion. The collection also provides a great number of early biographies, vital statistics, essays and editorials, poetry and prose, and advertisements all of which embody the African-American experience.
American Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and historically significant periodicals, covering 1740-1900.
Chicago Defender (1910-1975) This link opens in a new window
Leading newspaper of the black community in Chicago. The newspaper was a proponent of The Great Migration, the move of over 1.5 million African-Americans from the segregated South to the industrial North from 1915 to 1925. It reported on the Red Summer race riots of 1919, and editorialized for anti-lynching legislation and the integration of blacks into the U.S. military.
The newspaper was a proponent of The Great Migration, the move of over 1.5 million African-Americans from the segregated South to the industrial North from 1915 to 1925. It reported on the Red Summer race riots of 1919, and editorialized for anti-lynching legislation and the integration of blacks into the U.S. military.
Historic Oregon Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Historic Oregon Newspapers provides digitized versions of selected Oregon newspapers published between 1846 and 2017. Approximately 200 newspapers are included in this collection. Dates of coverage vary from newspaper to newspaper.
Middle Eastern and North African Newspapers This link opens in a new window
The Middle Eastern & North African Newspapers collection includes publications from across this dynamic region, providing unique insights into the history of individual countries, as well as broad viewpoints on key historic events from the late nineteenth century through the present. Key topics include the decline of colonialism, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Suez Crisis, the Cold War, the rise of the petroleum industry, twentieth-century pan-Arab movements, both World Wars, the establishment of the state of Israel, the Iran-Iraq War, and the recent Arab Spring. Content is predominantly in Arabic, but also includes key titles in English and French.
African Newspapers, Series 1 This link opens in a new window
Provides access to almost 70 newspapers published between 1800 and 1922 in Sub-Saharan Africa. Content features English- and foreign-language titles from countries including Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
African Newspapers, Series 2 This link opens in a new window
Provides access to 40 newspapers published in Africa during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Content features English- and foreign-language titles from countries including Algeria, Angola, Liberia, Madagascar, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, and Uganda.
Latin American Newspapers, Series 1 This link opens in a new window
Collection of historical Latin American newspapers.Includes newspapers published between 1805 and 1922 in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Guyana, Mexico, Peru, Trinidad and Venezuela.
Latin American Newspapers. Series 2 This link opens in a new window
Additional coverage of newspapers from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba and Mexico. Includes countries not represented in Latin American Newspapers I, such as Bolivia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Belize.

Current News Sources

Access world news This link opens in a new window
Access World News Research Collection is a full-text news resource consisting over 11,000+ local, regional, national and international sources (6,800+ US and almost 4,200 international sources). This database includes access to many local Oregon new sources, including The Oregonian and the Register-Guard up to current day. Updated daily, it offers researchers and students valuable primary source information on today’s issues and events from newspapers, newswires, transcripts, video clips, web only, and blogs.
AllAfrica This link opens in a new window
Contains articles from 100 news publications throughout Africa and other news sources both inside and outside Africa.
Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new window
Articles, editorials, and reviews published in approximately 200 ethnic and minority newspapers, magazines and journals published in the U.S, dating back to the mid-1990s.
Searchable in both English and Spanish.
Factiva This link opens in a new window
Factiva is a research platform providing access to over 33,000 global news sources, including newspapers, magazines, and journals in 32 languages from over 200 countries. It offers millions of corporate profiles and advanced tools for analyzing media coverage.
Limited to four simultaneous users. Please logout when you have finished. Text or data mining is prohibited in the Factiva database.
Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Nexis Uni™ features more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources from LexisNexis®—including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790—with an intuitive interface that offers quick discovery across all content types, personalization features such as Alerts and saved searches and a collaborative workspace with shared folders and annotated documents.

UO Libraries Resources in partnership with the LRP Black Cultural Center

Digital Archives

Image Databases

Historic News Sources

Current News Sources

Ask An Archivist | SCUA