LibGuides: Digital Primary and Secondary Sources: Southern Studies

Recommended Databases and Publications

Southern Cultures
Contains peer-reviewed, original scholarship, and uses citations. But they "are not your typical journal—we eschew jargon and insider speak, and in addition to scholarly articles, we print photo essays, original artwork, poetry, fiction, interviews, and narrative journalism."
Southern Courier
A weekly newspaper covering Civil Rights in the South 1965-68.

Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantations Records, Part 1 This link opens in a new window
Impact of plantations on both the American South and the nation.
Accessible Archives This link opens in a new window
Encompasses diverse primary sources including 18th and 19th century newspapers, periodicals, American county histories, and more.
Kanopy This link opens in a new window
Kanopy has one of the largest collections of streaming films in the world with 50,000+ films from thousands of leading producers such as Criterion Collection, New Day Films, California Newsreel, Kino Lorber, PBS, First Run Features, Media Education Foundation, Documentary Educational Resources, etc. These films are all genres - from documentaries to movies and training videos - and touch on every topic imaginable.
NAACP Papers - Collection 2 This link opens in a new window
The NAACPs Major Campaigns Education, Voting, Housing, Employment, Armed Forces
NAACP Papers - Collection 3 This link opens in a new window
The NAACPs Major CampaignsScottsboro, Anti-Lynching, Criminal Justice, Peonage, Labor, and Segregation and Discrimination Complaints and Responses
Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive This link opens in a new window
This database is an archive of millions of pages of content thematically arranged to provide an understanding of slavery from a multinational perspective, divided into four parts: Part 1: Debates over Slavery and Abolition; Part 2: Slave Trade in the Atlantic World; Part 3: The Institution of Slavery; Part 4: The Age of Emancipation.
Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture and Law This link opens in a new window
Brings together all essential legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery.
Music Online: Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries This link opens in a new window
Provides educators, students, and interested listeners with an unprecedented variety of online streaming resources that support the creation, continuity, and preservation of diverse musical forms.

South Carolina State Documents Depository
The South Carolina State Documents Depository provides access to publications produced by state agencies and state-supported academic institutions.
Civil War Part I: a Newspaper Perspective
Coverage begins with the events preceding the outbreak of war at Fort Sumter, continues through the surrender at Appomattox and concludes with the assassination and funeral of Abraham Lincoln.

Web Resources

The Lowcountry Digital Library
The Lowcountry Digital Library (LCDL) produces digital collections and projects that support research about the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and historically interconnected sites in the Atlantic World. LCDL is committed to a multifaceted approach that incorporates historical and anthropological scholarship, oral history, integrative archival practices, digital librarianship, and spatial, temporal, and environmental information.
Lowcountry Digital History Initiative
The Lowcountry Digital History Initiative is a digital humanities project hosted by the Lowcountry Digital Library at the College of Charleston. LDHI’s mission is to encourage projects that highlight underrepresented race, class, gender, and labor histories within the Lowcountry region, and in historically interconnected Atlantic World sites.
South Carolina Digital Library
The South Carolina Digital Library provides free access to historic materials, such as photographs, manuscripts, journals, books, oral histories, objects, etc. illustrating the history and culture of South Carolina from over 40 cultural heritage institutions across the state. Over 200,000 items have been added so far.
American Memory
American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity.
Digital Public Library of America
Portal to resources from U.S. libraries, archives, and museums. Browse by place, time, subject, or contributing partner.
Documenting the American South
Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes sixteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library. Its purposes include offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format.
UofSC Digital Collections: Sanborn Maps
Originally conceived in the late 18th Century, fire insurance maps provided structural and urban environmental information necessary for insurance underwriters. Founded in 1867 in the United States, the Sanborn National Insurance Diagram Bureau systematically produced ascetically appealing, but also efficient, maps nationwide. By World War II surveys of 13,000 towns produced over 700,000 sheets now stored in the Library of Congress. Today, these maps are utilized extensively by architectural historians, environmentalists, genealogists, historians, historic preservationists, and urban historical geographers.

Adam Matthew Highlight

Colonial America
Colonial America makes available all 1,450 volumes of the CO 5 series from The National Archives, UK, covering the period 1606 to 1822. CO 5 consists of the original correspondence between the British government and the governments of the American colonies, making it a uniquely rich resource for all historians of the period.

eBook Picks

Recommended e-Journals

American Historical Review
This journal presents articles, review articles, substantial numbers of book reviews and lists of recently published books in all areas of American history.
Eighteenth-Century Studies
Eighteenth-Century Studies is committed to publishing the best of current writing on all aspects of eighteenth-century culture. The journal publishes different modes of analysis and disciplinary discourses that explore how recent historiographical, critical, and theoretical ideas have engaged scholars concerned with the eighteenth century. Eighteenth-Century Studies is the official publication of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS).
Ethnohistory
Articles, review articles and book reviews in all areas of ethnohistory. The official journal of the American Society for Ethnohistory.
History & Memory
Focuses on questions relating to the formation of historical consciousness & collective memory, the role of historical memory in modern & premodern cultures, and the relationship between historical research and images of the past in different societies.
International History Review
This journal, spanning 1979-2011, is the only English-language quarterly devoted entirely to the history of international relations. An international journal on international history, the Review publishes articles, notes with documents, bibliographies, and reviews, on everything that affected, or was affected by, the relations between all states, throughout the world, throughout history.
International Journal for History, Culture, and Modernity
The International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity (HCM) is a peer-reviewed journal that offers a global perspective on modern culture and its history since 1750. How can history help to understand what it means to live in a modern world? From this vantage point HCM aims to take part in the international exchange on the cultural significance of modernity.
International Review of Social History
This journal is one of the leading journals in its field. Truly global in its scope, it focuses on research in social and labour history from a comparative and transnational perspective, both in the modern and in the early modern period, and across periods. The journal combines quality, depth and originality of its articles with an open eye for theoretical innovation and new insights and methods from within its field and from contiguous disciplines. Besides research articles, it features surveys of new themes and subject fields, a suggestions and debates section, review essays and book reviews.
Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History
This journal is an important resource to scholars of all aspects of colonialism, from pre-colonial societal studies to current post-colonial theory. It covers the broad range of issues that relate to imperialism and colonialism from the tenth century through modern times including the social effects on the population, the political structures under imperial rule, the transition to independence, and the lasting impact of living under colonial rule.
Journal of Global History
Journal of Global History addresses the main problems of global change over time, together with the diverse histories of globalization. It also examines counter-currents to globalization, including those that have structured other spatial units. The journal seeks to transcend the dichotomy between 'the West and the rest', straddle traditional regional boundaries, relate material to cultural and political history, and overcome thematic fragmentation in historiography. The journal also acts as a forum for interdisciplinary conversations across a wide variety of social and natural sciences.
Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History
This journal presents & discusses recent research in the history of the British Empire & Commonwealth & in comparative European colonial experiences.
Past & Present
Founded in 1952, Past & Present is widely acknowledged to be the liveliest and most stimulating historical journal in the English-speaking world.
Political Geography
Political Geography is the flagship journal of political geography and advances knowledge in all aspects of the geographical and spatial dimensions of politics and the political. The journal brings together leading contributions in the field and promotes interdisciplinary debates in international relations, political science, and other related fields.
South Atlantic Quarterly
Published exclusively in guest-edited special issues, this award-winning centenarian journal features some of the most prominent contemporary writers and scholars tackling urgent political, cultural, and social questions. Some issues grow out of current academic debates, concerning, for example, the growing power of finance, narratives of black leadership, and the politics of austerity.
Southern Quarterly: a Journal of Arts in the South
Published by The University of Southern Mississippi since 1962, the Southern Quarterly is an internationally-known scholarly journal devoted to the interdisciplinary study of Southern arts and culture.