LibGuides: HIST 348: Everyday Communism (Gigova): Digital Libraries and Primary Source Documents

Digital Libraries and Resources

CNN.com - The Cold War Documentary Series
This documentary series showcases the struggle between communism and capitalism and how it defined the second half of the 20th Century, pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war.
Cold War International History Project - The Wilson Center
The Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) was established at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., in 1991. The Project supports the full and prompt release of historical materials by governments on all sides of the Cold War, and seeks to accelerate the process of integrating new sources, materials and perspectives from the former "Communist bloc" and the non-Western world more generally with the historiography of the Cold War which has been written over the past few decades largely by Western scholars reliant on Western archival sources. It also seeks to transcend barriers of language, geography, and regional specialization to create new links among scholars interested in Cold War history.
The Wilson Center Digital Archive
The Digital Archive contains once-secret documents from governments all across the globe, uncovering new sources and providing fresh insights into the history of international relations and diplomacy. It collects the research of three Wilson Center projects which focus on the interrelated histories of the Cold War, Korea, and Nuclear Proliferation
The Cold War Museum
The Cold War Museum is a charitable organization dedicated to education, preservation, and research on the global, ideological, and political confrontations between East and West from the end of World War II to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
EuroDocs: Online Sources for European History
Links on this site connect to European primary historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated.
Internet Modern History Sourcebook
The Internet Modern History Sourcebook is one of series of history primary sourcebooks. It is intended to serve the needs of teachers and students in college survey courses in modern European history and American history, as well as in modern Western Civilization and World Cultures.
Web Links and Primary Source Documents on the Cold War in Europe
Links to primary source documents relating to the Cold War era
National Security Archive - Electronic Briefing Books
The National Security Archive's continually growing collection of Electronic Briefing Books (EBBs) provide timely online access to critical declassified records on issues including U.S. national security, foreign policy, diplomatic and military history, intelligence policy, and much more.
CIA Center for Study of Intelligence
The mission of Studies in Intelligence is to stimulate within the Intelligence Community the constructive discussion of important issues of the day, to expand knowledge of lessons learned from past experiences, to increase understanding of the history of the profession, and to provide readers with considered reviews of public literature concerning intelligence.
European History Primary Sources
European History Primary Sources (EHPS) is a joint initiative of the Library and the Department of History and Civilization of the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. It is also part of the WWW Virtual Library History Central Catalogue that is hosted at the EUI.
European History on Digital History Reader
This introductory module familiarizes students with the structure of the Digital History Reader's European History segment and offers useful strategies to employ while reading the materials. Within each module, the Introduction section defines the historical question or questions central to understanding the module's primary topic
Making the History of 1989
These primary sources are drawn from the emergence of resistance movements in the 1980s, the events of 1989, and the immediate aftermath in Eastern Europe.
Eyewitness to History: Espionage During the Cold War
This account appears in CIA Historical Paper no. 150, Clandestine Services History, The Berlin Tunnel Operation 1952 - 1956 (1968, declassified Feb., 2007); Martin, David C., Wilderness of Mirrors (1980); Stafford, David, Spies Beneath Berlin (2002).
Seventeen Moments in Soviet History: An Online Archive of Primary Sources
Seventeen Moments in Soviet history is a multi-media archive of primary materials designed to introduce students and the general public to the richness and contradictions of Soviet history. It provides a cross-section of Soviet life in seventeen different years, following the title of a beloved television spy serial from the seventies.
Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System digital collection: interviews and manuals, 1950-1953
A collection of digital facsimiles of transcripts of interviews conducted with Soviet émigrés to West Germany, Austria, and the United States, in 1950 and 1951. The transcripts are in English, and focus on life in the Soviet Union between 1917 to 1939, but there are also a lot of accounts of life during the revolution. All of the interviews were conducted in the person's native language, but the interviews were translated, on the fly, into English.

New York Times (Historical: 1851-2020) This link opens in a new window
This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time. Coverage: 1851-2020

Spotlight: Senator Burnet R. Maybank Papers

Burnet R. Maybank was a mid-twentieth century politician and served as governor of South Carolina as well as a United States Senator.

Materials primarily relate to Maybank's professional life as a United States Senator and include his legislative working files and constituent correspondence. Major topics include World War II, civil rights legislation, the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), the Korean War, the Cold War, labor, price control, the Charleston Navy Yard, the Santee Cooper Hydroelectric and Navigation Project, and the Savannah River Site atomic plant.

What is a Finding Aid?

A tool that facilitates discovery of information within a collection of records.
A description of records that gives the repository physical and intellectual control over the materials and that assists users to gain access to and understand the materials.
A finding aid is often a single document that places the materials in context by consolidating information about the collection, such as acquisition and processing; provenance, including administrative history or biographical note; scope of the collection, including size, subjects, media; organization and arrangement; and an inventory of the series and the folders.

Finding aids includes a wide range of formats, including card indexes, calendars, guides, inventories, shelf and container lists, and registers.

HIST 348: Everyday Communism (Gigova): Digital Libraries and Primary Source Documents

Spotlight: Europeana

Digital Libraries and Resources

Spotlight: Senator Burnet R. Maybank Papers

What is a Finding Aid?