Databases and Museum Collections
From in-class exercise:
- Early English Books Online This link opens in a new windowSearchable scans of nearly all existing English books up to the year 1700; this collection now contains over 100,000 of over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection and the Early English Books Tract Supplement. Dates of Coverage: 1473-1700
- Adam Matthew: Defining GenderDefining Gender provides access to a vast body of original British source material that will enrich the teaching and research experience of those studying history, literature, sociology and education from a gendered perspective. (Dates of coverage: 1450-1940)
- Monastic MatrixMonastic Matrix is an ongoing collaborative effort by an international group of scholars, collecting data about Christian religious women in Europe between 400 and 1600 C.E.
- AM Explorer: Medieval Family LifeOnly five major letter collections exist from fifteenth century England. These letter collections and associated manuscripts take the user into the world of medieval family, business, relationships, trade, politics and community.
- Adam Matthew Explorer: Age of Exploration, Life at SeaNumerous documents which record life aboard vessels operated by navies, privateers and merchants alike.
- HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new window
HathiTrust is a repository of digital content from 50 research libraries, including electronic versions of nearly 8 million books at the time of writing.
Note: As of May 2023, Oberlin is a HathiTrust member. Oberlin students, faculty, and staff can access member features by clicking on the “LOG IN” button, choosing “Oberlin College and Conservatory”, and using their ObieID to authenticate.
Not from class:
- Gallica Digital Library
Over a million documents accessible for free: Books, Manuscripts, Maps, Images, Newspapers, Magazines, Periodicals, Sound records, Music, Scores, e-Books.
- JSTOR Images This link opens in a new windowOver 1 million images selected to support research and reaching in art history from pre-historical to contemporary media.
- Word on the StreetThe National Library of Scotland's online collection of nearly 1,800 broadsides from 1650 to 1910 covering topics including crime, politics, romance, emigration, humor, tragedy, royalty and superstitions.
- The Proceedings of The Old BaileySearchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published -- containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.
- Statutes Project: Putting Historic British Law OnlineCollection of digitized British historic laws.
- Silk Road SeattlePublic education project using the "Silk Road" theme to explore cultural interaction across Eurasia from the beginning of the Common Era (A. D.) to the Seventeenth Century.
- EpistolaeLetters to and from women in the Middle Ages, from the 4th to the 13th century, letters in Latin with English translations.
- EuropeanaInternet portal to millions of books, paintings, films, museum objects and archival records from Europe’s museums and cultural institutions.
Finding primary sources in Summon and OBIS
Many useful primary sources will be collected in print or ebook compilations, with several texts or images on a related topic collected in a single volume. Gender and Sexuality in the Middle Ages is an example of such a source.
Gender and Sexuality in the Middle Ages by Call Number: Main Library HQ1075 .G418 2005ISBN: 9780786420421Publication Date: 2005-03-31Brings primary sources from throughout the medieval world into one collection. Here, the sources used are also derived from various fields - religious foundations, Christian thought, law, chronicles, literature, biology, medicine and science, witchcraft and heresy, Judaism and Islam - and the book's chapters are organized according to these nine areas allowing for comparative examination of different societies and periods of the Middle Ages.
Subjects that are useful for finding primary sources in OBIS and Summon:
- Sources
- Correspondence
- Diaries
- Interviews
- Pictoral Works
- Maps
- Early Works to 1800
- Medieval
- Centuries (e.g. 11th century)
- Exhibition
Summon indexes the full text of some (but not all) of our print sources. Therefore it can be useful to combine a subject search for subject headings associated with primary sources with a keyword search for more specific concepts. The proximity search can help ensure that multiple concepts are addressed in the same text inside a collection.
To find books where the word city and the word food appear within 100 words of each other, you would use the following search in Summon:
- "city food"~100