Primary Sources: Expanded access to ProQuest’s digital archives

The California Digital Library is piloting an arrangement with ProQuest that provides access to 45 History Vault modules.  At the end of the calendar year, UC may elect to purchase perpetual access to some of this content. Your feedback on which resources are most useful to you is welcome.

In the Library’s A-Z databases list, these resources have been grouped thematically into these categories; in some cases there are links to individual modules that we previously purchased. Once on the ProQuest platform, you can search within a single source or across multiple sources.

ProQuest History Vault – search across all ProQuest History vault collections

American Indians and the American West, 1809-1971 – Contains a large variety of collections from the U.S. National Archives, a series of collections from the Chicago History Museum, as well as selected first-hand accounts on Indian Wars and westward migration.

American Politics and Society – includes the collections: Thomas A. Edison Papers, Law and Society since the Civil War: American Legal Manuscripts from the Harvard Law School Library; Progressive Era: Reform, Regulation, and Rights; Progressive Era: Robert M. LaFollette Papers; Immigration: Records of the INS, 1880-1930; Records of the Children’s Bureau, 1912-1969; New Deal and World War II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Office Files and Records of Federal Agencies; American Politics in the Early Cold War: Truman and Eisenhower Administrations, 1945-1961; FBI Confidential Files and Radical Politics in the U.S., 1945-1972; Students for a Democratic Society, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and the anti-Vietnam War Movement; American Politics and Society from Kennedy to Watergate

Civil rights and the Black Freedom Struggle – includes the collections: Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Federal Government Records and Supplement; Organizational Records and Personal Papers Parts 1 & 2; and the NAACP Papers

International Relations and Military Conflicts – includes the collections: U.S. Military Intelligence Reports, 1911-1944; U.S. Diplomatic Post Records, 1914-1945; World War I: British Foreign Office Political Correspondence; World War I: Records of the American Expeditionary Forces, and Diplomacy in the World War I Era; Creation of Israel: British Foreign Office Correspondence on Palestine and Transjordan, 1940-1948; World War II: U.S. Documents on Planning, Operations, Intelligence, Axis War Crimes, and Refugees; Office of Strategic Services (OSS) – State Department Intelligence and Research Reports, 1941-1961; Confidential U.S. State Department Central Files, Africa and Middle East, 1960-1969, Asia, 1960-1969, Europe and Latin America, 1960-1969; and Vietnam War and American Foreign Policy, 1960-1975

Southern Life, Slavery, and the Civil War – includes the collections: Slavery and the Law; Slavery in Antebellum Southern Industries; two modules of Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantations Records; Confederate Military Manuscripts and Records of Union Generals and the Union Army; and Reconstruction and Military Government after the Civil War.

Women’s Studies – includes the collections: Struggle for Women’s Rights: Organizational Records, 1880-1990; Women’s Studies Manuscripts from the Schlesinger Library: Voting Rights, National Politics, and Reproductive Rights; Women at Work during World War II: Rosie the Riveter and the Women’s Army Corps; and Margaret Sanger Papers: Smith College Collections and Collected Documents

Workers, Labor Unions, and Radical Politics – includes the collections: Labor Unions in the U.S., 1862-1974: Knights of Labor, AFL, CIO, and AFL-CIO and
Workers, Labor Unions, and the American Left in the 20th Century: Federal Records


Primary Sources: Translated Texts for Historians E-Library

The Library has recently acquired the Translated Texts for Historians E-Library from Liverpool University Press. This resource currently includes 72 titles produced between 300-800 C.E. translated into English from Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Arabic, Georgian, Armenian, and Old Irish.  The geographic range covers Syria, Arabia, Armenia, Georgia and Egypt in the East; North Africa; major cities of the Roman Empire (Antioch, Alexandria and Constantinople); and Spain, Gaul, Italy, Britain and Ireland in the West. Each work includes an introduction setting the text into context, and annotations on content, interpretation, and debates.


Primary Sources: Wiley Digital Archives of Academic Societies

The Library has recently acquired the digital archives of three Academic Societies:

Royal Anthropological Institute Collection

Royal Geographic Society Collection

The New York Academy of Sciences Collection

The collections include research data, correspondence, photographs, drawings, and writings of society members, as well as administrative records, proceedings, reports, and a wide variety of other materials.


2 Newspaper Trials: Daily Mail & Daily Mirror

Trial access to the digital archives of these two London newspapers is available until June 18, 2020.

Described by the New Yorker as “the newspaper that rules Britain,” the Daily Mail has been at the heart of British journalism since 1896, regularly changing the course of government policy and setting the national debate. It currently boasts a circulation of over 2 million, and its website is the most visited news site in the world. (See the fact sheet)

Started in 1903, the Daily Mirror was influential in changing the course of British newspapers in the second half of the twentieth century, becoming Britain’s bestselling daily newspaper by 1949. Editorially left-leaning and populist to reflect the views of its target working class audience, it offers a counterpoint to the more conservative newspapers that dominated the late nineteenth- and early-twentieth centuries, such as The Times and The Telegraph. (See the fact sheet)


Trial: Literary Studies

Until July 16, the Library has trial access to Literary Studies, a digital archive of literary manuscripts, rare printed works, and personal papers of a range of leading literary figures.

Highlights include:

  • Holograph copies and early editions of books by George Eliot, including several volumes of the seminal work of English literature Middlemarch
  • Autograph manuscript of The Ring and the Book and several early editions of Robert Browning’s poetry
  • Personal papers, literary manuscripts and correspondence of Charlotte, Maria and Emily Brontë
  • Manuscripts and correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, including early draft versions and corrected proofs of Walden, or Life in the Woods

PDF download options are not available during the trial.


New Library Digital Collection: 1920s-1930s Leisure from the Julian P. Graham Collection of Photographic Negatives

The Bancroft Library has announced that “over 500 photographs from the Julian P. Graham collection are now available via the Library’s Digital Collections site.

“This Bancroft Library collection of film negatives from Monterey area photographer Julian Graham has been the subject of ongoing interest over the years. It documents early years of the Pebble Beach and Cypress Grove golf courses, and the recreational life of California’s “high society” of the 1920s and 1930s, chiefly around the famous Hotel del Monte. The negatives, unfortunately, are largely on hazardous nitrate-based film, so are not available for library users until digitized.”


Trial access: Refugees, Relief, and Resettlement: Forced Migration and World War II

Until March 31, the Library has trial access to Refugees, Relief, and Resettlement: Forced Migration and World War II, which “chronicles the plight of refugees and displaced persons across Europe, North Africa, and Asia from 1935 to 1950, bringing together over 650,000 pages of pamphlets, ephemera, government documents, relief organization publications, and refugee reports that recount the causes, effects and responses to refugee crises before, during and shortly after World War II.” The records are sourced from the foreign and colonial office files in the U.K. National Archives, the U.S. State Department from the National Archives Records Administration, the British India office collection from the British Library, and the archives of World Jewish Relief.


Trial access: Border and Migration Studies Online & Security Issues Online

Through April 30, the Library has trial access to Border and Migration Studies Online, a collection of primary source documents, archives, films, and ephemera related to significant border areas and events from the 19th to 21st centuries. The materials were selected and are organized around themes such as border identities; border enforcement and control; border disputes; border criminologies; maritime borders; human trafficking; sea migration; undocumented and unauthorized migration; and global governance of migration. Geographic topics addressed include Mexico and the United States; EU and its Borders, Internal and External; Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria; The Congo and its borders; Germany and its borders; Argentina and its borders; Canada and the United States; and Turkey and its borders.

This trial also provides access to Security Issues Online, containing primary and secondary materials across multiple media formats and content types for each selected event, including Iran (1940s to the Present), 1960 U-2 Incident, World War II and Intelligence, Cold War: The Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1961-1962, and more.