Primary Sources: Resources on the Middle East

Over the past year the library has acquired new resources on the Middle East and North Africa, which include:

Minorities in the Middle East: Christian minorities, 1838-1967 – A digitized version of 10 volume collection primary source material. It includes original political despatches, correspondence and reports covering: Christian communities in the Levant 1838 to 1955 in overview, and the affairs of the Assyrian communities 1880 to 1951, the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Jacobite, Chaldean and Syrian Catholic communities, and Protestant communities in the Levant and Iraq, in particular, with further detail about the Maronite communities in the Levant 1841 to 1958, and Coptic Christian communities in the Levant and Egypt 1917 to 1967. These volumes also cover the Jeddah murders of 1858 and 1895, and the treatment of Armenians in Turkey and the Levant, including the Armenian massacres during the First World War.

Minorities in the Middle East : Jewish communities in Arab countries, 1841-1974 – A digitized version of a 6 volume collection, which covers the arrangements and conditions for Jewish communities living under Islam, throughout the Arab world, from 1840 to 1974.

Middle Eastern and north African Newspapers – A digital archive of prominent newspapers from the the Middle East and North Africa.

Noor Digital Library – a collection of thousands of full text Persian ebooks in humanities and religious studies. This include history, literature, language, Islam, and philosophy.

NoorMags – One of the largest specialized databases in Islamic Studies and Humanities. It provides full text access to more than 1300 magazines for over a million articles in mainly Persian, with some Arabic and English languages.


Primary Sources: American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection

The Library recently acquired the complete digital archive of the historical periodicals held by the American Antiquarian Society (AAS). The collection exists as a series of five databases created from 6500 American periodicals published between 1691 and 1876. The collection also contains titles in more than two dozen languages including French, German, Norwegian, Spanish, and more. The series can be searched together or individually.


Primary Sources: Ogonek Digital Archive (DA-OGN) 1923-2017

The Library has acquired the Ogonek Digital Archive 1923-2017.

Ogonek is one of the oldest weekly magazines in Russia, having been in continuous publication since 1923. Throughout its illustrious history Ogonek has published original works by such Soviet cultural luminaries as Vladimir Mayakovsky, Isaac Babel, Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the photographer Yuri Rost, and others. It first saw the rise of its stock under the editorial guidance of Mikhail Koltsov, a star Soviet reporter, who oversaw the growth of Ogonek from a readership of 25,000 in 1923 to nearly half a million within a mere two year period, turning it into one of the most influential and widely read Soviet publications of the period. Its popularity was left intact even after Koltsov’s arrest on the eve of the WWII in 1938. It is safe to say however, that the magazine would not become the cultural force it became, were it not for the editorial tenure of Anatoli Sofronov, the noted Soviet poet and playwright. Under Sofronov’s at times controversial and at times bromidic leadership Ogonek became an important outlet for some of the most well-known and respected Soviet writers, visual artists, photographers and reporters. Although under Sofronov Ogonek grew steadily, it came to experience the peak of its popularity at the hands of its new editor Vitaly Korotich, who assumed the editorship of the magazine after the passing of Sofronov in 1986 at the height of Perestroika. Korotich, inspired by the newfound political liberties turned the journal into a lively space for edgy political commentary, criticism, and satire. After undergoing financial and creative crisis in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which saw a steep decline in readership, Ogonek has now rediscovered its creative zest under a new leadership and management, once again becoming an important forum for cultural and political intellectual exchanges.


Primary Sources: 6 magazine archives

Kim Il Sung on coverInstead of writing up each of these individually, I will follow up on the last post about the Life Magazine Archive with links to six magazine archives the Library has acquired in the last year.

Time Magazine Archive
Subjects: American Studies, History
Years: 1923-2000

Architectural Digest Magazine Archive
Subjects: Architecture
Years: 1922-2011

BusinessWeek Magazine Archive
Alt names: Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Business Week
Subjects: Business
Years: 1929-2000

Forbes Magazine Archive
Subjects: Business
Years: 1917-2000

Fortune Magazine Archive
Subjects: Business
Years: 1930-2000

Life Magazine Archive
Subjects: American Studies, History, Journalism
Years: 1936-2000

These can all be searched or browsed by issue.


Primary Sources: Life Magazine Archive

Sign reading "entering new deal speed limit 25 miles per hour" As described on its website, Life Magazine Archive “presents an extensive collection of the famed photojournalism magazine, spanning its very first issue in November, 1936 through December, 2000 in a comprehensive cover-to-cover format.

“Published by Time Inc., the magazine has featured story-telling through documentary photographs and informative captions.Each issue visually and powerfully depicted national and international events and topical stories, providing intimate views of real people and their real life situations.

“Articles and cover pages are fully indexed and advertisements are individually identified, ensuring researchers and readers can quickly and accurately locate the information they seek. Life Magazine Archive is valuable to researchers of 20th-Century current events, politics and culture, as well as those interested in the history of business, advertising, and popular culture.”

The covers, articles, and advertisements can all be searched. It is also possible to browse through an issue, once a page of the issue has been retrieved.


Primary Sources: Women’s Magazine Archive

Covers rom women's magazines A recent acquisition is Proquest’s Women’s Magazine Archive, a searchable archive of women’s interest magazines, dating from the 19th century. It provides access to the complete archives (with some exceptions) of Good Housekeeping (1885-2005), Ladies’ Home Journal (1885-2005), and Woman’s Day (1937-2005). Other titles include:

Better Homes and Gardens 1925-1978
Chatelaine 1928-2005
Cosmopolitan 1965-1993
Essence 1970-2000
Parents 1949-2005
Redbook 1903-2005
Seventeen 1970-2005
Women’s International Network News 1975-1985

Additional content will be added by September 2017.


Primary Sources: Latin American Anarchist and Labour Periodicals (c. 1880-1940) Online

page of newspaper The Library has recently acquired Latin American Anarchist and Labour Periodicals (c. 1880-1940) Online, a collection of 971 titles held at the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam. As described on the website, the “collection contains numerous rare, and in many cases unique, titles. It consists of periodicals accumulated by the Austrian anarchist, historian and collector Max Nettlau (1865-1944), together with a number of later additions. Included, among many others, are the Argentine periodicals La Protesta, La Vanguardia and Acción Obrera; the Brazilian O Exempio, Jornal do Povo and Battaglia; the Chilean Voz del Mar; and the Mexican Ariete, Redención Obrera, Revolución Social and El Sindicalista.”

This resource has been added to the Latin American History guide.


Primary Sources: British Periodicals


The Library now has access to three modules of the primary source collection, British Periodicals. This digitized and searchable resource is made up of collections previously available on microfilm — English Literary Periodicals and Early British Periodicals — and includes nearly 500 publications from the 17th century through to the early 21st century.

English Literary Periodicals (also known ELP) includes over 341 periodicals, published in Great Britain during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, that are predominantly literary in nature. Besides literary reviews there are also theatrical, satirical, political, religious, and women’s magazines, such as Monthly Review and Critical Review.

Early British Periodicals is a supplement to ELP, consisting of additional 168 titles (1681-1921), and includes titles such as Quarterly Review and Edinburgh Review.

Search results can be filtered to article type and downloaded in either PDF or JPEG format.


Primary Sources: Independent Voices

cover of Berkeley Barb issue

Independent Voices is a digital collection of magazines, journals, newspapers, and newsletters housed in the alternative and small press archives of participating libraries and historical institutions.

The focus is on materials published during the 1960s-1980s that stem primarily from the second wave of feminism, LGBT activism, GI and student protest movements, and the Black, Chicano(a), and Native American movements.