Research Guides: U.S. History: Subscription Databases S-Z

Subscription Databases S

Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926
Provides over 14,000 primary source titles based on Joseph Sabin's bibliography, Bibliotheca Americana. Materials describe every aspect of life in the Western Hemisphere from 1500 to the 1890s. Included are books, pamphlets, serials and other documents that provide original accounts of exploration, trade, colonialism, slavery and abolition, the western movement, Native Americans, military actions and much more. Searchable in a variety of ways, including: author, title, year of publication, and subject.
Screen Studies Collection
The Screen Studies Collection is a comprehensive survey of current publications related to film scholarship alongside expansive filmographies. This collection includes the FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals Database, the American Film Institute, the British Film Institute, and the AFI Catalog and Film Index International.
Senate Executive Journals
Senate Executive Journals: Archive of Americana are journals of the executive proceedings of the United States Senate 1789 to 1980, covering the first Congress through the 96th Congress.
Service Newspapers of World War Two
Service Newspapers of World War Two is a digital resource that reveals the story of war as told by the newspapers that brought information, entertainment and camaraderie to the forces at home and overseas. Explore over 200 titles from key nations across the globe that took part in the world-changing conflict.
17th & 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers
17th & 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers contains the digitized materials (not just newspapers) collected by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817) and held in the British Library. A useful source for find information about the United Kingdom and the wider world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.The database's advanced search offers searching publications by title, place, language, section, and date. The Publications Search link includes searching by format, including (among others) books, broadsides, forms, newspapers, and pamphlets.
17th and 18th Century Nichols Newspapers Collection
17th and 18th Century Nichols Newspapers Collection features London newspapers and pamphlets gathered by antiquarian and printer John Nichols. This collection, sourced from the Bodleian Library, spans the years 1672 to 1737 and complements the titles and issues found in 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers.
Sex and Sexuality
The Sex and Sexuality collection explores changing attitudes towards human sexuality, gender identities and sexual behaviors throughout the twentieth century. Investigate the breadth and complexity of human sexual understanding through the work of leading American sexologists, sex researchers, organizations and the public consciousness.
Short Story Index Retrospective, 1915-1983 (EBSCO)
Short Story Index Retrospective 1915-1983 includes bibliographic entries for short stories published from the 1820s to the 1980s in periodicals and anthologies.
Silent Film Online
Silent Film Online brings together over 1200 films from the silent era"(1890s to 1930s) representing the birth of cinema as a form of artistic and cultural expression.
SimplyAnalytics
SimplyAnalytics is a web-based mapping, analytics and data visualization program providing data variables. Users have access to demographics, marketing data, consumer behavior (purchasing and product usage data), market segments, health, and business points for States, Congressional Districts, Counties, Cities/Places, ZIP Codes, Census Tracts and Block Groups. Users can also export data, maps, reports and shapefiles for use outside of SimplyAnalytics. Now includes Nielsen Scarborough Data Module.
Users are not required to log-in with a user name and password; however, in order to save your work, it is recommended that you create your own user account. SimplyMap user accounts are still functional in the SimplyAnalytics interface.
Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960 - 1974
This full text resource consists of diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary. With 150,000 pages of material at completion, this searchable collection is a resource for students and scholars researching this period in American history, culture, and politics.
60 Minutes
60 Minutes contains streaming video episodes from the 60 Minutes CBS news broadcast show. Users can explore content by keyword, place, historical event, and time period, and can create compilations of clips to embed in other multimedia projects.
Users must create an account with Alexander Street Press to publish embedded clips.
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice
Bringing together primary source documents from archives and libraries across the Atlantic world, this resource allows students and researchers to explore and compare unique material relating to the complex subjects of slavery, abolition and social justice.In addition to the primary source documents there are secondary sources for research and teaching; including an interactive map, scholarly essays, tutorials, a visual sources gallery, chronology and bibliography.
Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law
Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law brings together 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. The cases go into the 20th century, because long after slavery was ended, there were still court cases based on issues emanating from slavery.
Smithsonian Collections Online
A result of Gale's partnership to create searchable archives of the Smithsonian's vast collections, this resource combines rare 19th and 20th century archival materials on topics such as the evolving modes of flight, World's Fairs, and trade literature, with recent and backfile issues of Smithsonian Magazine and Air & Space Magazine. This comprehensive resource presents unique insight into history, science, nature, the arts, innovation, technology, and world culture.
Social Explorer
Social Explorer contains access to U.S. Census data dating back to 1790. Users can create maps and embed them as objects or download static images.
To access Social Explorer, create a user account after signing in to NYU's SSO. If you have questions about authenticating your NYU Social Explorer account from off-campus, please contact Data Services.
Social Theory
Social Theory contains the full text of some of the most influential writing in social, political, and economic thought and theory from the eighteenth century to the present day. Included in the content are important works by such theorists as Auguste Comte, Max Weber, Theodor Adorno, Jean Baudrillard, Simone de Beauvoir, Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Jürgen Habermas, Frederick Engels, and Michel Foucault, among many others.
Sociological Abstracts
Sociological Abstracts represents the core database for sociological scholarship, covering literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. It indexes scholarly journals, dissertations and theses, books, and conference papers and proceedings, and is international in scope.
History Vault: Southern Life, Slavery, and the Civil War
History Vault’s collections on Slavery and Southern plantations candidly document the realities of slavery at the most immediate grassroots level in Southern society, providing some of the most revealing documentation in existence on the functioning of the slave system. Ledgers, correspondence, petitions, photographs, diaries, legal documents, and other materials illuminate this large and momentous chapter in history by documenting the far-reaching impact of slavery on plantations, the American South, and the nation. The events in this category include documentation on the Nat Turner rebellion, the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act, the Secession Crisis of 1860-1861, and Civil War battles such as the Battle of Gettysburg.
State Papers Online (SPO)
Part I: The Tudors, 1509-1603: State Papers Domestic; Part II: The Tudors, 1509-1603: State Papers Foreign, Scotland, Borders, Ireland and Registers of the Privy Council; Part III: The Stuarts and Commonwealth, James I - Anne I, 1603-1714: State Papers Domestic; Part IV: The Stuarts and Commonwealth, James I - Anne I, 1603-1714: State Papers Foreign, Ireland; Eighteenth Century, 1714-1782, Part 1: State Papers Domestic, Military, Naval and Registers of the Privy Council; Eighteenth Century, 1714-1782, Part 2: State Papers Foreign, Low Countries and Germany;
Eighteenth Century, 1714-1782, Part 3: State Papers Foreign, Western Europe; Eighteenth Century, 1714-1782, Part 4: State Papers Foreign, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and Turkey; The Stuart and the Cumberland Papers from the Royal Archives, Windsor Castle.
Statistical Abstract of the U.S. (1993-present)
The Statistical Abstract of the United States is the authoritative and comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States. The Census Bureau ceased production of the Statistical Abstract in 2012; newer versions are compiled and distributed by ProQuest. Use the Abstract as a convenient volume for statistical reference, and as a guide to sources of more information both in print and on the Web Sources of data include the Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and many other Federal agencies and private organizations. For historical Statistical Abstracts, see Statistical Abstract of the United States (1878-2012).
Statistical Abstract of the United States (1878-2012)
The Statistical Abstract of the United States, published by the Census Bureau from 1878-2012, is the authoritative and comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States. Use the Abstract as a convenient volume for statistical reference, and as a guide to sources of more information both in print and on the Web Sources of data include the Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and many other Federal agencies and private organizations. For newer Statistical Abstracts, see Proquest Statistical Abstract of the U.S. (2013-present).
Supreme Court Insight
Supreme Court Insight is a complete online collection of full opinions from Supreme Court argued cases, including per decision, dockets, oral arguments, joint appendices and amicus briefs. Content associated with each case is compiled on a dynamic page organized to facilitate understanding of the judicial process, and is also retrievable on a document by document basis.

Subscription Databases T-Z

Text Creation Partnership Collection (TCP)
The Text Creation Partnership Collection provides full-text access to subsets of the texts contained in three large historical text collections: Early English Books Online, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, and Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans. Texts in the TCP subsets have been enhanced by additional textual mark-up to enable searching options more sophisticated than what is possible in the original databases.
Thomson Reuters Westlaw Campus Research
TR Westlaw Campus Research provides access to a comprehensive and widely-used indexing system for caselaw materials to make legal research easier, more accurate, and more relevant.
Times Digital Archive (London)
Provides full-text access to back issues of The Times newspaper. Dates of coverage: 1785 to 2006.
Trade Catalogues and the American Home
Trade Catalogues and the American Home - Explore domestic consumerism, life and leisure in America between 1850-1950 with Trade Catalogues and the American Home. This resource presents a wealth of highly illustrated primary source documents that highlight commercial tastes and consumer trends, and provide a valuable visual record for a breadth of interdisciplinary study.
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC)
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research center at Syracuse University, has developed a web-based data warehouse/data mining application that makes it possible to produce useful information from previously inaccessible data. The TRACFed data warehouse includes among its many offerings transactional data from the US Federal government concerning its enforcement and prosecution activities, staffing, federal expenditures, and more. It focuses on the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, IRS, DEA and the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History
Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History provides primary source material for the study of travel and life writing. It contains travel diaries and supporting correspondence written by American women of all ages, travelling for many different reasons, from all walks of life, describing their journeys across the globe from the early 19th century to the late 20th century. This resource has wide ranging interdisciplinary appeal, offering first-hand accounts of major historical events as reported by eye witnesses, detailing key interests and themes in women’s lives, providing snapshots of cities, cultures and customs, and charting the rise of modern tourism and the travel industry.
Trench Journals and Unit Magazines of the First World War
The trench journals and unit magazines of the First World War are a source of information on the common serviceman and woman’s experience of the war. These magazines were written by and for every type of unit from every combatant nation. As such they contain the hitherto unheard voices of hundreds of thousands of men and women writing from every facet of the conflict.
Twentieth Century Drama, 2nd Edition
Twentieth-Century Drama, Second Edition contains a collection of published plays from throughout the English-speaking world, covering the history of modern drama from the 1890s to the present day, alongside unpublished works by major writers and Pulitzer Prize winners.
Twentieth Century North American Drama
Contains 1,122 plays by 170 playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. The database also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays.
U.K. Parliamentary Papers
Provides full-text access to the Parliamentary Papers. They are the working documents of government for all areas of social, political, economic and foreign policy, showing how issues were explored and legislation was formed. Dates of coverage: 1688 to the present.
U.S. Declassified Documents Online
U.S. Declassified Documents Online provides access to previously classified federal records in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The collection brings together the most sensitive documents from all the presidential libraries and numerous executive agencies in a single, easily searchable database, including: intelligence studies, policy papers, diplomatic correspondence, cabinet meeting minutes, briefing materials, and domestic surveillance and military reports. The search and discovery interface for the collection allows researchers to locate the full text of documents and quickly filter their search results by document type, issue date, source institution, classification level, and date declassified as well as other document characteristics.
U.S. Intelligence on Asia, 1945-1991
The purpose of this unique online collection is to provide students and researchers with the declassified documentary record about the successes and failures of the U.S. intelligence community in the Far East during the Cold War (1945-1991). Particular emphasis is given to America’s principal antagonists in Asia during the Cold War era: the People’s Republic of China, North Korea and North Vietnam. However, countries such as Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia are covered as well.
U.S. Intelligence on Europe, 1945-1995
U.S. Intelligence on Europe, 1945-1995 is a collection of over 4,000 formerly classified U.S. government documents provides a comprehensive survey of the U.S. intelligence community’s activities in Europe, including Eastern Europe, Turkey and Cyprus, covering the time period from the end of World War II to the fall of the Iron Curtain and beyond.
U.S. Intelligence on the Middle East, 1945-2009
This comprehensive document set sheds light on the U.S. intelligence community’s spying and analytic efforts in the Middle East and North Africa. It covers the time period from the end of World War II to the present day, up until the 2002-2003 Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) assessments, the Global War on Terror, the Iraq War, and Iran’s nuclear program.
Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels
Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels contains digitized images of comic books and graphic novels from the 1960’s to the works of modern sequential artists. The collection also contains materials about comics, including interviews, commentary, theory, and criticism from The Comics Journal and other secondary sources.
Vanderbilt Television News Archive
The Vanderbilt Television News Archive is a searchable collection of the individual network evening news broadcasts from ABC, NBC, and CBS from 1968-present, CNN from 1995-present, and Fox from 2004-present. Broadcasts from CNN and NBC can be streamed; broadcasts from all sources, including ABC, CBS, and Fox, can be loaned and downloaded in MP4 format after creating an account and paying a nominal duplication fee ($12 per clip + a $10 processing fee).
Follow this link for more information on the loan process for this content and any associated fees: MP4 loans — compilation and duplication fees
Virginia Company Archives
Provides online access to the Virginia Company Archives, which began as a business archive, consisting of papers of Nicholas Ferrar (d.1620) and those of the Virginia Company of London and its subordinate, the Somer Islands Company. Few of old Nicholas's papers survive, but there are over five hundred items from the days of the Virginia Company.
Vogue Archive
The Vogue Archive contains the entire run of Vogue magazine (US edition), from 1892 to the current month. Every page, advertisement, cover and fold-out has been indexed so that images can be found by garment type, designer and brand names.
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts provides citations, abstracts, and indexing of the international serials literature in political science and its complementary fields, including international relations, law, and public administration.
Youth and Popular Culture Magazine Archive
The Youth and Popular Culture Magazine Archive database provides access to periodicals from 1940s-present, highlighting topics and trends of youth culture like fashion, rock and roll, sexuality and dating, as well as youth portrayal in the media. At completion, this collection will have 200,000 pages from periodicals published in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. Most of the periodicals within the collection are difficult to find and no longer published, such as Clarity Magazine from the 1940s and Petticoat from the 1960s, providing insight to the various content that influenced youth culture throughout the decades. Other titles include: 19, FLiP Teen Magazine, Fab 208, Intro Magazine, It's Here! And Now!, Letterman Magazine, and Look Now.