Research Web Links

RESEARCH LINKS
Amazing research web sites you should visit at least once

History and/or Genealogy Collections. (Photographs, Artifacts, Documents)

250+ Killer Libraries & Digital Archives – from OEdb – archives BY STATE (U.S.)

American Centuries--View from New England – Memorial Hall Museum online, with an online collection of historic artifacts and The Sea Serpentdocuments from New England (searchable).

American Antiquarian Society – GIGI is the society’s digital asset database, searchable.

American Memory, Library of Congress – a searchable database of historical photographs and documents.

Ancestor Hunt (The): New Hampshire Online Historical Newspapers Summary

Early Canadiana Online – these collections contain over 80,000 rare books, magazines and government publications from the 1600s to the 1940s.

Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School – they help law students at Harvard Law School, lawyers, policy-makers and others who practice in this area, and the public at large, to learn about cyberspace issues

Boston Public Library – online collection of manuscripts and photographs.

Calisphere – a world of primary resources, University of California.

Chronicling America – Search U.S. Newspaper Directory 1690-present (free) from National Endowment for the Humanities. [2nd link with different view]

Colonial Williamsburg Multimedia – slideshows of colonial life

Connecticut Online – a collaboration between the Connecticut Historical Society, the Connecticut State Library, the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut, Mystic Seaport, and the New Haven Colony Historical Society. 14,000 images of photographs, drawings and prints which may be searched or browsed in a variety of ways, including by keyword, subject, creator, title and date.

Cornell University’s “Making of America” – a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction.

Curt Teich Postcard Archives – Digital Collection (Places)

D.A.R. Genealogical Research System – helpful databases to look up the family trees of known patriots of the American Revolution.

Dartmouth Digital Library Collection – Dartmouth College online documents and photographs | Sanborn Maps of NH

Digital Commonwealth – Massachusetts historical documents and artifacts online. [searchable includes other states].

Digital History – materials to support the teaching of American History in K-12 schools and colleges. The site includes an online U.S. history textbook, over 400 annotated documents from the Gilder Lehrman Collection and includes primary sources on slavery, Mexican-American, Asian-American, and Native American history; also U.S. political, social and legal history.

Digital Image Collection, Amherst Historical Society, Amherst, New Hampshire

Digital Library, State Library of Massachusetts (documents and photographs)

Digital Public Library of America, a free research guide to genealogy

Elephind – 2,663,188 Newspapers that you can search (Australia and USA).

FamilySearch – Search for your ancestors in millions of historical records. You can also search in the catalog, books, genealogies, and the Wiki.

Flickr – Internet Archive Book graphics and photographs

Fulton History – Old Fulton NY Post cards PLUS over 40,743,000 historical newspaper pages [searchable, a gem]

Genealogy Gopher – a mostly free genealogy search engine

Gilder Lehrman Institute of America – (searchable) more than 60,000 documents detailing the political and social history of the United States. The collection’s holdings include manuscript letters, diaries, maps, photographs, printed books and pamphlets ranging from 1493 through modern times.

GoogleBooks – discover and browse books online. If the book is out of copyright, or the publisher has given them permission, you’ll be able to see a preview of the book, and in some cases the entire text. If it’s in the public domain, you’re free to download a PDF copy.

Google News Archive Search –  search and explore historical archives. In addition to helping you search, News archive search can automatically create timelines which show selected results from relevant time periods.

Google Scholar – broadly search for scholarly literature.

Hagley Digital Archives – images, documents and publications related to the history of business, technology and society.

Hamilton College Library Digital Collections –  Hamilton College in Clinton NY has an online digital collection, searchable.

Harvard University VIA (Photographs) – Now called HOLLIS. Visual resources at Harvard University, focusing on artistic and cultural materials.VIA includes catalog records for objects or images owned, held or licensed by Harvard.

Harvard Digital Collections – free public access to over 6 million objects digitized from Harvard’s collections – from ancient art to modern manuscripts and audio visual . materials.

Hathi Trust Digital Collection – A digital library, entirely searchable, free.

Historic New England – collections and archives

Illinois Digital Archives – searchable

Illinois Digital Newspapers – searchable

Internet Archive: E-books and Texts

Internet Archive: Newspapers online

Internet Archive: Subject Genealogy – take a look you might find your family history here. [Also Subject: Family Genealogy]

Internet Archive: Subject New Hampshire – the famous Waybackmachine archive provides historical documents of interest to New Hampshire researchers.

Internet Archive: Subject United States Census – ALL of the United States Census records online, FREE.

Internet Archive: Universal Newsreels – In the pre-TV era, people saw the news every week in their neighborhood movie theaters. Newsreels were shown before every feature film and in dedicated newsreel theaters located in large cities. Universal Newsreel, produced from 1929 to 1967.

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Online – searchable

Library of Congress, Photo-stream on FLICKR – searchable

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection – searchable

Michigan University’s “Making of America” – a searchable collection (digital library) of documents and photographs that are NOT restricted to Michigan.

Nashua NH Historic Newspaper – New Hampshire newspaper covering 1869 to 1952. Great for New Hampshire WW1 and WW2 research. Provided ONLY by the Nashua Public Library.

National Archives | 2nd National Archives  search page of documents, artifacts and photographs of American history.

New Hampshire Genealogy & History Research at Searchroots  (my web site)  – all the FREE tools you need to research New Hampshire people, places and events.

New Hampshire Genealogical Digest – an index of New Hampshire names with brief bios or personal data as COMPILED from specific New Hampshire county histories.  [borrow from the Internet Archive]

New Hampshire History Project – some copyright free photographs provided by the New Hampshire State Library

New Hampshire History NETWORK – searchable database of New Hampshire photographs and artifacts.

FREE ONLINE NEWSPAPERS (smaller, regional, U.S., Canada) – Advantage Preservation.

New Hampshire Historic NEWSPAPERS – online FREE at various libraries [Advantage Preservation database system]
— Grafton County–
Bethlehem Public Library
— Hillsborough County —
Fuller Public Library (Hillsboro NH)
Nashua Public Library
Peterborough Town Library
Wadleigh Memorial Library (Milford NH)
— Rockingham County —
Derry Public Library
Kelley Library (Salem NH)
Nesmith Library (Windham NH)
Plaistow Public Library
— Strafford County —
Dover Public Library
Farmington News
Lee Public Library (New Market NH)
— Sullivan County —
Fiske Library (Claremont NH)
Richards Free Library  (Newport NH Area)

VERMONT HISTORIC NEWSPAPERS (because VT abuts New Hampshire)
Chittenden County VT – Charlotte News newspaper
Franklin County VT – Arvin A. Brown Public Library (Richford VT )
Lamoille County VT – Stowe Free Library (Stowe VT)
Rutland County VT – Sherburne Memorial Library (Killington VT )

Newspaper — Nashua, New Hampshire archive from 1935 to 1990s. (free)

New Hampshire Political Library – online library and archives, educating audiences about the tradition of the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire presidential primary.

New Hampshire State Papers – the provincial state papers of New Hampshire, originally published between 1867 and 1943; these archives are downloadable in PDF format. You probably want to view the index first (the first link on that page).

New Hampshire Underground – archeology in New Hampshire; sadly no plans to update.

NewsLibrary.com – a search engine that includes more than 274 million newspaper articles.  Note: some of the articles are “pay per view”.

New York State Historical Newspapers (free) searchable online.

New York Times Search Engine – search the New York Times newspaper for current (1981-today) and archived issues (1851-1980).  Some articles are free in both HTML and PDF format, others available for a small fee.

NYS Historic Newspapers online (free and searchable)

NPS Historic Photo Collection – The National Park Service Historic Photograph Collection is comprised of more than two million images which cover a wide variety of subjects: Park architecture, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Native American heritage, NPS personnel, roads and transportation, scenic views, and much more.

NYPL Digital Library | NYPL Digital Collections – NYPL Digital Gallery provides access to over 550,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints  and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more. Searchable.

The National Archives of Great Britain – this links to the blog portion of their web site, and here to the searchable databases portion.  Great resources for UK information.

Old Photographs – A private web site with a collection of old photographs, many presented in “themes.”

One Step Web Pages – by Stephen P. Morse to help you research immigration records, census records, vital records, and help with problematic calendars and foreign alphabets.

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology – online collections and exhibits. Browse a special collection or to perform a search according to your own interests. Especially suited for those researching New England Native Peoples and other cultures.

Plymouth State University–Museum of the White Mountains – online photographs, documents, etc., preserving history and culture of northern New Hampshire. Searchable.

Portsmouth Athenaeum Online – search the online collections of documents, photographs, etc. at the Portsmouth Atheneaeum of Portsmouth NH, using the PastPerfect collection system.

SIRIS–Smithsonian Research Information – search all catalogs

The Historical Marker Database – just type in the state or town you are interested in.

UCLA Library | Digital Collection – many photographs free to use for educational purposes (not for commercial purposes).

University of Maine – Digital Commons

University of New Hampshire – Milne Special Collections (searchable)

New Hampshire Historical Society‘s Online Catalog (searchable) and a second search engine for the museum. [sadly this is not a complete database of their collections].

Historical Societies and/or Libraries

American Historical Association – the professional association for all historians

Manchester (NH) Historic Association – online database and web site

Bartlett Historical Society – this organization works to preserve the history of the villages of Bartlett, New Hampshire (Bartlett, Glen and Intervale)

Book Notes New Hampshire – Occasional notes on New Hampshire’s book community from the Director of the Center for the Book at the New Hampshire State Library

Hampton’s Lane Memorial Library – local history for Hampton New Hampshire (seacoast); articles, records, documents, photographs

Merrimack Public Library Blog – news from the reference department of the Merrimack (New Hampshire) Public Library

New Hampshire Historical Society – state society, and nonprofit organization, founded 1823, two databases one for the museum and one for the library, searchable.

History Lessons & Tools

Best of History Web Sites – an award-winning portal that contains annotated links to over 1000 history web sites as well as links to hundreds of quality K-12 history lesson plans, history teacher guides, history activities, history games, history quizzes, and more.

Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Project Gutenberg EBook of 1811, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Captain Grose et al. – Fashionable SLANG of the times.

History Matters – designed for high school and college teachers and students, History Matters serves as a gateway to web resources and offers other useful materials for teaching U.S. history.

Online Entymology Dictionary – explanations of what our words mean and/or how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago.

Playle’s Real Photo Stamp – helps you to identify real photograph postcards by dating the “stamp” mark on the mail/address side.  [Thanks to John Thielemann for this]

Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society –  the wondrous, the curious, the singular, the esoteric, and the sometimes hazy frontier between the plausible and the implausible.

Quaker Strongrooms: a blog from the Library of the Society of Friends

The American Experience – American Experience Online (PBS) premiered in November of 1995 and has produced over 100 feature sites. These sites encourage in-depth exploration of the issues surrounding each documentary subject beyond the television screen.

World Wide Words – international English from a British viewpoint. Explanation of terms.

Genealogy Tools & D N A Tools

Ancient DNA – Map based on all ancient DNA; plug in your Y-DNA or mtDNA

DNA & Genealogy –  Geni – Louise Coakley provides understandable and useful articles about DNA testing and how to use the results.

DNA Painter – shared cM Project Tool. Simply enter the cM amount of your shared DNA.

Genetic Genealogy – blog of Blaine Bettinger, DNA book author and gene guru

ISOGG Wiki – Genetic Genealogy Resources

Tracking Back – a website for genealogy tools, experimentation and discussion
—– SNP Tracker

Search Engines
Google and Yahoo are great, but not always the best, depending on your personal needs.  Try a few of these on for size!

Bing – Microsoft’s search engine, 2nd most popular in the search engine world.

Creative Commons Share – find content you can use.

Dogpile – an old favorite.

DuckDuckGo – a search engine, that unlike Google, does NOT track you.

Genealogy Gophers – the BEST genealogy-specific free search engine that I know.

Internet Wayback Machine – did you ever wonder what a web site looked like a year ago? was it around five years ago?  Now you can find out (you must know the URL).

Kids Search – Safe Search Engine for Children

Privado – keep your searches private.

RSSMicro: RSS Feed Search Engine – 65,000,000 feeds, blog posts, and news articles fully searchable

WorldCat – search for books, videos, music and documents in  libraries (searchable by title, subject, person)

Yippy – formerly called “Clusty” a search engine states that it does not save or share your personal information.

Blog and Web Site Helpers

BeFunky Photo Editor & Graphic Design – basics are free, small monthly fee for extras.

Broken Link Checker – will check up to 3000 pages for free.

Character Counter – If you ever need to know character, word or line count of your document, use this free service. (Did you know FaceBook only allows 8000 characters per post? Authors need word counts for many publication entries.    Copy and paste, auto counted.

Colorize it – free at Algorithmia

Copyscape Plagarism Checker – see who (if anyone) is using your blog stories).

Digital.com – what is popular in the digital world for blogs and web sites, see the comparisons.

Earwig’s Copyvio Detector – This tool attempts to detect copyright violations in articles.

FaceBook, Best Practices (for Images)

File Dropper – upload your file, save your personal link (5 GB max per file).

Keyword Spy – shows the last ten keywords used to reach your blog or web site, your ad rank for those words, and number of competitors.

Google Ranking Factors – “over 200 SEO factors” that Google uses to rank pages in the Google search results (SERPs). What are the search engine optimization rules? [Updated article! Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List, a must read!]

Internet Traffic Report – The Internet Traffic Report monitors the flow of data around the world. It then displays a value between zero and 100. Higher values indicate faster and more reliable connections.

LANGUAGE TRANSLATORS:
– DeepL Translator
– Google Translator

Pixabay – free images to use on your blog or web site

Pond5 – royalty free graphics, video, etc.

Quantcast Internet Ratings – the only open internet ratings service. Find ratings on the top web sites and blogs, or see how your own rates. Learn your full network reach.

Quant – a European Search Engine

ResearchBuzz – News about search engines, databases, and other information collections.

Screenfly – Test how your web site looks on smart phones, ipads and various computer screen sizes. [this was broken 3 September 2019].  Replacements include: Responsinator // Google Resizer //

SEO Tools – more blog and web site tools than you can shake a stick at!

Shrink Links – have a humongously long link you need to shrink?  I don’t know how they do it, but it works. [Another link which is my personal favorite is tinyurl.] [Did you ever need to upload a quick photo to show someone, tinypic is great].

Reverse Tinyurl – see what is behind those tiny url links.

The Blog Herald – the latest and greatest information in the blogosphere.  Blogging news and helpful articles.

Tips for New Bloggers – A dummies guide, blog tips, tricks, help for all new bloggers on Web templates, Blog templates, designs, widgets, layout, JavaScript, HTML codes, SEO, Google AdSense, gadgets, diagnostic tools, and how to monetize Blogger or Blogspot blogs.

Unsplash – Free, high-resolution photographs for your blog.
[Also SEE Free Stock Photos: 80+ Free (& Nearly Free) Libraries]

Watermarktool – online software (FREE) that lets you add the watermark of your choice to photographs [new May 2017].

W3C Link Checker – Enter the address (URL) of a document that you would like to check, and it produces a list of good and bad links on that page.

Widgetbox – world’s largest widget directory.  Need a special blog widget? Make one here.

Minority History and Current Events

Huffington Post – history is happening right now

Indian Country Today – current news affecting Native Peoples

Museum of African American History – Boston MA museum. See the Online Exhibits under the “Exhibits” tab.

Webmaster’s Blog: Native American Resources – historical events impacting Native Peoples

Quick Practical Tools

New Hampshire Zip Codes – for those of us who still use ‘snail mail’ here is an interesting way to look up New Hampshire mail’s zip codes.

FaceBook Debugger – Awesomely Techie explains why you should use this tool (if you use FaceBook).

GetLinkInfo: Expand tinyurl, bit.ly, goo.gl, is.gd, t.co or any other short URLs. Very useful for Twitter users.  [Editor’s note: if you’d like to know what the web site is before you click on the shortened url, check it first here].

ID A PHOTO – Browse through lost photographs by location or surname.  Submit some of your own.

Is it Down Right Now? – monitors the status of your favorite web sites and checks whether they are down or not. Check a website status easily by using the below test tool. Just enter the url and a fresh site status test will be performed on the domain name in real time using our online website checker tool. For detailed information, check response time graph and user comments.

Postimage.org – need to post a temporary image to show someone a photograph?

RefMe – Referencing, MadeEasy. Join millions of students using RefME around the world. Generate references in Harvard, MLA, APA or any style. For free.

Sharing Debugger (FaceBook) – having trouble getting a graphic to show up, try this.

Shrunken & Tiny Text Generator (for Twitter, Facebook etc.)

The Free Automatic Bibliography and Citation Generator – Save time by creating a Works Cited page instantly in MLA, APA, or Chicago!

 Calculate Date Duration (ie, days, months, and years between 2 dates)

Who’s Talking? Real Time Results about who on social media is talking about a specific topic or search terms.

Social Media Must-Haves (and NOTS)
…
Facebook | Facebook Blog
FlipBoard | FlipBoard Blog
Historypin | Historypin Blog
Google+ | Google+ Blog
Youtube | Youtube Blog
Top 15 Most Popular Social Networking Sites

I JUST SAY NO to these! (and recommend that you do the same)
(1) Is Pinterest a haven for copyright violators?. This site blocks it.
(2) Prezi – It seems like a nifty slideshow Idea, but despite their slick disclaimer, they DO allow copyright violations (as I have reported my own on their site twice and they ignore me).  Stop these thefts by just not using the companies that allow it.
*3) Twitter | Twitter Blog – sometimes a great source of MISinformation.