Research Guides: Humanities Research Guide: Online Sources

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Online Sources

Recommended sites about humanities.

American Academy of Arts & Sciences
"The American Academy serves the nation as a champion of scholarship, civil dialogue, and useful knowledge. As one of the country's oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers, the Academy convenes leaders from the academic, business, and government sectors to respond to the challenges facing the nation and the world."
EDSITEment
"EDSITEment offers a treasure trove for teachers, students, and parents searching for high-quality material on the Internet in the subject areas of literature and language arts, foreign languages, art and culture, and history and social studies."
Humanities Indicators
"When the Initiative for Humanities and Culture was organized in 1998, the Academy recognized that the humanities lack reliable, comprehensive, and consistently updated statistical data necessary to chart trends and draw conclusions. To address this need, the Academy began working closely with major humanities institutions, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Humanities Alliance, to develop an infrastructure for the compilation, analysis and publication of comprehensive trend data about the humanities. The Humanities Indicators (HI) is a result of this work and is modeled after the Science and Engineering Indicators published biennially by the National Science Board."
National Endowment for the Humanities
" The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency created in 1965. It is one of the largest funders of humanities programs in the United States. Because democracy demands wisdom, NEH serves and strengthens our republic by promoting excellence in the humanities and conveying the lessons of history to all Americans. The Endowment accomplishes this mission by awarding grants for top-rated proposals examined by panels of independent, external reviewers."
National Humanities Center
"The National Humanities Center is a private, nonprofit organization, and the only independent institute dedicated exclusively to advanced study in all areas of the humanities."
Stanford Presidential Lectures in the Humanities and Arts
"The Stanford Presidential Lecture Series in the Humanities and Arts brings the most distinguished scholars, artists, and critics of our time to the Stanford University campus for lectures, seminars, panel discussions, and a variety of related interactions with faculty, students, and the community at large."
World Digital Library
"The World Digital Library (WDL) is a project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with the support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world."

Recommended sites about art.

Art & Architecture (Courtauld Institute of Art)
"The Art and Architecture web site is designed to be explored. There are more than 40,000 images here, and a network of over half a million links."
Writing About Art
Professor Marjorie Munsterberg from The City College of New York created this resource "as the text for a course of the same name at The City College of New York. [It] explains the different approaches college students encounter in undergraduate art history classes."

Reference Sites

Artcyclopedia
Provides brief biographical information for artists, links to their works in museums, and links to online articles and information.
Dictionary of Art Historians
"A biographical and methodological database intended as a beginning point to learning the background of major art historians of western art history. A free, copyrighted, scholarly database for the use of researchers, students and the public."
Getty Research Institute: Vocabularies
"The Getty vocabularies contain structured terminology for art, architecture, decorative arts, archival materials, visual surrogates, conservation, and bibliographic materials."
Symbols.com
"Symbols.com is a unique online encyclopedia that contains everything about symbols, signs, flags and glyphs arranged by categories such as culture, country, religion, and more."

Timelines

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
"The Timeline presents a thematic, chronological, and geographical exploration of global art history through The Met collection. It is a reference, research, and teaching tool conceived for students and scholars of art history. It is authored by The Met’s experts, and currently comprises more than 1,000 essays, close to 7,600 works of art, 300 chronologies, and 3,700 keywords."
Pigments through the Ages
Timeline and information about paint pigments used in art from prehistory to present.
Timeline: Modern & Contemporary Art
"Famous, established and emerging artists since 1900 are represented with their portrait, biography and/or portfolio, with links to web resources to find anything you want to know about them, with images of their work, comprehensive biographies and articles, and if it exists, the artist's personal website."

Museum Sites

Archives of American Art (Smithsonian)
"The Archives of American Art is the world’s pre-eminent and most widely used research center dedicated to collecting, preserving, and providing access to primary sources that document the history of the visual arts in America."
Google Arts & Culture
"Google Arts & Culture features content from over 1200 leading museums and archives who have partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to bring the world's treasures online."
Museums and Museum Sites
Comprehensive list of museum websites compiled by the University of Michigan's School of Art & Design.

Recommended sites about history.

Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South
"The Behind the Veil Oral History Project was undertaken by Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies from 1993 to 1995. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the primary purpose of this documentary project was to record and preserve the living memory of African American life during the age of legal segregation in the American South, from the 1890s to the 1950s."
Digital Collections: Library of Congress
A list of different types of digital collections from the Library of Congress. Subjects include American history, world cultures and history, local history and folklife, photographs, and more.
Digital Public Library of America
"DPLA connects people to the riches held within America’s libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions. All of the materials found through DPLA—photographs, books, maps, news footage, oral histories, personal letters, museum objects, artwork, government documents, and so much more—are free and immediately available in digital format."
Documenting the American South
"Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes sixteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs." From the University Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
EuroDocs
"Online sources for European history." Organized according to time period or country. Created by Richard Hacken, European Studies Bibliographer, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University,
The Great Depression Interviews
"From the stock market crash of 1929 to the beginnings of World War II, The Great Depression tells the dramatic and diverse stories of struggle and survival during the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. Originally debuting on PBS stations in 1993, the 7-part series was met with critical acclaim, winning an Emmy for writing and a duPont-Columbia Award. These interviews are part of the Henry Hampton Collection housed at the Film & Media Archive at Washington University Libraries."
Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive
"The Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives (JARDA) contains thousands of primary sources documenting Japanese American internment. ... The JARDA project began in 1998 with the goal of providing a single point of entry to materials held by California institutions on the subject of Japanese American relocation and incarceration during World War II."
LLILAS Benson Digital Collections
Digital collections focused on Latin America. "The Benson Latin American Collection and LLILAS host or have been partners in a broad array of digital projects and initiatives. We invite you to learn more about these rich collections, or browse and search their contents."
The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
"The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the nation's record keeper. Of all documents and materials created in the course of business conducted by the United States Federal government, only 1%-3% are so important for legal or historical reasons that they are kept by us forever."
Visual History Archive Online
"USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive allows users to search through and view more than 54,000 video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of genocide. ... Viewable on the VHA Online are about 3,000 testimony videos from survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides. Testimony videos not viewable in the VHA Online can be viewed onsite at many institutions around the world." More information for using VHA Online is available at the VHA Online LibGuide.
World Maps
A collection of world maps from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas Libraries.
Yale Indian Papers Project / The New England Indian Papers Series
"The New England Indian Papers Series Electronic Archives is a scholarly critical edition of New England Native American primary source materials gathered into one robust virtual collection. It offers students, educators, researchers, Native American tribal members, and the general public, visual and intellectual access to significant historical knowledge for the purposes of teaching, scholarly analysis, and research."

Recommended sites about foreign languages.

CIA World Factbook
"The World Factbook provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities. Our Reference tab includes: maps of the major world regions, as well as Flags of the World, a Physical Map of the World, a Political Map of the World, a World Oceans map, and a Standard Time Zones of the World map."
Duolingo
"Learning with Duolingo is fun and addictive. Earn points for correct answers, race against the clock, and level up." Available on the web and via phone apps.
Forvo: The Pronunciation Dictionary
"Forvo is the largest pronunciation guide in the world, the place where you´ll find millions of words pronounced in their original languages."
Google Translate
Google's translation page.
iTunes Language Courses
Free audio language podcasts (requires iTunes).
Kwintessential Country Guides & Profiles
"Our country guides cover everything from etiquette, to local customs, culture and how to conduct business."
Learn a Language
"Learnalanguage.com is owned and operated by Certification Coaching Ltd a United Kingdom Registered Company. It exists to help people bridge communication gaps and to give back to the world in which we live."
Linguee: Language Dictionary
A free online dictionary with an app. Includes example sentences and recorded pronunciations.
National Foreign Language Resource Centers (LRCs)
"Led by nationally and internationally recognized language professionals, LRCs create language learning and teaching materials, offer professional development opportunities for teachers and instructors, and conduct research on foreign language learning."
WordReference.com
Language dictionaries

Recommended sites about literature and literary analysis.

Emory Women Writers Research Project
"The Emory Women Writers Resource Project is a collection of edited and unedited texts by women writing from the seventeenth century through the early twentieth century."
ipl2 Literary Criticism
"The ipl2's Literary Criticism Collection contains critical and biographical websites about authors and their works that can be browsed by author, by title, or by nationality and literary period. The collection is not inclusive of all the work on the web, nor does it plan to be. The sites are selected with some thought to their overall usefulness." While the ipl2 closed in 2015, the site remains available. Some links may no longer work.
The Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval Studies
"The Labyrinth provides free, organized access to resources in medieval studies. The Labyrinth’s easy-to-use links provide connections to databases, services, texts, and images around the world."
Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature
Provides biographical and critical essays on a range of authors from the Medieval, Renaissance, 17th Century, and Restoration & 18th Century periods. Also includes some sources for 19th Century, Contemporary Women Writers, and Irish Literature, Mythology, Folklore, and Drama. Remember to check the authority of the authors. Many are scholars in their field, but not all. Created by Anniina Jokinen.
Modern American Poetry
"The Modern American Poetry Site is a comprehensive learning environment and scholarly forum for the study of modern and contemporary American poetry." It is edited by Cary Nelson and Bartholomew Brinkman and hosted by the Department of English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
PAL: Perspectives in American Literature
"First published as a book (hence the site's format), this ongoing project is now available only online; it is a research and reference tool...The ten chapters represent the major literary and historical perspectives, cycles, or movements in American literature; each chapter has an Introduction, a Selected Bibliography, and a list of representative authors." Created by Dr. Paul P. Reuben, Professor Emeritus, Department of English, California State University, Stanislaus.
Representative Poetry Online
"Representative Poetry Online, edition 6.0, is a web anthology of 4,800 poems in English and French by over 700 poets spanning 1400 years."
Voices from the Gaps
"University of Minnesota professors Toni McNaron (English) and Carol Miller (American Studies and American Indian Studies) founded VG/Voices from the Gaps in 1996 to uncover, highlight, and share the works of marginalized artists, predominately women writers of color living and working in North America."
Writing in Literature (Purdue OWL)
"This handout gives a rundown of some important terms and concepts used when talking and writing about literature."

Humanities-related associations and organizations.

Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations
"The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) promotes and supports digital research and teaching across all arts and humanities disciplines, acting as a community-based advisory force, and supporting excellence in research, publication, collaboration and training."
Association for Computers and the Humanities
"The Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) is a major professional society for the digital humanities. We support and disseminate research and cultivate a vibrant professional community through conferences, publications, and outreach activities."
Community College Humanities Association
"The Community College Humanities Association (CCHA), founded in 1979, is the only national organization of its kind for humanities faculty and administrators in two-year colleges. It is dedicated to preserving and strengthening the humanities in two-year colleges."
European Association for Digital Humanities
"The EADH brings together and represents the Digital Humanities in Europe across the entire spectrum of disciplines that research, develop, and apply digital humanities methods and technology. The EADH also supports the formation of DH interest groups in Europe that are defined by region, language, methodological focus or other criteria."
Federation of State Humanities Councils
"Founded in 1977, the Federation of State Humanities Councils is the national member association of the 56 state and jurisdictional humanities councils. Our purpose is to provide leadership, advocacy, and information to help members advance programs that engage millions of citizens across diverse populations in community and civic life."
Humanities Education and Research Education
"HERA - The Humanities Education and Research Association - is devoted to promoting the worldwide study, teaching and understanding of the humanities across a range of disciplines through regular conferences, scholarship, and its journal Interdisciplinary Humanities."
Modern Language Association
"Founded in 1883, the Modern Language Association of America has worked for more than a century to strengthen the study and teaching of languages and literatures."
National Humanities Alliance
"The National Humanities Alliance is a coalition of organizations dedicated to advancing humanities education, research, preservation, and public programs. We are the only organization that brings together the US humanities community as a whole."

Alternative search engines. Useful for locating specific types of sources.

Congress.gov
"Presented by the Library of Congress, Congress.gov is the official website for U.S. federal legislative information."
FDsys (Federal Digital System)
"GPO’s Federal Digital System (FDsys) provides free online access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government."
Google Images
Image search from Google - either text-based or reverse image.
Google News
A news aggregator
Science.gov
"Science.gov searches over 60 databases and over 2,200 scientific websites to provide users with access to more than 200 million pages of authoritative federal science information including research and development results."
TinEye Reverse Image Search
Reverse image search - upload an image or provide a URL to an image's online location.
USA.gov
"USA.gov is an interagency product administered by USAGov (formerly the Federal Citizen Information Center), a division of the U.S. General Services Administration's Technology Transformation Service. Our mission is to create and organize timely, needed government information and services and make them accessible anytime, anywhere, via your channel of choice."
WolframAlpha
"Wolfram|Alpha introduces a fundamentally new way to get knowledge and answers—not by searching the web, but by doing dynamic computations based on a vast collection of built-in data, algorithms, and methods."
Want to have fun? Look what the response is to the question "What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?"