Iowa History: Databases
Resources on Iowa history
Ancestry.com - Library Edition
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Ancestry library edition This link opens in a new windowContains coverage of the U.S. and the U.K. data including census, vital, church, court, and immigration records, as well as record collections from Canada and other areas. A collection of more than 4,000 databases and 1.5 billion names including U.S. federal census images and indexes from 1790 to 1930; the Map Center containing more than 1,000 historical maps; American Genealogical Biographical Index (over 200 volumes), Daughters of the American Revolution Lineage (over 150 volumes), The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1630, Social Security Death Index, WWI Draft Registration Cards, Federal Slave Narratives, and a Civil War collection.
US Government Resources
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Cold War Intelligence Online: The Secret War Between the U.S. and the USSR, 1945-1991 This link opens in a new windowThis collection of 2,360 formerly classified U.S. government documents (most of them classified Top Secret or higher) provides readers for the first time with the declassified documentary record about the successes and failures of the U.S. intelligence community in its efforts to spy on the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
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Digital National Security Archive (DNSA) This link opens in a new windowDNSA contains the most comprehensive collection of primary documents available. The database includes more than 875,000 pages and approximately 140,000 of the most important declassified documents regarding critical U.S. policy decisions.
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Foreign Relations of the United States This link opens in a new windowThe Foreign Relations of the United States series is the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions that have been declassified and edited for publication.
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LexisNexis Academic (now called Nexis Uni) This link opens in a new windowTURN OFF POP-UP BLOCKER; Researchers can quickly and easily search full-text documents from over 17,000 credible sources of information and pinpoint relevant information for a wide range of academic research projects. Extensive legal sources for federal and state cases and statutes, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions since 1790
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ProQuest Congressional U.S. Congressional Serial Set and Maps (coverage extended from 2003 to 2016) This link opens in a new window
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ProQuest Legislative Insight This link opens in a new windowFull-text publication types associated with a legislative history include the Public Law, all versions of enacted and related bills, Congressional Record excerpts, and committee hearings, reports, and documents. Other full-text publication types are included in our legislative histories to provide users with background material are committee prints, CRS reports, and miscellaneous congressional publications. Presidential signing statements are also included.
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ProQuest Legislative Insight This link opens in a new windowFull-text publication types associated with a legislative history include the Public Law, all versions of enacted and related bills, Congressional Record excerpts, and committee hearings, reports, and documents. Other full-text publication types are included in our legislative histories to provide users with background material are committee prints, CRS reports, and miscellaneous congressional publications. Presidential signing statements are also included.
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U.S. Congressional Serial Set, 1817-1994 This link opens in a new windowDatabase of texts from the bound, sequentially numbered volumes of all the reports, documents, and journals of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Texts constitute a rich source of primary source material on all aspects of American history. Upon completion, the digital version of the Serial set will consist of over 12,000,000 pages. Database searchable by subject, publication category, standing committee author, and other parameters.
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U.S. Declassified Documents Online (formerly Declassified Documents Reference System) This link opens in a new windowU.S. Declassified Documents Online provides immediate access to a broad range of previously classified federal records spanning 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.
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U.S. Intelligence on Europe, 1945-1995 This link opens in a new windowThis 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.
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U.S. Intelligence on the Middle East, 1945-2009 This link opens in a new windowThis comprehensive document set sheds light on the U.S. intelligence community’s spying and analytic efforts in the Arab world, including the Middle East, the Near 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.
Databases
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Academic Search Elite This link opens in a new windowThis multi-disciplinary database offers full text for nearly 2,000 scholarly journals, including more than 1,500 peer-reviewed titles. Covering virtually every area of academic study, Academic Search Elite offers full text information dating as far back as 1985. This database is updated on a daily basis.
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America: History and Life This link opens in a new windowRECOMMEND USING CHROME; Covers the world's scholarly literature in United States and Canadian history. It includes article abstracts from 1700 journals and bibliographic citations of books and dissertations. The coverage is 1954- .
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Black Thought and Culture: African Americans from Colonial Times to the Present This link opens in a new windowBlack Thought and Culture is a single source for the published works of numerous historically important black leaders. Along with well-known works, the collection features approximately 5,000 pages of unique, fugitive, and never-before-published materials. When complete, Black Thought and Culture will provide approximately 100,000 pages of monographs, essays, articles, speeches, and interviews written by leaders within the black community from the earliest times to 1975. Black teachers, artists, politicians, religious leaders, athletes, war veterans, entertainers, and other leaders form the mainstay of this corpus. The collection is intended for research in black studies, political science, American history, music, literature, and art.
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JSTOR (Journal Storage) This link opens in a new windowProvides image and full-text online access to back issues of selected scholarly journals in history, economics, political science, philosophy, mathematics and other fields of the humanities and social sciences. Consult the online tables of contents for holdings, as coverage varies for each titles. Journals may be searched across multiple titles as well as by the individual titles below
Note that this database comprises mostly back issues: for most titles the JSTOR database does NOT include full text of the most recent 3 to 5 years. -
North American Indian Thought and Culture This link opens in a new windowA compilation of biographical information on indigenous peoples from all areas of North America. When complete, the database will include 100,000 pages of content, including biographies, autobiographies, oral histories, reference works, manuscripts, and photographs, presenting the life stories of American Indians and Canadian First Peoples in their own words and through the words of others. Coverage: 1677 to present.
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Periodicals Archive Online This link opens in a new windowCompanion to: Periodicals index online. Archive of hundreds of digitized journals published in the arts, humanities and social sciences.
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Project Muse This link opens in a new windowWith full text for well over 300 journal titles from university publishers, Project MUSE covers the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, and many others. Coverage begins in 1995.
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Readers' Guide Retrospective This link opens in a new windowA comprehensive index to the most popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States. This database is available through WilsonWeb and covers the time period from 1890-1982. (Formerly on WilsonWeb)
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Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 This link opens in a new windowA set of learning modules in the form of mini-monographs, each of which is organized around a specific question about a single social movement. Each module contains fifteen to twenty documents that address the question.
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American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I This link opens in a new windowBased on the American Antiquarian Society's landmark collection, this offers fully searchable facsimile images of approximately 15,000 broadsides printed between 1820 and 1900 and 15,000 pieces of ephemera printed between 1760 and 1900. The subjects of these broadsides range from contemporary accounts of the Civil War, unusual occurrences and natural disasters to official government proclamations, tax bills and town meeting reports. Featuring many rare items, the pieces of ephemera include clipper ship sailing cards, early trade cards, bill heads, theater and music programs, stock certificates, menus and invitations documenting civic, political and private celebrations.
Resources on Native Americans
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Indigenous Histories and Cultures in North America This link opens in a new window
Explore manuscripts, artwork and rare printed books dating from the earliest contact with European settlers right up to photographs and newspapers from the mid-twentieth century. Browse through a wide range of rare and original documents from treaties, speeches and diaries, to historic maps and travel journals.
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American Indian Movement and Native American Radicalism This link opens in a new windowThe American Indian Movement and Native American Radicalism includes FBI documentation on the evolution of AIM as an organization of social protest, as well as valuable documentation on the 1973 Wounded Knee standoff. Informant reports and materials collected by the Extremist Intelligence Section of the FBI provide insight into the motives, actions, and leadership of AIM and the development of Native American radicalism.
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Indigenous Newspapers in North America This link opens in a new window
Nearly 200 years of Indigenous print journalism in the US and Canada from historic pressings to contemporary periodicals. Developed with, and made possible by, the permission and contribution of the newspaper publishers and Tribal Councils concerned.
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American Indians and the American West, 1809-1971 This link opens in a new windowContains several collections focusing on the interaction between American Indians and the U.S. government in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Notable collections in this module from the 19th Century focus on Indian Removal from 1832-1840, the U.S. Army and American Indians in the years from the 1850s-1890s, including detailed coverage of Indian Wars. The featured collections on the 20th Century are Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and records from the Major Council Meetings of American Indian Tribes.
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Bibliography of Indigenous Peoples in North America This link opens in a new windowRECOMMEND USING CHROME; Indexes works from the sixteenth century to the present, including monographs, essays, journal articles, dissertations and U.S. and Canadian government publications. Areas covered include native American topics and issues, including education, anthropology, psychology, political science, sociology, and legal and medical research. This bibliography, from Human Relations Areas Files (HRAF), contains the citations from the cumulative eight volumes of the Ethnographic bibliography of North America as well as additional new citations.
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Indian Claims Insight This link opens in a new windowIndian Claims Insight allows users to research the history of U.S. Indian claims from 1789-present. Unique compiled docket histories provide legal researchers with the ability to quickly search the full text of all content related to each claim, which can be narrowed on-the-fly to pinpoint a topic. The compilation includes not only court documents, but also cited treaties, related congressional publications, and maps to facilitate the ability of researchers to fully understand the specifics of each case without leaving the docket history page.
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Indigenous Peoples: North America This link opens in a new windowIndigenous Peoples: North America provides users with a robust, diverse, informative source that will enhance research and increase understanding of the historical experiences, cultural traditions and innovations, and political status of Indigenous Peoples in the United States and Canada.
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North American Indian Thought and Culture This link opens in a new windowA compilation of biographical information on indigenous peoples from all areas of North America. When complete, the database will include 100,000 pages of content, including biographies, autobiographies, oral histories, reference works, manuscripts, and photographs, presenting the life stories of American Indians and Canadian First Peoples in their own words and through the words of others. Coverage: 1677 to present.