Resources for Historical Research for Non-Historians
At Worldcon on Friday, I gave an Academic track presentation on “Historical Research for Non-Historians,” with an eye to folks writing historical fiction of all stripes, whether that be alternate history or fantastical history or something else! Because I’ve got training as a historian, I tend to do a lot of research for my historical writing. But there are a number of those techniques that people who don’t have that training can also use!
As part of my presentation, I mentioned a number of useful websites for historical research, so I’m collecting those here for folks who attended my presentation or anyone who wanted to be there but missed it!
I’m grouping these thematically, and I’ll include a handful of notes where relevant to the topic!
If you want to learn more about primary vs. secondary sources, UMass Boston has a good, short summary. There are also additional research guides on their site!
If you want to learn more about oral history, the Oral History Association has a number of resources. I like their list of best practices, and the sidebar on that page has other topics of interest related to ethics and preservation of oral histories.
I also mentioned a piece from Sam Houston State University on The History Research Process, which is written for university students but has many useful tips for someone starting out with historical research.
Online historical newspapers:
- Chronicling America: a free joint project of the Library of Congress and National Endowment for the Humanities, including some historical American newspapers; not comprehensive, so it will depend on your location and time period
- Google News Archive Search: a free site that includes newspapers that are not available through other databases (as well as some that are)
- Newspapers.com: a paid website that includes many historical American newspapers (check the free sites first!); similarly not comprehensive
- Newspaper Archive: a paid website that includes many historical American newspapers (check the free sites first!); similarly not comprehensive
Online historical maps:
- Old Maps Online: includes historical maps from map libraries in Europe and the United States; in 2012, there were over 60,000 maps included, and that number has likely grown (free)
- Open Historical Map: free, public domain map that lets you see territorial boundaries over time
- USGS Historical Topographic Maps: free maps from the U.S. Geological Survey, covering only the United States, which are on a large scale (not very detailed) but show the topography of a place and indications of development over time (USGS also does historical aerial photography, which may or may not be covered on that site, but “historical aerial photography” is a good search terms if you want to find images of a place in the United States, from the air, starting in about the 1950s)
- Historic Map Works: paid site that has a wide array of types of maps, covering the world and a wide timespan (as usual, check the free sites first!)
Online photographs, drawings, and artwork (all free):
- Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog
- Photographs and Graphic Works at the National Archives
- Smithsonian Open Access
- Getty Archive Photos
- LIFE photo archives
- Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection
- New York Public Library
- Fashion in the Age of Bridgeton: narrow focus, but valuable if you’re writing Regency!
Online books (out of copyright books):
- Google Books: not all books are scanned in full
- Internet Archive: there are occasionally books that have to be borrowed or that are only available to users with low vision
- HathiTrust: not all of their books have full access for free users
- Project Gutenberg: not mentioned in my presentation, but thank you to the attendee who reminded me of this source after the presentation! Here, you can even download the books as ebooks to read on your phone or ereader!
Other resources:
- Just how rich was Mister Darcy? (includes a currency converter and information about how to research money for historical settings)
- Words I Couldn’t Use in Glamour in Glass (Mary Robinette Kowal’s approach to language for her Regency fantasy novel series)
- Google Books Ngram Viewer (to find when words came into use)
- Oxford English Dictionary Online (etymology and when words came into use)
- Winter Count (via the National Museum of the American Indian, a way in which Indigenous peoples recorded their history through illustrations tied to oral history. Special thanks to author Daphne Singingtree who mentioned this as a resource!)
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