Archival Research in Digital Collections: Where to find those resources online!

Hathi Trust Digital Library search interface

Over the years I have done a bit of research on the tribes in Oregon. My career in research has crossed from non-digital to nearly full digital for many projects. There is now perhaps 50% of the original manuscripts I use on a daily basis online and available for viewing or digital download. Many more are being enabled as I write. Digital is the future but still cannot replace good archival research skills. Here I am posting annotated online research links. Please notify me if any go out of date. thank you

Online Digital Libraries

Berkeley, California Sunsite – http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/, Vast collections online, but confusing groups of cooperative sites, sometimes difficult to navigate.

David Rumsey Historical Map Collection- https://www.davidrumsey.com/, very many early Oregon Maps

Google Books- http://books.google.com/, excellent site, many books older than 1920 fully downloadable, includes magazines, and congressional publications, best research site on the internet

Google Scholar- http://scholar.google.com/, good for finding journal article references.

Hathi Trust Digital Library- http://www.hathitrust.org/, viewable only, but they have much not available on Google books in full view.

Internet Archive- https://archive.org/index.php, Second to Google books, they have materials not in other sites, including audio, video and other media.

Kappler’s Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties – http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/, the site for accessing treaties, good for navigation.

Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs; University if Wisconsin Digital Collections, http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/History/History-idx?type=browse&scope=HISTORY.COMMREP , all the hard to find reports are here.

Montana Memory Project- http://mtmemory.org/, newly found site, they have digital viewable federal microfilms, see my other article on the M234 series.

National Anthropological Archives- http://www.anthropology.si.edu/naa/search.html, Again great searchable site, access to some digital downloadable content.

National Archives Experience – Digital Vaults – http://www.digitalvaults.org/#, searchable, good site

Northern Arizona University Digital Collections – http://archive.library.nau.edu/cdm/search/collection/cpa, unexplored by myself, but they have a number of special collections that are fully searchable.

Northwest Digital Archives – http://nwda.orbiscascade.org/index.shtml, searching finding aids for collections in the region.

Northwestern University Library Digitized Collections- http://digital.library.northwestern.edu/, good digital collections, Edward Curtis books are fully viewable, somewhat difficult navigation

Orbis Cascade Alliance, Summit- http://www.orbiscascade.org/, search the regional libraries

Oregon Digital Collections- http://oregondigital.org/digcol/, The collaboration between UO and OSU to digitize their collections.

Oregon Digital Newspaper Program- http://odnp.wordpress.com/, Great site with access to Oregon newspapers from 1840s to 1920s. Some newspapers do not have all of their runs digitized yet, and adding newspapers all the time.

Oregon Historical Society- http://www.ohs.org/, some searchability, this is useful for you to pre-research, print the results and take those to the archives to view the files.

Oregon State Library- http://www.oregon.gov/OSL/, the state of Oregon library with good search interface.

Oregon State University Library- http://osulibrary.orst.edu/, the main site

Oregon State University Digital Collections- https://digital.osl.state.or.us/

OSU Special Collections- http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/, good for images and photos

Oregon Digital Library- http://odl.library.oregonstate.edu/record/search, images

The Plateau Peoples Web Portal- http://mukurtu.org/project/the-plateau-peoples-web-portal/

Proquest- Dissertation Express- http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/disexpress.shtml, simple search interface, but you have to know already what you are looking for

Southern Oregon Digital Archives- http://soda.sou.edu/, Great site many documents not available elsewhere. Click on First Nations link.

University of British Columbia, Open Library, https://open.library.ubc.ca/

University of Oregon Library- http://libweb.uoregon.edu/, main library site

University of Washington Library, Digital Collections- http://content.lib.washington.edu/, good digital collections, some related to Oregon.

The University of Wisconsin- Madison’s Digital Collections- https://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/, all of the Indian Affairs reports, Search Indian Affairs

UO Scholar’s Bank- https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/, some materials related to Oregon tribes, Recent large number of Paiute research thesis.

UO Special Collections and University Archives- http://libweb.uoregon.edu/speccoll/, limited downloadable content, good for finding aids

Willamette University http://libmedia.willamette.edu/commons/archives, a growing collection of historical documents, good interface, and searchability

Worldcat – http://www.worldcat.org/, best library search site on the planet

Yale University, Beinecke Digital Collections- http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/tags/digital-collections, Lewis and Clark map images

Federal

National Archives Records Administration (NARA)- http://www.archives.gov/, Perhaps the largest repository in the world.

Smithsonian Institution- http://www.si.edu/, Lots of museums and sites.

National Museum of the American Indian- http://www.nmai.si.edu/, some good resources, very little digital.

National Anthropological Archives- http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/, a great searchable finding aid, adding digitized documents, and requesting volunteers to help with transcription.

Library of Congress – http://thomas.loc.gov/home/thomas.php, scattered selection of information that is searchable, little but photos for the northwest.

The Library of Congress- American Memory- http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html, Searchable for documents and photos.

Lewis and Clark Trail – http://www.lewisandclarktrail.com/index.html, Some good historic information, images from the journals and journal pages.

Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail- http://www.nps.gov/lecl/index.htm, some good information, resources and images of documents.

Oregon State

Oregon State Archives – http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/pages/records/index.html, very good digital collections.

Oregon State Library- http://www.oregon.gov/OSL/, the main library site

Oregon Museums Association – http://www.oregonmuseums.org/index.asp, jobs and events

Washington State Historical Society – http://www.washingtonhistory.org/, some good historical information access to digital collections.

Oregon History Project- http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/, developing a good digitized database.

Oregon Encyclopedia- http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/, peer reviewed essays, anyone can write for the encyclopedia

County and Cities

Benton County Museum – http://www.bentoncountymuseum.org/index.cfm

Burke Museum – http://www.burkemuseum.org/, good images of artifacts

Clackamas County Historical Society- http://clackamascountyhistoricalsociety.art.officelive.com/default.aspx

Libraries in Clackamas County- http://www.lincc.org/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/NT/x/1/517/X/BLASTOFF

Douglas County Historical Society- http://omahahistory.org/, the archival collections are vastly unexplored.

Portland Art Museum – http://www.portlandartmuseum.org/, good digitized and searchable images.

Oregon Coast History Center – http://www.oregoncoast.history.museum/, some reservation images.

Tillamook County Pioneer Museum – http://www.tcpm.org/, good unique collections in their archives.

Willamette Heritage Center- http://www.willametteheritage.org/LaRC/research_library.html, nothing online yet besides history journals, vastly unexplored archival collections.

Washington County Museum- http://www.washingtoncountymuseum.org/, museum exhibits, unexplored archival collections

Yamhill County Historical society and Museum- http://yamhillcountyhistory.org/

Salem Public Library- http://www.cityofsalem.net/departments/library/pages/home.aspx, main library site, very little archives, reportedly getting a genealogy collection

Oregon Historic Photograph Collection (Salem Library)- http://photos.salemhistory.net/cdm/, great images of agricultural work and logging in Willamette Valley

Chemeketa Cooperative Regional Library Service- http://catalog.ccrls.org/, main search site