Lib & Info Science > Digital Libraries

Table of Contents See Also Electronic Libraries & Digital Archives Library & Info Science Digital Library Methods & Research Government Documents Libraries & Library Catalogs Internet Studies

Subject Specific Digital Libraries:

The listing below contains either multi-disciplinary online collections or very large specialized digital libraries.

Electronic Libraries & Digital Archives

AIM25 - Archives in London and the M25 Area
"AIM25 is a major project to provide electronic access to collection level descriptions of the archives of over fifty higher education institutions and learned societies within the greater London area."

American Heritage Virtual Archive Project
A Prototype "Virtual Archive" of Encoded Finding Aids
"will investigate one of the most serious problems facing knowledge seekers everywhere, the geographic distribution of both collections of primary source material and the written guides describing and providing access to them. We propose to solve this problem by creating a prototype 'virtual archive', integrating into a single source, hundreds of archival finding aids describing and providing access to a large body of primary source materials from collections documenting American culture and history held by four major academic research libraries [Duke University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Virginia]. The project will demonstrate the feasibility of providing both scholars and average American citizens with user-friendly, universal Internet access to the research collections of the world."

Astrophysics Data System (ADS)
 "The Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is a NASA-funded project which maintains three bibliographic databases containing more than 4.8 million records: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Physics, and ArXiv e-prints."

[Australia] Australian Research Repositories Online to the World (ARROW)
"...project will identify and test software or solutions to support best practice institutional digital repositories comprising e-prints, electronic theses, e-research and electronic publishing."

Bartleby.com
A collection of Reference, Verse, Fiction, and Nonfiction works online.

The European Library - (dead link)
"The European Library is for searching the content of European national libraries."

Bloomsbury Research Centre
"The Bloomsbury Research centre is a FREE on-line database of reference books. Over 17,000 entries are cross-referenced providing a wealth of information all linked and all fully indexed. Use our search engine to search on a wide range of subjects including literature, art, myth, human thought, quotations and a thesaurus or browse through each book at your leisure."

BOPCRIS
British Official Publications Collaborative Reader Information Service
"You can use this web site to search and browse information from British Official Publications over the period 1688-1995."

The British Library

  • Collect Britain
    "Putting History in place: over 90,000 images and sounds from the UK and beyond."

Brown University Library - Center for Digital Initiatives

California Digital Library
A Co-Library of the campuses of the University of California

  • eScholarship
    "The eScholarship Editions collection includes the full text of more than 1,400 books from academic presses on a range of topics, including art, science, history, music, religion, and fiction...Access to the electronic books is free for all University of California faculty, staff, and students, while select books are available for free to the public."
  • The Online Archive of California (OAC)
     "...a digital information resource that facilitates and provides access to materials such as manuscripts, photographs, and works of art held in libraries, museums, archives, and other institutions across California. The OAC includes digitized version of many of these materials as well as archival "finding aids," or collection inventories that help students and scholars to identify and relevant primary source materials."

Canada's Digital Collection

Carnegie Mellon University - Informedia Digital Video Library
"...building a multimedia library that will consist of over one thousand hours of digital video, audio, images, text and other related materials."

DAREnet - Digital Academic Repositories (English or Nederlands)
"...is a search service which gives free access to academic research output in the Netherlands. This is a broad collection which guarantees digital accessibility to the full text without any restrictions. DAREnet consists of 82210 digital objects...All Dutch universities, the National Library of the Netherlands, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) participate."

deff.dk
Denmark's Electronic Research Library.

DBNL (Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren) (Dutch)
"The Digital Library of Dutch Literature is a collection of primary and secondary information on Dutch language and literature in its historical, societal and cultural context."

Digital Library Federation (DLF)
"The site offers you information about developing digital collections and managing networked information for the benefit of scholarship, education, and cultural progress ... The Digital Library Federation (DLF) is a consortium of libraries and related agencies that are pioneering in the use of electronic-information technologies to extend their collections and services."

Digital Library of Georgia
"...is a gateway to Georgia's history and culture found in digitized books, manuscripts, photographs, newspapers, audio, video, and other materials."

Digital South Asia Library
Sections of this important international effort include: Reference Resources ; Bibliographies and Union Lists ; Images ; Indexes ; Maps ; Books and Journals ; Statistics ; Other Internet Resources.

DigitalBookIndex
"Digital Book Index provides access to more than 74,000 titles records. It is the sole index that gathers both commercial and non-commercial eBooks from more than 1800 publishers and private publishing organizations."

DISA - Digital Imaging Project of South Africa
"The aim of DISA is to make Southern African material of high socio ñ political interest, which would otherwise be difficult to locate and use, accessible to scholars and researchers worldwide.  DISA will undertake digital imaging projects in Southern Africa, which will result in this important historical material becoming universally accessible, while at the same time developing knowledge and expertise in digital imaging technology in the library and archival community in the region."

Ejournals
Health science Ejournal information from the National Library of Medicine

Electronic Literature Directory
"A descriptive guide to 2353 works, 1196 authors, and 193 publishers."

The EServer
Accessible Online E-Publishing
"The EServer (founded in 1990 as the English Server) attempts to provide an alternative niche for quality work. We offer 42 collections on such diverse topics as contemporary art, race, 18th century literary criticism, internet studies, sexuality, drama, design, gender studies and current political and social issues. In addition to written works, we publish hypertext, audio and even video recordings."

FinDArticles.com
"FindArticles gives you free access to millions of articles from thousands of top publications."

FreeFullText.com - (dead link)
"...provides direct links to over 7000 scholarly periodicals which allow some or all of their online content to be viewed by ANYONE with Internet access for free (though some may require free registration)."

getCITED
"over 3,2500,000 publications and 315 identities already on file..."
"...is a site that exists to facilitate the dissemination and discussion of academic research. It has numerous features, but at its core, it consists of two things: a database and a discussion forum. What makes getCITED's database truly unique is that it lets scholars and researchers decide what its content should be. What makes its discussion forum truly unique is the fact that, within the comments posted, you can create LINKS to PUBLICATIONS and IDENTITIES within the getCITED database."

GPO Access
Superintendent of Documents Home Page
"GPO Access is a service of the U.S. Government Printing Office that provides free electronic access to a wealth of important information products produced by the Federal Government. The information provided on this site is the official, published version..."

GrayLIT Network
Full-Text Scientific Report Literature
"The GrayLIT Network makes the gray literature of U.S. Federal Agencies easily accessible over the Internet. It taps into the search engines of distributed gray literature collections, enabling the user to find information without first having to know the sponsoring agency...The GrayLIT Network is the world's most comprehensive portal to Federal gray literature."

The Great Books
"From the ancient classics to the masterpieces of the 20th century, the Great Books are all the introduction youíll ever need to the ideas, stories, and discoveries that have shaped modern civilization."
- The Access Foundation

The Harvard Classics and Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction
Selected by Charles W. Eliot, LLD., 1909-1917.
"The most comprehensive and well-researched anthology of all time comprises both the 50-volume '5-foot shelf of books' and the the 20-volume Shelf of Fiction. Together they cover every major literary figure, philosopher, religion, folklore and historical subject through the twentieth century."
Published by Bartleby.com, 2001.

HighWire Press
"A division of the Stanford University Libraries, HighWire Press hosts the largest repository of free, full-text, peer-reviewed content, with 966 journals and 1,395,813 free, full-text articles online. With our partner publishers we produce 71 of the 200 most-frequently-cited journals."

ibiblio - the public's library and digital archive
(formerly sunsite.unc.edu)
A collaboration of the Center for the Public Domain and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Indiana University Digital Library Program

Internet Archive
"...was founded to build an ëInternet library,í with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format."
Includes sites from October 1996 to now and contains about 4 billion pages!

Internet Public Library
Hosted by the University of Michigan's School of Information the IPL serves as both a training ground for librarians and students to learn about and use digital resources as well as functioning as a traditional public library in the dissemination of information to a diverse community.

Kentucky Virtual Library (KYVL)
"...is a digital library of primary sources and access aids selected by Kentucky archivists representing 15 Kentucky colleges, universities, libraries and historical society repositories. The Kentuckiana Digital Library collection currently comprises archival collection finding aids, electronic texts, digital photographs, and digital audio files."

Library and Archival Exhibitions on the Web
"This site features links to online exhibitions that have been created by libraries, archives, and historical societies, as well as to museum online exhibitions with a significant focus on library and archival materials."
- A Project of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries

Library of Congress (LC)
U.S. National Library
For additional LC resources see our Library Cataloging Resources page and Library Catalogs and Libraries page.

  • American Memory
    "Documents, photographs, movies, and sound recordings that tell America's story." Highlights include the George Washington Papers, Spanish-American War in Motion Pictures, Civil War Photographs and much more.
  • Library of Congress - Global Gateway
    World Cultures & Resources
    Sections include: World Libraries & Collections: Collaborative Digital Libraries, Individual Digital Collections ; Links, Databases, & Resources: Centers for International Research, Portals to the World, Research Guides and Databases, Featured Presentations, International Exhibitions, International Cybercasts.
  • MINERVA
    Mapping the INternet Electronic Resources Virtual Archive
    "An ever-increasing amount of the worldís cultural and intellectual output is presently created in digital formats and does not exist in any physical form. Such materials are colloquially described as "born digital." This born digital realm includes open access materials on the World Wide Web...The MINERVA Web Preservation Project was established to initiate a broad program to collect and preserve these primary source materials."
  • Virtual Programs & Services
    Library of Congress Digital Reference Team

The Library of Virginia Digital Library Program (DLP)
"...the Program has digitized more than 2.2 million original documents, photographs, and maps, and produced more than 80 fully-searchable databases, indexes, and electronic finding aids."
The Library of Virginia

LSU Digital Library
Collections include: Art and Architecture ; History ; Geography ; Psychology
- Louisiana State University

Making of America Journals - (dead link)
"...is a digital library of primary sources in American social history primarily from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The book collection currently contains approximately 8,500 books with 19th century imprints."

McGill University Libraries (Canada) - Digital Collections Program (DCP)
"...has been created to digitally capture and provide electronic access to McGill University's unique rare and special collections via the World Wide Web using advanced digital technologies. These collections include, rare books, maps, manuscripts, prints, photographs, sound recordings, and more."

Michigan eLibrary
"...is an anywhere, anytime information gateway to hundreds of full-text magazines and newspapers and more than 10,000 electronic books."
Some resources restricted to Michigan residents."

Michigan State University Libraries - Digital Collections
Major collections include: Africana ; American Radicalism ; Applied and Life Sciences ; History & Social Sciences ; Interviews with Michigan Supreme Court Justices ; Orchids ; Osteopathy ; Sunday School Books ; Veterinary Medicine.

National Library of Australia

  • Pandora Archive
    Preserving and Accessing Networked Documentary Resources of Australia
    "...selected Australian online publications such as electronic journals, organisational sites, government publications and ephemera."
    National Library of Australia and Partners

National Library of Canada - Digital Library of Canada

Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD)

New York Public Library Digital Collection
Includes the Digital Schomerg collections of Images of African Americans from the 19th Century, and African American Women Writers of the 19th Century. The site also contains a very diverse collection of Online Exhibits detailing the social history of New York and the United States.

New Zealand Digital Library
"Our web site provides several document collections, including historical documents, humanitarian and development information, computer science technical reports and bibliographies, literary works, and magazines."
- The University of Waikato

The Online Books Page
"Listing over 25,000 free books on the Web."
Edited by John Mark Ockerbloom, University of Pennsylvania

OnlineNewspapers.com
 A directory of around 10,000 newspapers available online.

The Open Video Project (OV)
"The purpose of the Open Video Project is to collect and make available a repository of digitized video content for the digital video, multimedia retrieval, digital library, and other research communities."
Genres include: Documentary ; Educational ; Ephemeral ; Historical ; Lecture ; Other.

Oxford Text Collection
"The Oxford Text Archive holds several thousand electronic texts and linguistic corpora, in a variety of languages. Its holdings include electronic editions of works by individual authors, standard reference works such as the Bible and mono-/bilingual dictionaries, and a range of language corpora. The Oxford Text Archive does not produce digital resources, and we rely upon deposits from the wider community as the primary source of high-quality materials."

Perseus Project, The - (dead link)
An Evolving Digital Library
"Perseus is a continually growing digital library of resources for studying the ancient world. The library's materials include ancient texts and translations, philological tools, maps, extensively illustrated art catalogs, and secondary essays on topics like vase painting. A collaborative team from a number of academic institutions has worked together to amass Perseus materials. Over 70 museums have shared pictures of their art objects."
- Tufts University

PLoS - Public Library of Science
"is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a public resource."

Russian Archives Online
"...is an online collection of Russian and Soviet-related archives and other sources of film footage, photographs, illustrations, and audio, along with supporting documents and text."

Scholarly Journals Distributed Via the World Wide Web - (dead link)
"This directory provides links to established Web-based scholarly journals that offer access to English language article files without requiring user registration or fees."
- University of Houston Libraries

SciILO - Scientific Electronic Library Online
"...Online is a model for cooperative electronic publishing of scientific journals on the Internet. Especially conceived to meet the scientific communication needs of developing countries, particularly Latin America and the Caribbean countries, it provides an efficient way to assure universal visibility and accessibility to their scientific literature, contributing to overcome the phenomena known as "lost science". In addition, the SciELO model comprises integrated procedures for the measurement of usage and impact of scientific journals."

[Scotland] National Library of Scotland - Digital Library

Smithsonian Online Collections
 "Over the past few years the Smithsonian has been digitizing its catalogues and has been appending images to these records. The On-Line Collections site is the portal through which these collections will ultimately be accessed. You will be able to use the portal site to search for topics or collections across the museums, allowing the user to locate and browse the Smithsonianís treasures."

Stanford Database Group Publication Server
"Here you can find fulltexts and bibliographic data of a number of electronic publications of the Stanford InfoLab.  Currently there are 796 publications available."

UC Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE
Especially strong in California history and literature but contains the Medieval and Classical Library as well as the American Heritage Project

UK Data Archive
"...is a specialist national resource containing the largest collection of accessible computer readable data in the social sciences and humanities in the United Kingdom. Through these web pages it is also possible to search the catalogues of other national archives for computer readable data and to use the services of the Data Archive to acquire these data on your behalf."
Registration (free) is required.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

  • UNESCO Archives Portal
    An International Gateway to Information for Archivists and Archive Users
    "gives access to websites of archival institutions around the world. It is also a gateway to resources related to records and archives management and to international co-operation in this area."
  • UNESCO Social and Human Sciences Documentation Centre
    • Social Science Online Periodicals (full-text) - (dead link)
      Specialized Articles from around 700 Periodicals in Social Sciences

UC Berkeley Digital Library Project
"The project's goal is to develop the technologies for intelligent access to massive, distributed collections of photographs, satellite images, maps, full text documents, and "multivalent" documents."
Includes a collection of Environmental Documents.

University of California Press - eScholarship Editions
 "The eScholarship Editions collection includes almost 2000 books [about 500 available to the public] from academic presses on a range of topics, including art, science, history, music, religion, and fiction."

University of Michigan Digital Library

  • OAIster - (dead link)
    "...is a Mellon-funded project of the University of Michigan Digital Library Production Services. Our goal is to create a wide-ranging collection of free, useful, previously difficult-to-access digital resources that are easily searchable by anyone."

University of Sydney Library - Scholarly Electronic Text and Image Service (SETIS)
"...provides access to a large number of networked and in-house full text databases, primarily but not exclusively, source texts within the humanities. In addition to these literary, philosophical and religious texts the service is engaged in a number of text and image creation projects."
Some databases restricted

University of Utah - Marriot Library Digitized Collection - (dead link)

University of Virginia - Electronic Text Center

University of Washington Digital Collections

University of Wisconsin Digital Collections

Utah State University Special Collections & Archives - Digital Exhibits

Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries - Online Exhibits

Washington State Digital Collections
Listing of digital collections from libraries and museums around the state.

Washington State University - Digital Collections


 




 


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