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MPS Betsy and Bill Vorsheck Library/Research Center: Scholarly (and free!) Websites

NEWS, CURRENT EVENTS, AND GLOBAL INFORMATION

NEWSELA

Newsela provides students with over 1,000 current event articles. 

CIA WORLD FACTBOOK

"The Factbook provides information on the history, people, government, economy, energy, georgraphy, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities." - from CIA World Factbook

GOOGLE SCHOLAR

Online, freely accessible search engine that lets users look for both physical and digital copies of articles. It searches a wide variety of sources, including academic publishers, universities, and other depositories.

UNITED NATIONS NEWS

"A one-stop guide to UN issues in the news, with easy access to statements, resolution, and other essential resources" (UN).

THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE

Wonderful place to find primary sources and analysis pertaining to espionage, the Cold War, and declassified information about the U.S. security apparatus. Per the website: "Founded in 1985 by journalists and scholars to check rising government secrecy, the National Security Archive combines a unique range of functions: investigative journalism center, research institute on international affairs, library and archive of declassified U.S. documents ("the world's largest nongovernmental collection" according to the Los Angeles Times), leading non-profit user of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, public interest law firm defending and expanding public access to government information, global advocate of open government, and indexer and publisher of former secrets."

 

HEALTH AND SCIENCE RESOURCES

Medline Plus

Produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, this site offers users the ability to search diseases, conditions and health topics. The information is accurate and up to date.

The Mayo Clinic

This is the official site of the Mayo Clinic, one of the premiere hospitals in the United States. Browse by disease or search conditions, symptoms, tests and health topics.  

PSYCHOLOGY RESOURCES

The American Psychological Association

The leading psychological association in the United States offers much material. Just use the search engine or search the "Psychology Topics."

Google Scholar

Thousands of open source articles pertaining to any subject.

Psych Central

Psychology Online Resource Central, a comprehensive index of links to online psychology resources

Remember...

JSTOR has 43 psychology journals too. That is located in our "Electronic Databases A-Z" section!

Consumer Health Complete, also located under EbscoHost in our Electronic database section, provides content covering all key areas of health and wellness, from mainstream medicine to the many perspectives of complementary, holistic and integrated medicine.

OTHER LIBRARY CATALOGS

FREE ACADEMIC DATABASES

JURN

Free academic articles pertaining to the arts, humanities, social sciences, nature, law, and medicine

PRIMARY SOURCES

American Memory - This is a primary-source repository hosted by the Library of Congress. It has over 70 collections of documents, photographs, recorded sound, and images from United States history.  The Primary Source Sets and Collection Connections offers even more resources.

American Studies Web: Historical and Archival Resources An extensive list of links to historical studies, archival resources and general history resources in the field of American history.

The Avalon Project - A Yale University website that offers an enormous collection of primary sources related to law, diplomacy, and history.  This site represents over 6,000 years worth of information pertaining to politics, law, diplomacy, warfare, religious doctrine, decrees, and official government documents.

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers ​ - A collection of American newspapers from 1690 - present. 

History Matters - Hundreds of first-person testimonials dating throughout American history as well as thousands of other primary sources. Also links to articles and essays on the web regarding a variety of historical topics related to the U.S.

The Internet Modern History Sourcebook - Hosted by Fordham University, features thousands of primary sources related to the medieval period all the way to the 20th century.  One of the premiere primary source repositories on the web.

The Labyrinth - A collection of medieval resources includes an electronic library of poetry and prose in medieval languages, on-line bibliographies, professional directories and news about medieval studies, links to related teaching resources, and information on medieval cultures.

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) - Database that showcases digitized archives of important U.S. government materials, including documents, photographs, images, maps, audio clips, letters, speeches, and films.

The New Deal Network - ​A History site that contains hundreds of primary sources related to the Depression era and the New Deal, including letters, photographs, posters, political cartoons, government documents, speeches, and more.  You can also find background information on New Deal programs.

The Perseus Project - A collection of online resources for focusing on the ancient world. Materials include ancient texts and translations, maps, articles, essays, and images from over 70 museums around the world.

Project Gutenberg - ​"Offers over 54,000 free eBooks: Choose among free epub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online. You will find the world's great literature here, especially older works for which copyright has expired. We digitized and diligently proofread them with the help of thousands of volunteers."

FREE HISTORY WEBSITES

Making of America

"Making of America (MOA) 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."

Digital Irish Famine Archive

"Arguably the worst famine to occur in 19th-century Europe, the Irish Famine was also known as the Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1849. The Archive is simple and easy to navigate. Its holdings have been divided into four sections, each containing the aforementioned accounts. Each section contains downloadable PDFs and summaries accompanied by images related to the tragedy. Overall, the Archive will be an excellent resource for high school and college students in need of primary and secondary sources about the efforts made to help the Famine's emigrants to Canada" (ALA).

Free People of Color in Louisiana 

"Free People of Color in Louisiana is an NEH funded project that brings together disparate archival collections of personal and family papers, documenting the lives of people of African descent who were either born free or who escaped from slavery and lived freely in the United States, prior to 1865. The site is designed to facilitate easy access to the original catalog records and finding aids for the collections from their source libraries and archives, while presenting the digitized documents together on one searchable platform. The project represents an ambitious collaboration among its contributing institutions and will be of remarkable value to legal, cultural, social, and political historians and scholars of the U.S. and of the Atlantic World more broadly" (ALA).

The War of 1812

Hosted by Indiana University at Bloomington, this comprehensive website provides much information on the War of 1812. Broken into three convenience sections ("Before the War," "The War," and "After the War,") it offers primary research materials as well as scholarly interpretations and evaluations.

OTHER SOURCES

NATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFERENCE SERVICE

Free digital database on topics ranging from crime, crime prevention and information on illegal narcotics. Funded by the Department of Justice. 

NEWS FROM OTHER COUNTRIES' PERSPECTIVES

WORLD PRESS REVIEW

Summaries of views from outside the United States.

NEWS PAPER INDEX

Site links to newspapers around the world and indicates which are written in English.

ABYZ NEWSPAPERS AND NEWS MEDIA