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Major History-oriented Sites on the WWW

As helpful as a locally-based History web page may be, it cannot hope to encompass the full extent and burgeoning volume of historical resources available on the Internet. For this reason, it is important to highlight several of the most significant and nearly comprehensive Web sites. Some are already slightlty out of date, but the best are up-to-date, very extensive, and searchable by the browser.
  1. General
  2. The Major History Sites
  3. Searchable Indexes

  1. General

    1. The World-Wide Web Virtual Library: Subject Catalogue - Much more than just history, but many areas might be of interest to historians. The specifically history section is HNSource, at UKans (see below)

  2. The Major History Sites

    1. HNSource - [UKansas]. "The server of the History Network." This is essentially a massive index that can be browsed or searched in various ways [era, region, subject]; it is extensive, but the presence or relevance of many of the entries is questionable
    2. WWW services for Historians - [AHC - data]. This is especially good for worldwide data archives and for European resources
    3. The Historical Text Archive - [Mississippi State]. "The oldest File Transfer Protocol site for historians, the Historical Text Archive is supported by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Computing Center of Mississippi State University. The archive contains a variety of resources of interest to historians. New files are added as they become available; we encourage people to contribute materials. Links to other sites are also available."
    4. Institute of Historical Research - [London]. Most notable for the Victoria County History project information [actual data is not available online], and as the main index and point of entry to resources in London and throughout the UK
    5. The History Computerization Project of the Regional History Center of the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles City Historical Society, in cooperation with the Conference of California Historical Societies, is building a history information network for the exchange of information between historians, libraries, archives, museums, preservation groups, and historical societies. The project has created a database representing thousands of historical organizations, repositories, and universities.
    6. History Resources - [Rice gopher]

  3. Searchable Indexes

    1. Index to History Resources from the University of Kansas Web Server - search engine of HNSource
    2. Alex: A Catalogue of Electronic Texts on the Internet - [searchable]. Alex allows users to find and retrieve the full-text of documents on the Internet. It currently indexes over 700 books and shorter texts by author and title, incorporating texts from Project Gutenberg, Wiretap, the On-line Book Initiative, the Eris system at Virginia Tech, the English Server at Carnegie Mellon University, and the on-line portion of the Oxford Text Archive. For now it includes no serials. Alex does include an entry for itself. New publications at the sites above will be detected automatically. However, pointers to other sites, specific suggestions for additions to the catalogue, and notifications of errors are welcome, particularly those with full bibliographic information and URLs.
    3. History Online Indexes - [Yahoo]. Includes some of the ones listed above.

    Geoff Wichert
    Department of History
    (416) 978-3363
    gwichert@epas.utoronto.ca
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