Women's and Gender Studies

The Illinois Newspaper Project (INP) is an initiative of the History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library (HPNL), and the Department of Preservation Services at the University of Illinois Library. As of 2023, the Peoria Journal Star is not included in this project.

Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1777-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.

Women's Knowledge Digital Library (WKDL) is an open access portal of information by and about women and girls. The goal of the project is to provide users with trusted information that is easily and efficiently accessible and that which can be used in the education and empowerment of women and girls worldwide. Our focus is to amplify women's voices and include resources that women can learn from and adapt to suit the work being done within their own communities.

A United Nations site providing information and resources on Gender Equality and Empowerment of women.

The purpose of the Digital Transgender Archive (DTA) is to increase the accessibility of transgender history by providing an online hub for digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world. Based in Worcester, Massachusetts at the College of the Holy Cross, the DTA is an international collaboration among more than fifty colleges, universities, nonprofit organizations, public libraries, and private collections. By digitally localizing a wide range of trans-related materials, the DTA expands access to trans history for academics and independent researchers alike in order to foster education and dialog concerning trans history.

This webpage contains links to fact sheets and articles about women's health issues with a global perspective in mind. The page notes several broad sociocultural factors that may influence how and if women and girls are able to access adequate health services. Some of the sociocultural factors that prevent women and girls benefiting from quality health services and attaining the best possible level of health include the following: Unequal power relationships between men and women; social norms that decrease education and paid employment opportunities; an exclusive focus on women’s reproductive roles; and potential or actual experience of physical, sexual and emotional violence.

This collection contains manifestos, speeches, essays, and other materials documenting various aspects of the Women's Movement in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.

This database provides access to digital collections of primary sources (photos, letters, diaries, artifacts, etc.) that document the history of women in the United States.

Fordham University offers a collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts presented cleanly (without advertising or excessive layout) for educational use.

This site contains a decreasing number collections. The LOC has migrated most of its American Memory collections to new presentations. For a full list of all digitized collections at the Library of Congress, please go to https://www.loc.gov/collections/

The Digital Library contains over 5,000 scanned books along with photo collections, videos, scholarly bibliographies, virtual exhibitions, and searchable databases of resources related to art, history, science, technology and library and museum collections or exhibitions.

The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library. Founded in 1996 and located in San Francisco, the Archive has been receiving data donations from Alexa Internet and others. In late 1999, the organization started to grow to include more well-rounded collections. Now the Internet Archive includes: texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in our collections. Also home of the WayBackMachine.

Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy: A well-edited, high-quality collection of full-text primary source documents particularly rich in legal and diplomatic history and human rights. Organized by period and topic and searchable by keyword, documents include internal links to materials referenced in the text.

A digital archive of books and journals from the antebellum period through Reconstruction. It is extremely useful for the study of American social history, with strengths in education, science and technology, psychology, and sociology. A work in progress, it already includes the full text of over 10,000 books and 50,000 journal articles published in the nineteenth century.

The Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series presents the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity. Search within the volumes, or browse volume titles by administration:

A repository of proclamations, speeches, statements, photographs, and other presidential papers. Documents from the George H. W. Bush administration and later are currently available online. For more information about this collection, see the National Archives following this link: https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/publications/presidential-papers.html

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has some GREAT online bibliographies and finding aids. Start at this link to access their home page on WGS and LGBTQIA+ Research Sources. Go Badgers!