Historical American Legal Research Guide
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Research Guides
19th Century Index ("C19 Index")
integrated access to the most important finding aids for books, periodicals, official publications, newspapers and archives. Users of C19 Index can query its 12 collections simultaneously, or can conduct more detailed research using collection specific search screens
Access Newspaper Archive
A database of over 50 million pages of newspaper articles mostly from small-town newspapers throughout the United States in the 1800s and 1900s.
America's Historical Newspapers
1690-1922 including Early American Newspapers Series 1 - 5
American Broadsides & Ephemera, Series I
American Broadsides and Ephemera, based on the American Antiquarian Society's collection, offers searchable facsimile images of broadsides printed between 1820 and 1900 and pieces of ephemera printed between 1760 and 1900.
American Periodical Series Online
contains over 1,100 periodicals that first began publishing between 1740 and 1900, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children’s and women’s magazines, and many other historically-significant periodicals.
British Periodicals
provides access to the searchable full text of hundreds of periodicals from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth, comprising millions of high-resolution facsimile page images.
Early American Imprints, Series I (Evans)
Early American Imprints, Series I (1639 - 1800) is based on the American Bibliography by Charles Evans and the Early American Imprint Series I. Upon completion, it will consist of more than 36,000 works and 2,400,000 images.
Early American Imprints, Series II (Shaw-Shoemaker)
Early American Imprints, Series II (1801-1819) provides full-text access to the 36,000 American books, pamphlets and broadsides published in the first nineteen years of the nineteenth century.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online
Fully searchable digital images of books published during the 18th Century, including history, literature, religion, law, fine arts, and science
English Short Title Catalog (Wing)
The Wing Short Title Catalog is the essential bibliographic database of extant books, pamphlets and broadsides printed in English between 1641 and 1700. The Catalog lists the title, author name, imprint and physical format as well as including bibliographic information and listings of selected libraries and institutions that hold a copy of the work.
HeinOnline
provides .pdf image and text for journals in the arts and humanities, back to the beginning of the journal (in most cases), and up to 2-3 years of current.
Index to Legal Periodicals & Books / Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective
Index to Legal Periodicals & Books is a bibliographic database that cites articles from legal periodicals and indexes law books from 1981-date. Retrospective is a bibliographic database that cumulates citations from print editions of Index to Legal Periodicals published between 1908–1981.
Making of Modern Law
Contains legal treatises published from 1800-1926, from the Nineteenth-Century Legal Treatises and Twentieth-Century Legal Treatises microfilm collections.
The Primary Sources database, based primarily on holdings of the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale University, offers online access to early state codes, city charters, constitutional conventions, law dictionaries, and colonial records.
Nineteenth Century Masterfile
19th Century Masterfile is a vast "Index of Indexes", and is the largest resource for historical research prior to 1925.
It brings together over 60 subject indexes to: Periodicals, Newspapers, Books, US Congressional Record, US and UK Government Documents, US Patents.
Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue
The NSTC Project aims to provide increasingly complete listings of British books printed between 1801 and 1919. British books are taken to include all books published in Britain, its colonies and the United States of America; all books in English wherever published; and all translations from English.
ProQuest Congressional
Legislative history research 1789-present. Full text of Congressional hearings (published and unpublished), bills and resolutions, Serial Set, reports, prints, documents, Congressional Record, legislative histories for enacted laws, Congressional Research Service reports, and regulatory materials. Subscription includes access to bill texts and tracking. Dates of coverage vary.
ProQuest Newspapers
Coverage of national, international, and local news. Find full text articles from many major U.S. newspapers - current and historical; includes Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, LA Times, NY Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. New papers added frequently, check "Searching: ## databases" for full, current list.
The Making of America
is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from antebellum through reconstruction, including books, journals, and original manuscripts.
The Making of the Modern World
The Goldsmiths'- Kress Library of Economic Literature 1450-1850 (formerly The Making of the Modern Economy) provides digital facsimile images on every page of works of literature on economic and business published in Europe and North America from 1450 through 1850.
WorldCat
WorldCat is the Online Computer Library Center's (OCLC) online "union catalog"; that is, its database of over 1 billion records of books and other materials held in more than 10,000 academic, public, special and national libraries around the world. Use WorldCat to locate materials outside of Yale, in almost any area of study, or to locate items in specific libraries and research collections. WorldCat provides catalog records for books, maps, sound recordings, musical scores, films, archives, and computer files held in research, corporate, and public libraries, as well as museums, archives and historical societies. All searches may be easily printed, downloaded or e-mailed directly to you.
NEW ! Click on the Yale links icon and then on the link for submitting an Interlibrary Loan request to obtain items that Yale does not own.
Yale subscribes to a paid version of WorldCat, click of 'Access database.''
Archive Finder
Archive Finder is a current directory which describes over 206,200 collections of primary source material housed in thousands of repositories across the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Archive Grid
Locate relevant research institutions, arrange visits, or request copies from libraries, museums, and archives worldwide.
Century of lawmaking
From the Library of Congress; page images of material related to the Constitutional Convention (Journals of the Continental Congress, Letters of Delegates to Congress, Elliot's Debates, and Farrand's Records) and Congressional material to 1875.
ORBIS
Yale University Catalog contains bibliographic records of books and other materials available through the Yale University libraries. Search by title, keyword, or subject heading.
Search MORRIS by Keyword
Yale Law School's Catalog contains bibliographic records of books, databases, and other materials available through the law library.
--For law-related reports/studies
WorldCat
WorldCat is the Online Computer Library Center's (OCLC) online "union catalog"; that is, its database of over 1 billion records of books and other materials held in more than 10,000 academic, public, special and national libraries around the world. Use WorldCat to locate materials outside of Yale, in almost any area of study, or to locate items in specific libraries and research collections. WorldCat provides catalog records for books, maps, sound recordings, musical scores, films, archives, and computer files held in research, corporate, and public libraries, as well as museums, archives and historical societies. All searches may be easily printed, downloaded or e-mailed directly to you.
NEW ! Click on the Yale links icon and then on the link for submitting an Interlibrary Loan request to obtain items that Yale does not own.
Yale subscribes to a paid version of WorldCat, click of 'Access database.''
