eDesiderata®

Informed Investment in Electronic Resources

Please log in or sign up to access all resource details and interactive features

Resources: CRL Reviews

CRL gathers and provides information here about commercial and open access digital resources of interest to the CRL community.  This information is intended to inform library decisions on investment in electronic resources and related services.

+ Suggest New Resource

Active Filters:
Reviewed by CRL
Correspondence
Arts and Humanities
Expired Offer

East India Company

East India Company is a digital collection of the official records of the East India Company (1595-1858) and the India Office (1858-1947) held at the British Library. Adam Matthew is digitizing the IOR archive over the next five years in conjunction with the British Library, . 

This collection will include the charters and minute books of the East India Company and the minute books of the post-1858 governing agency, the Council of India. 

The  modules are as follows:

Module I: Trade, Governance and Empire, 1600-1947 Modules II and III: Factory Records for South Asia, South-East Asia, China, Japan and the...
Provider: Adam Matthew Digital
Updated: Jun 25, 2019 10:41am

North American Indian Thought and Culture

North American Indian Thought and Culture provides access to autobiographies, biographies, Indian publications, oral histories, personal writings, photographs, drawings, and audio files that were previously unpublished. It includes fifty-four volumes from the 18th and 19th centuries with works by Cadwallader Colden, William Apes, Samuel G. Drake, and Benjamin Drake, as well as autobiographies by Black Hawk, Okah Tubbee, Kah-Ga-Gah-Bowh, and many others. Nations covered in depth, include the Eskimos and Inuit of the Arctic; the sub-Arctic Cree; the Pacific Coastal Salish; the Ojibwa, Cheyenne, and Sioux of the Plains; the Luiseno, Pomo, and Miwok of California; the Apache, Navajo, and...

Provider: Alexander Street Press
Updated: Aug 24, 2016 10:08am

North American Women's Letters and Diaries

North American Women's Letters and Diaries is a collection of approximately 150,000 pages of letters and diaries from Colonial times to 1950, including 7,000 pages of previously unpublished manuscripts—all in electronic format for the first time. The material is drawn from more than 1,000 sources, including journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings, and much of it is in copyright. Represented are all age groups and life stages, a wide range of ethnicities, many geographical regions, the famous, and the not so famous. More than 1,500 biographies enhance the use of the database.

Provider: Alexander Street Press
Updated: Aug 24, 2016 10:08am

Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment

Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment documents the relationships among peoples in North America from 1534 to 1850. The collection focuses on personal accounts and provides perspectives from all of the protagonists, including traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials, both men and women. This collection provides a wide range of published and unpublished accounts, including narratives, diaries, journals, and letters.

Provider: Alexander Street Press
Updated: Aug 24, 2016 10:16am

British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries

British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries includes over 100,000 pages of material assembled from numerous bibliographies and from newly conducted research. Alongside the published material are 4,000 facsimile pages of previously unpublished manuscripts.  British and Irish Women’s Letters and Diaries spans more than 400 years of personal writings, bringing together the voices of women from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales.

Provider: Alexander Street Press
Updated: Aug 24, 2016 10:15am

The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries

The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries contains more than 400 sources of diaries, letters, and memoirs, to provide access to thousands of views on almost every aspect of the war. Collection includes 200 letters written by Amos Wood, his wife Clara, and their three-year-old son, Freddie, illustrating what life was like for a Massachusetts family separated by the war. 

Provider: Alexander Street Press
Updated: Oct 26, 2017 9:53am

Church Missionary Society Periodicals

Church Missionary Society Periodicals provides digital access to two hundred years of serial publications from the British-based Church Missionary Society (CMS) and the South American Missionary Society. The collection consists of two modules.

Module 1: Global Missions and Contemporary Encounters was released in April 2015 and features a wide range of titles from the collection at the Crowther Mission Studies Library in Oxford. It includes the Church Missionary Gleaner, CMS Outlook, CMS Intelligencer, Ruanda Notes (MAM News) and the South Missionary Magazine, encompassing issues from 1804-2009. 

...
Provider: Adam Matthew Digital
Updated: Oct 26, 2017 9:59am

Associated Press Collections Online

The Associated Press Collections Online (AP Online) consists of an extensive collection of archival files and internal communications from various bureaus of the Associated Press (AP), in six parts, anticipated to total around 2.7 million pages.

Provider: Gale
Updated: Jul 1, 2020 12:05am

American Indian Histories and Cultures

American Indian Histories and Cultures, scheduled for release in fall 2013, will present material from the Newberry Library’s Edward E. Ayer Collection, an extensive archival collection on American Indian history. The content ranges from early contacts with European settlers through the expanded occupation of the American west, up through the Indian political movements of the mid-20th century. The collection covers a wide geographic area with a primary focus on North America and Mexico. This digital resource will complement The American West, an earlier digital collection from Adam Matthew compiled from the Newberry Library’s Everett D. Graff Collection of Western Americana.

Provider: Adam Matthew Digital
Updated: Oct 12, 2013 12:00am

Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO)

Gale Cengage has designed Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO) to be an extensive database with multiple content types, covering most regions of the world. The collection is in a rolling release of twelve modules over several years, with the initial four collection modules (called “Archives” by Gale) released in spring 2012.

Provider: Gale
Updated: Jul 2, 2020 10:28am

Parker Library on the Web

This significant collection of medieval manuscripts accumulated by Archbishop Matthew Parker and housed in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, has been digitized in a joint project between the College, Cambridge University, and Stanford University, completed in 2009. The database is maintained by Stanford and distributed exclusively through Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co.

Provider: OTTO HARRASSOWITZ GmbH & Co. KG
Updated: Feb 21, 2014 5:32pm

State Papers Online

State Papers Online is a comprehensive collection of primary source British documents. Four modules covering 1509 to 1714, the period of the Tudor and Stuart monarchies, have already been completed; a new collection for the 18th century (covering 1714 to 1782) will be released in three modules, beginning in summer 2013. This wealth of digitized documents includes manuscript correspondence, reports, Parliamentary drafts, and depositions on domestic and foreign affairs.

The latest part is: State Papers Online: Eighteenth Century, 1714-1782: Part II: State Papers Foreign - Low Countries and Germany

Provider: Gale
Updated: Jul 1, 2020 12:05am

India Raj and Empire: Manuscript Collections from the National Library of Scotland

India Raj and Empire is a digital collection of unique manuscript sources from the National Library of Scotland from 1615 through 1947. First-hand accounts from journals and diaries document events including the foundation of the East India Company and the independence of India. Letters and reports from government, military, and business officials provide further insight into this significant historical period for India.

Provider: Adam Matthew Digital
Updated: Sep 12, 2013 3:49pm


While CRL makes every effort to verify statements made herein, the opinions expressed and evaluative information provided here represent the considered viewpoints of individual librarians and specialists at CRL and in the CRL community.  They do not necessarily reflect the views of CRL management, its board, and/or its officers.