History and American Studies Resources at Northumbria

In the past four years Northumbria University has invested heavily in digital resources in History and American Studies subjects.  The Northumbria Library has created handy, one-stop shop webpages for resources in English and History.  (Both have numerous American Studies links as well.)

History "Core Resources" includes the following.  There are numerous other "Additional Resources" on the page as well.

19th Century British Library Newspapers

19th Century U.S. Newspapers

America's Historical Newspapers

America: history and life with full text

American Civil War: Letters and Diaries

British Newspapers 1600-1950

Cambridge Histories

Churchill Archive

Civil War: Antebellum Period to Reconstruction

Historical Abstracts (EBSCO)

Historical Newspapers: Atlanta Constitution, The (1868-1945)

Historical Newspapers: Boston Globe (1872 - 1979)

Historical Newspapers: Chicago Tribune (1849-1987)

Historical Newspapers: New York Times,The (1851-2008) with Index (1851-1993)

Historical Newspapers: Washington Post (1877-1994)

Irish Newspaper Archive

JSTOR Collections

Mass Observation Online

Nineteenth Century Collections Online

Popular Culture in Britain and America 1950-75

Ralph J. Bunche Oral Histories Collection on the Civil Rights Movement

State Papers Online 1509-1714

Taylor & Francis Library Journals Collection

The Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960–1974

Times Digital Archive

U.S. Congressional Documents (HeinOnline)

Northumbria University Acquires the Books of the Late Historian Michael O'Brien

Northumbria University has recently acquired the book collection of the late, esteemed historian Michael O’Brien.  This is wonderful news for American Studies, History, and the Humanities Department at Northumbria.

The collection amounts to approximately 3,300 books, occupying 90 metres of shelving space. Books in the collection cover US history, culture, and the American South from the colonial period to the twentieth century.

Michael O'Brien collection.

Michael O’Brien was Professor of American Intellectual History at Jesus College, Cambridge.  In an academic career of great distinction he became a Fellow of the British Academy, was winner of the Bancroft Prize for his seminal work Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860, was twice a nominated finalist for the Pulitzer Prize (for History and Biography and Autobiography), and was honoured by a number of American historical societies. Further information on Michael O’Brien’s life and achievements is available from his obituary in the Guardian and at Cambridge University.

Before his death, Michael had discussed disposal of his book collection with Northumbria University Professor in American Studies Brian Ward. Subsequently, the collection was offered to Northumbria University by one of Michael O’Brien’s executors, Joel Isaac, Senior Lecturer in the History of Modern Political Thought, and Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge through contact with both Randall Stephens, Reader in American History, and Brian Ward.  Philip Judd (Collection and Digital Services Librarian, Collection Management, Student and Library Services) has also been instrumental in securing the collection and processing it for the library.

The broad themes of the collection include:

• History of the southern states including

o Architecture;

o Cultural issues;
o Education including universities; the education of women;
o Experience of different societal groups, including German and Jewish communities;
o Gender issues;
o General history of the southern states in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries;
o Intellectual history;
o Medicine;
o Politics generally and ‘high’ politics (the politics of parties and state legislatures);
o Race and racism;
o Religious history;
o Social history;
o Urban history.

• The Civil War;
• Slavery;

• Biographies of politicians and people of influence.

In addition, the collection on contains books on twentieth century American history and political biographies of presidents.

The collection includes a small number of multi-volume collections including:

• Forty-five volumes of The Adams Papers Project founded in 1954 to edit and publish the writings of the family of John Adams and published by Harvard University Press;
• E.W. Knight: A Documentary History of Education in the South (Five volumes), published by the University of North Carolina;
• Reprints of nineteenth century books on slavery, published by The Negro Universities Press (a division of Greenwood Press).

The vast majority of the books in the collection are monographs ranging from general histories to books on very specific subjects. All of the books in the collection will be placed on Northumbria’s open shelves.