History & Social Science

Photographs from Chicago Public Library's special collections. View photos of Civil War artifacts, Millennium Park's construction, Mayor Harold Washington and Chicago neighborhoods. Search the Chicago Examiner newspaper and playbills from Chicago's early theaters.

Find digital photographs, maps, oral histories, personal letters and more from libraries, archives and museums across the United States.

Articles from general-interest magazines and scholarly journals. Search two separate databases (MasterFILE Complete and OmniFile Full Text Select) covering more than 3,500 publications.

Features robust searching capabilities suited for complex research, but remains intuitive for novice users.

Topic-based browsing of 18 EBSCO databases for public library patrons.

Locate archival collections and digital images from archives and libraries with Chicago history collections.

Find encyclopedia articles in a variety of subject areas from more than two hundred reference titles.

Covering topics in U.S. and world history from the earliest civilizations through the 21st century, History Reference Source is a research database containing full-text journals, magazines, reference books and thousands of primary source documents. It also includes a companion e-book collection with reference books from top educational publishers and university presses.

Access five resources on specific aspects of history:

• African-American History Online
• American History Online
• American Indian History Online
• Ancient and Medieval History Online
• Modern World History Online

Search all five at once or browse them individually. Each includes articles from reference works, primary sources, biographies, timelines, images, and maps, charts and tables. Recommended for grades six and up.

The largest African American video oral history archive in the world features interviews with African Americans who have made significant contributions in American life or culture.

Search and download high-definition, color fire insurance maps, including Sanborn maps, real estate atlases, plat books and other historical maps. Additional 20th-century fire insurance maps can be found in Illinois Sanborn Maps.

Digitized fire insurance maps for the state of Illinois, including over a hundred volumes for the city of Chicago. If looking for a location in Chicago or a nearby suburb, start with the Chicago Sanborn Maps Index and note the series (1894-1897 or 1905-1951) and volumes for the neighborhood or suburb. For 19th-century maps, use Illinois Fire Insurance Maps online instead.

Older issues of more than 2,000 scholarly journals in a wide range of interest areas. Coverage begins with the first issue, but recent issues are not included. Recent issues of some of these journals are available in EBSCO Magazines & Journals.

More than 40,000 encyclopedia articles, as well as an online atlas, online dictionary, research tools and more. Recommended for grades three and up.

Full text, including display and classified advertisements, of this nationally significant African American newspaper from 1910 to 2010. (To search for articles in this paper from 2011 to present, use Black Newspapers or Illinois Newsstand.)

Full text of the Chicago Examiner from 1908 to 1918.

Research Chicago history through the Chicago Sun-Times Historical and Current Collection with coverage from 1929 through current. Study trends, issues, events, advertisements, companies, and more through historical and current full newspaper pages, full-text articles and content only published online.

Historical Archive

• Chicago Sun-Times (1929 - 1985)   
  • Daily Times (1929 - 1947)
  • Chicago Sun (1941-1948)
  • Chicago Sun-Times (1948-1985)

Current Collection

• Chicago Sun-Times (1986 to the present)

Full text of the Chicago Tribune, including classified and display advertisements, from 1849 to 2015.

Full text of more than 4,000 U.S. newspapers from 1756 to 1963. Chicago-area papers are The Broad Ax, an African American newspaper digitized from 1895 to 1927; The Day Book, E.W. Scripps' experiment in advertisement-free newspaper publishing digitized from 1911 to 1917 and The Chicago Eagle, a publication with a strong focus on municipal political affairs digitized from 1889 to 1922.