The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) electronic reading room of the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) offers several primary source collections for the study of Central and Eastern Europe during and after the Cold War period. The FOIA Electronic Reading Room web site was established by the CIA "to provide the public with an overview of access to CIA information, including electronic access to previously released documents." Direct web access to the following collections is now possible: # The Soviet and Warsaw Pact Military Journals is a PDF collection of "sensitive Soviet and Warsaw Pact military journals from 1961 to 1984 providing a view into Warsaw Pact military strategy". # Preparing for Martial Law: Through the Eyes of Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski is "a captivating collection of over 75 documents concerning the planning and implementation martial law in Poland from mid-1980 to late 1981. The collection release coincided with a CIA symposium honouring Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski, a member of the Polish Army General Staff and the source of the documents."

Seems to focus especially on the Cold War. Definitely one for the conspirary theorists.

The Internet Archive BookServer, A Future for Books, distributed lending & vending on the internet is an Open Web for Books project for worldwide distribution of e-books. BookServer with more than 1,5 millions books is, today, one of the biggest digital libraries offering and sharing free access to digital books both in PDF and ePub format, the latest recommended by the International Digital Publishing Forum a free and open e-book standard with extension ".epub".

Cool!

The European Archive, part of the LiWA (Living Web Archive Project), offers access to archived web sites and multi-media materials with the aim to preserve the whole European Digital Cultural Heritage. We provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.

An excellent site for sources on European cultural history.

Parallel Archive (PA), an "invented" archive repository accessible for everybody wishing to upload primary sources, is developed by the Open Society Archives (OSA) at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. PA is, "at once a personal scholarly workspace, a collaborative research environment, and a digital repository".

Has primary sources uploaded by people who have registered with the site in many European languages, including English. Come to think of it, is English a European language anymore? Interesting...

The Kennan Institute and National Public Radio in the USA has established an online audio archive of Soviet and Russian history. "The archive consists of recordings dating back to the earliest years of the Soviet state. Included are the voices and speeches of key political figures, including Lenin, Kerensky, Kirov, Beria, Stalin, Gorbachev, and others. Among the recorded interviews are Anna Larina (Bukharin's widow); Valentin Berezhkov, Stalin's wartime interpreter; Yelena Bonner, Sakharov's widow; and Lev Pevsner, a survivor of the Leningrad Blockade. There is also on-the-scene recorded sound of many events in Soviet history, including: the Russian and American armies meeting at the Elbe; Stalin's funeral; the August 1991 coup against Gorbachev. [...] The material comes from Soviet and Russian sources, the NPR archives, the archives of the BBC, and individual donors. Some of the material is in Russian, some in English. "

The bulk of the audio files are in Russian, however if you scroll down closely there are speeches by significant Western figures too. Yet another excellent set of resources from the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Has gazillions of articles from journals and other places in the form of downloadable pdfs. Very useful site for historical research and of course looks perfectly legal...

* Lawrence Royal & Cabinet Collections The Lawrence Collection consists of 40,000 glass plate negatives from 1870-1914. The images were produced commercially and capture topographical scenes of that period throughout Ireland. The entire Lawrence Royal collection (10,784 plates) and part of the Lawrence Cabinet collection (2,040 plates) are available here to view online. * Poole Whole Plate Collection The Poole collection comprises 65,000 glass plate negatives and was created by the family firm of A.H. Poole in Waterford between 1884-1954. The majority of images in the collection are studio portraits but the Poole Whole Plate subset which consists of 5,119 images, reflects the diversity of the collection with studio portraits, social and political events and also images of architecture and industry in the south east of Ireland. * Independent H Collection The Independent Newspaper collection of some 300,000 images, is made up of glass plates, plastic negatives and a small number of prints. The Independent H collection is a subset of the collection and contains 3,250 glass plates negatives dating from 1912-1936. It provides a record of many aspects of 20th century Irish life, and is particularly strong in the coverage of politics and sport in Ireland.

A wide collection of images and documents (mainly newspapers, I think) on Irish life in the C19th and C20th.

Vincent Van Gogh's 902 letters from and to him, now available online freely. The letters are translated into English and richly annotated and illustrated with new transcriptions and translations edited by Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten and Nienke Bakker for the Vincent Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the Huyghens Institute - KNAW.

Wonder if any future historians will bookmark a collection of Damien Hirst's emails and share it to Diigo?

"The LBC/IRN Audio Archive, (London Broadcasting Company / Independent Radio News audio archive) consists of 7,000 reel-to-reel tapes in a collection that runs from 1973 to the mid-1990s. It is the most important commercial radio archive in the UK and provides a unique audio history of the period. This digitised collection focuses on the most noteworthy content - approximately 3,000 hours of recordings relating to news and current affairs. The digitised archive contains invaluable recordings of a wide range of broadcasts including coverage of the Falklands war, the miners' strike, Northern Ireland, the whole of the Thatcher period of government and recordings of the first hour of UK commercial radio including the first commercial radio news bulletin."

You can only listen if you are part of a tertiary institution which has a paid subscription through the Athens ID system (v. annoying!) however you're able to read the transcripts for free.

Has links to a number of historical source collections on various topics. How thoughtful of those lovely people in Wisconsin.

"The Germany Under Reconstruction digital collection [at the University of Wisconsin, Madison,] provides a varied selection of publications in both English and German from the period immediately following World War II. Many are publications of the U.S. occupying forces, including reports and descriptions of efforts to introduce U.S.-style democracy to Germany. Some of the other books and documents describe conditions in a country devastated by years of war, efforts at political, economic and cultural development, and the differing perspectives coming from the U.S. and British zones and the Russian zone of occupation. At the same time, the Germans themselves and the occupying forces look back at the National Socialist period and try to come to terms with what had happened."

The Economic History Association owns and operates the EH.net website and mailing lists to provide resources and promote communication among scholars in economic history and related fields. The Economic History Society (U.K.), the Business History Conference, and the Cliometric Society also support the site.

Looks useful for research into economic history.

"These volumes are the logs (navigational records) and journals (narrative accounts) of naval officers of ships engaged in exploration and surveying, which were used by the Hydrographic Office to produce charts and other data. Most of the logs were kept by naval captains, masters, lieutenants and masters' mates, although there are a few logs which were kept by boatswains or assistant surgeons. Amongst this collection of Royal Naval logs, there are a several logs which were kept by merchant ships. "

Gotta love the British National Archives. More and more of this type of material is being made available.

"The Memoro Project is a non profit online initiative dedicated to collecting and divulgating short video recordings of spontaneous interviews with people born before 1940. An editorial staff identifies and authenticates the material uploaded by the volunteers involved in the project. The Memoro Project was created by Memoro S.r.l. with the financial support of the Province of Cuneo, Italy. [...]"

Could be useful when teaching oral history to students. Or not. It's up to you.

The datasets that are offered cover a range of topics relating to Dutch history and are particularly strong in aspects of socio-economic and colonial history. The datasets can be browsed or searched by keyword. Users need to register in order to be able to download datasets.

Seems to have English as well as Dutch pages in the collections. Enormous range of topics and types of sources.

"The Clergy of the Church of England Database 1540-1835 (CCEd), launched in 1999 and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, makes available and searchable the principal records of clerical careers from over 50 archives in England and Wales with the aim of providing coverage of as many clerical lives as possible from the Reformation to the mid-nineteenth century.

Contains a wealth of information on the local level of Church operations in England from the period.

Has Dutch and English sections so those of us whose medieval Dutch is a little rusty can still use the site. How thoughtful!

EuroDocs rocks!

The Letters of Philip II, King of Spain, 1592-1597 a digital collection available within the Special Collections Department of the Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA, is made of "... 174 letters and documents, all in Spanish : 172 manuscript, 2 printed.

Has English summaries of the letters.

Collections of French language resources and French sources.