"Digital technology can make the works of man permanently accessible to the billions of people all over the world. Andrew Carnegie and other great philanthropists in past centuries have recognized the great potential of public libraries to improve the quality of life and provide opportunity to the citizenry. A universal digital library, widely available through free access on the Internet, will improve the global society in ways beyond measurement. The Internet can house a Universal Library that is free to the people."
The Japanese Historical Map Collection contains about 2,300 early maps of Japan and the World. The collection was acquired by the University of California from the Mitsui family in 1949, and is housed on the Berkeley campus in the East Asian Library. Represented in this online collection are over 1100 images of maps and books from this Collection.
The English Emblem Book Project of the Penn State University Libraries in Pennsylvania, USA, has digitized older form of texts, the emblem books, for the 16th to the 19th centuries.
"An emblem book is a collection of images with adjoining text. In an emblem there is a dialog or tension between image and word. Emblems are frequently allegorical in theme. Emblem books are a form of text not altogether familiar to us today. An emblem book represents a particular kind of reading. Unlike today, the eye is not intended to move rapidly from page to page. The emblem is meant to arrest the sense, to lead into the text, to the richness of its associations. An emblem is something like a riddle, a "hieroglyph" in the Renaissance vocabulary -- what many readers considered to be a form of natural language."
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.
You actually have to have a Brisbane City Council library card to log into Encyclopaedia Britannica online. If you go to the council website, click (under facilities and recreation) lbrary catalog, then click search e-libcat, and go into databases, encyclopaedias, Encyclopaedia Britannica online and type in your library card number you can access this site.
The IISH collections comprise archive, library and audio-visual material with a thematic emphasis on social and emancipatory movements. The institute holds over 3,000 archives, more than 1,000,000 printed volumes, and a equivalent number of audio-visual items.
Contains many useful tools and services for history teachers. There are online experts for tutoring and some good-quality sources. Looks like it's going to get even better. Some of the sites there look brilliant.
Group items tagged 
