LibGuides: Government: Local History

Finding Articles

A complete list of all of the library databases is available. The following databases will be useful for research on local history:

Academic Search Complete (EBSCO)
- Why search here?
  Designed for academic institutions, this database is a leading resource for scholarly research. and supports high-level research in the key areas of academic study.
- What's included?
  Journals, periodicals, reports, books and more. Subjects include: Animal science, anthropology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, engineering, ethnic and multicultural studies, general science, geography, geology, law, mathematics, music, pharmaceutical sciences, physics, psychology, religion and philosophy, science and technology, veterinary science, women's studies, zoology, and more.

Digital Commonwealth
This site provides access to photographs, manuscripts, books, audio recordings, and other materials of historical interest that have been digitized and made available by members of Digital Commonwealth, a statewide consortium of libraries, museums, archives, and historical societies from across Massachusetts.

Boston Globe (1980 - Present) This link opens in a new window
- Why search here?
  Full text, searchable database of the Boston Globe newspaper. Offers authoritative coverage of local, national, and international news from 1980 to the present.
- What's included?
  Full text of articles published in the Boston Globe newspaper from 1980 to the present. Text only articles, which do not contain all content found in the published version of the Globe. Excluded items include advertisements, charts, classified ads, graphs, most images, and non-staff written items. Updated daily by 8 a.m.
HeritageQuest Online (Proquest)
- Why search here?
  HeritageQuest Online is a comprehensive database of American genealogical sources and contains over 4.4 billion historical and genealogical records from the 1700s to present day. It is best used to understand ancestry and a location's history.
- What's included?
  It includes city directories, family and local histories, U.S. Census records from 1790-1940, and military records from the Revolutionary War and other conflicts as well as research aids.
Military & Government Collection (EBSCO)
- Why search here?
  Military & Government Collection is a database of full-text journals and periodicals pertaining to all branches of the military and government. It is designed to offer current news to military members, analysts, policy makers, students and researchers.
- What's included?
  Military & Government Collection provides cover-to-cover full text, indexing and abstracts for hundreds of journals and periodicals. Many full-text titles are available in searchable PDF or scanned-in-color.
History (Salem Series)
- Why search here?
  Salem Press' history titles cover a wide range of topics spanning American and world history, providing thought-provoking coverage of the most important moments and figures throughout history. Designed for high school, undergraduate and public libraries, these resources promote a greater understanding of how history has shaped the modern world.
- What's included?
  The database access to the Salem Decades, Great Events from history and Innovator series.
U.S. History (Gale in Context) This link opens in a new window
- Why search here?
  Provide students extensive coverage of historical events. This collection contains millions of articles from periodicals and newspapers; hundreds of thousands of topic and event overviews; biographies; and rich multimedia, including images, videos, audio, and weblinks. This invaluable resource provides access to information on diverse topics, such as early America, the Great Depression, and National History Day.
- What's included?
  The database includes Gale's authoritative reference content with full-text magazines, academic journals, news articles, primary source documents, images, videos, audio files, and links to vetted websites. These are all organized into a user-friendly portal experience.

Massachusetts Defined

Massachusetts Museums, Historical Societies, Historical Homes

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Isabella Stewart Gardner collected and carefully displayed a collection comprised of more than 7500 paintings, sculptures, furniture, textiles, silver, ceramics, 1500 rare books, and 7000 archival objects-from ancient Rome, Medieval Europe, Renaissance Italy, Asia, the Islamic world and 19th-century France and America.
New England Historical Society
Massachusetts Art Museums
Massachusetts Historical Society
Massachusetts Historic Houses and Homes
Massachusetts Local Historical Societies
National Park Service: List of Massachusetts Sites
Massachusetts Town Histories

Searching Outside of MCC

These are internet-based scholarly resources that are outside of MCC's database lists and do not require our login.

Boston Public Library eCard
Massachusetts residents can get a free ecard which will allow you access to a wide range of databases (https://www.bpl.org/resource/#azindex) beyond what you have access to through MCC.
Directory of Open Access Preprint Repositories
Directory of Open Source Journals
DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. DOAJ is independent.
The General Index (Internet Archive)
Google Scholar
Search for articles.
HathiTrust
Founded in 2008, HathiTrust is a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving 17+ million digitized items. HathiTrust offers reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. copyright law, computational access to the entire corpus for scholarly research, and other emerging services based on the combined collection. HathiTrust members steward the collection — the largest set of digitized books managed by academic and research libraries — under the aims of scholarly, not corporate, interests.
History Hub (National Archives & Records Administration)
We are pleased to announce History Hub has successfully been migrated to its new home!
Internet Archive
Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.
Internet Archive Scholar
This fulltext search index includes over 25 million research articles and other scholarly documents preserved in the Internet Archive. The collection spans from digitized copies of eighteenth century journals though the latest Open Access conference proceedings and pre-prints crawled from the World Wide Web.
JURN
JURN is a free online search tool for the finding and downloading of free full-text scholarly works.
Open Library of Humanities
The Open Library of Humanities journal publishes internationally-leading, rigorous and peer-reviewed scholarship across the humanities disciplines: from classics, theology and philosophy, to modern languages and literatures, film and media studies, anthropology, political theory and sociology.

Family History

HeritageQuest Online
Login using your library account.

Access to Library Resources from Off-Campus

You can watch videos, access articles and eBooks from off-campus but students may be asked for their A number and library password. Faculty and staff will be asked for their user name and library password.

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