Digital archives

In March 2024 the information about European archives has been placed on a subpage.

Archives are nowadays almost unthinkable without a website, online catalogues and increasingly also online finding aids and digital collections. However, even when using overviews and repertories it is not easy to get a good view of these collections. Digital image galleries often contain archival records only as one element among other digitized images. Selecting collections with relevance for legal history is not an easy matter, too. Sometimes archives participate in digital portals for the cultural heritage of a town, a region or a specific discipline, subject or theme. You might therefore find relevant information also on my general page for digital collections. Some archival collections are to be found in libraries, and thus you might want to look also at digital libraries. It will not surprise you this page with archives in some 110 countries shows gaps and omissions, but I try to present here at least to the best of my knowledge guides, overviews and portals. Ordening items by continents makes the gaps and the work to do clearer. As always comments, suggestions and alerts for broken links are most welcome!

For one particular subject I have tried elsewhere to provide a fair selection of digital collections. Digital projects for and by archives concerning the First World War can be found at my blog Digital 1418. Some projects with sources for and problems in legal history are in a phase of crowdsourcing projects in which the general public is invited to join scholars in transcribing or indexing resources. On the page about palaeography of my site I have listed a number of major platforms for these projects.

On purpose I open here with an overview of existing archives, portal sites and online finding aids, to make you aware of the fact that digital archival collections form only a fraction of the materials kept in archives, preserved, described, put in order and catalogued by archivists. Describing or restoring the order of an archival collection, its contents and context necessarily comes before digitization. Some of the general overviews are very detailed. Some of the best classic overviews online do not longer exist, except for archived versions.

The second section brings you to digitized archival collections. This page might be nothing but just a stepping stone towards a Digital Archives Register, be it on a national, international or thematic level, but without such efforts you cannot start contemplating such enterprises. Having seen some initiatives without clear indication of the URL’s for the end results is another consideration that has convinced me to create at least this page. I have decided not to include here licensed digital archival collections, they are easily found using research guides provided by libraries. I try to point also to portals where several archives together publish digital collections around a particular subject.

It is good to be aware of the differences in archival terminology. I use often the word archives for the institutions which hold archival records, and also for archival collections with files stemming from one source, thus forming a fonds as the French would say. I use finding aid and inventory as synonyms. In Dutch the word archief can stand for both the institution and a particular archival collection. In American usage the term manuscript collection can refer to archival records. You can learn much in this respect from the Multilingual Archival Terminology created by the International Council of Archives. At the end of this page you will find a section with some links for standards, terminology, archival societies and their journals.

In view of the sheer mass of web links and the difficulty to organize it in a list I created a searchable Zotero version with currently entries for general and world institutions, Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and also the Pacific region. With tags and combinations of tags you can quickly perform searches and create your own selections.

As a sequel to the aforementioned step to clarify the overview given here European archives are presented since March 2024 on a separate subpage.

General organizations

Archives worldwide: Overviews and portals

– in alphabetical order for countries

General overviews

Worldwide

USA and United Kingdom

  • ArchiveFinder, Chadwyck – a licensed database combining ArchivesUSA and NIDS UK/Ireland; luckily there is a successor to the British National Archives Register and similar websites, see below

Continents and countries in alphabetical order:

Africa

Benin

Cabo Verde

Côte d’Ivoire

Egypt

Eritrea

Ethiopia

Ghana

Kenya

Madagascar

Malawi

Morocco

  • Archives du Maroc, Rabat – the national archive has a website in Arabic and French

Mozambique

Namibia

Nigeria

São Tomé and Principe

Senegal

South Africa

Swaziland

Tunesia

America

Latin-America

Argentina

Aruba

Bahamas

Barbados

Bermuda

Bolivia

Brasil

The Dutch-Brazilian Mauritiana series of archival guides and similar guides for archival holdings in France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and Ireland, and for the United States can be found online in the digital library of the Biblioteca Nacional (search for arquivos; PDF’s).

Canada

Cayman Islands

Chili

Colombia

Costa Rica

Cuba

Curaçao

Dominican Republic

Ecuador

El Salvador

Guatemala

Haiti

Jamaica

Martinique

Mexico

Nicaragua

Panama

Paraguay

Peru

Puerto Rico

Het Center for Latin American Studies bij Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, biedt in het project Puerto Rico Archival Collaboration veel nuttige informatie aan.

Suriname

  • Archievenoverzicht, Nationaal Archief Suriname, Paramaribo – an overview of the collections held in this national archive

Trinidad and Tobago

United States of America

The Bodleian Libraries, Oxford, provide an online guide for doing research in major US archives and libraries with archival collections.

Uruguay

Venezuela

Asia

Armenia

Azerbaijan

Bangladesh

Bhutan

  • Druk Gyelyong Pedzö [National Library and Archives of Bhutan], Thimphu – interface Dzongkha and English

Cambodja

China

On the website Resources for the history of the People’s Republic of China you will find a very full list of archives with comments but also other valuable information.

Hong Kong

India

Indonesia

Iraq

Israel

Japan

Kazachstan

Kyrgyzstan

Lebanon

Macau

Malaysia

Mongolia

Myanmar

Nepal

Oman

Pakistan

Philippines

Russia

For archives in Moscow and St. Petersburg there is the massive guide by Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, Archives in Russia. A Directory and Bibliographic Guide to Holdings in Moscow and St.Petersburg (London, etc., 2016). Earlier on she published Archives and Manuscript Repositories in the USSR: Ukraine and Moldavia, I: General Bibliography and Institutional Directory (Princeton, NJ, 1988).

Singapore

South-Korea

Sri Lanka

Taiwan

Thailand

Turkey

  • Devlet Arsivleri Genel Müdüdürlügü (National Archives of Turkey) – with the important Ottoman Archives (Osmanlı Arşivi Daire Başkanlığı); access to catalog only after registration, interface Turkish, Arabic, English and French – this archive has its own publications series in open access, including a guide to the Ottoman Archive (in Turkish, 2017)
  • Turkish Archives and Libraries, FamilySearch – a commented overview of some main institutions
  • Archives in Turkey, Suna Kiraç Library, Koç University, Istanbul – a guide to twelve archives
  • Arsivler, Sakarya Universitesi – a short list, but note the very substantial other lists for libraries provided here
  • Arsiv, Türk Tahir Kurumu [Turkish Historical Society], Ankara – with collections from the late Ottoman Empire and the early republic
  • Kizilay Tarih (History of the Turkish Red Crescent), Ankara – the archive and library for the history of the Turkish Red Cross
  • Kadın Eserleri Kütüphanesi ve Bilgi Merkezi Vakfı (Women’s History Library and Documentation Center), Istanbul – with a number of atchival collections
  • Topkapi Sarayi Muzesi Arsiv, Istanbul – only the Turkish version of the website has information about the archive with important Ottoman records; see also the general research page
  • Archives, SALT Research, Istanbul – an archive and library for urban and economic history, architecture and art with numerous digitized collections

United Arab Emirates

Uzbekistan

Australia and New Zealand – Oceania

Australia

New Zealand

Oceania

Digital archival collections

– in alphabetical order of continents and countries

Worldwide

Africa

  • African Digital Research Repositories, International African Institute, School of Oriental and African Studies, London – a very rich overview of digital libraries and also some archives
  • Slave Societies Digital Archive (formerly called Ecclesiastical and Secular Sources for Slave Societies), Vanderbilt University – a project with digital archival collections for Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Spanish Florida, and also for the African port towns Ouidah and Luanda

Egypt

Liberia

Morocco

  • The Rabat Genizah Project, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon, and Musée du judaïsme Marocain, Casablanca – digitized Moroccan Jewish documents

Namibia

  • Namibian Digital Archive, Polytechnic of Namibia, Utah Valley University and National Archives of Namibia – digitized archival collections, photographs, films and books

Rwanda

Sierra Leone

  • Sierra Leone Collection, University of Illinois at Chicago – documents concerning the Sierra Leone Company and British actions against slavery in the nineteenth century

South Africa

Sudan

  • Sudan Archive, Durham University Library – papers of officials, documents and Sudan government gazettes

America

  • Our Americas, Rice University, University of Maryland and Instituto Mora (Mexico)
  • Online publications, New Netherland Institute, Albany, NY – some digitized editions and translations concerning the Dutch presence in New York and the Caribbean are accompanied by images of the original archival records, for example the Curaçao Papers

Latin America

Argentina

Aruba

Bolivia

Brasil

Canada

Chile

Colombia

  • Negros y Esclavos, Archivo General de la Nación – an online guide to digitized archival records concerning black people and slavery held in four Colombian archives; interface Spanish and English

Cuba

Curaçao

  • Digital Library, Central Bureau of Statistics – with publications from the mid-twentieth century onwards

Dominican Republic

Guatemala

  • Digital archive, Archivo Historico de la Policia Nacional, University of Texas at Austin – documents from the periode 1960 to 1990, discovered in 2005

Martinique

  • Banque Numérique des Patrimoines Martiniquais, Collectivité Territoriale de Martinique and Direction régionale des Affaires Culturelles – a portal for digitized cultural heritage with digitized civil records, archival records, images, archaeological objects and books; interface French and English

Mexico

Panama

  • Panama and the Canal, University of Florida Libraries and Panama Canal Museum – three digital collections

Peru

Puerto Rico

Suriname

  • Archieven online, Nationaal Archief Suriname, Paramaribo – 35 digital collections
  • Slavenregisters, Nationaal Archief Suriname and Nationaal Archief, The Hague – digitized slavery registers from the nineteenth century

United States

Asia

Middle East

Afghanistan

Armenia

  • Krikor Guergerian Archive, Clark University, Worcester, MA, and Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem – the core of this archive are digitized materials concerning trials between 1919 and 1921 after the Armenian genocide; interface English and Turkish

Cambodia

China

Hong Kong

  • Online holdings, Government Record Services – three digital collections and three virtual exhibits
  • Hong Kong Memory – a cultural heritage portal
  • Municipal Council Archives, Hong Kong Public Libraries – some 48,000 digitized archival records of the city council between 1965 and 2000
  • Land Deeds Collection, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Library – 160 land deeds and six volumes of fish-scale registers, mid-seventeenth to twentieth century
  • Open Public Records of the UK National Archives, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Library – dozens of digitized documents from various series
  • Sheng Xuanhei Archive, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Library – documents and transcriptions concerning a very influential merchant and politician (1844-1916) who initiated many projects
  • Elsie Tu Digital Collection, Hong Kong Baptist University – speeches and publications of a scholar who followed closely political and legal developments in Hong Kong
  • HKBU Corpora, Hong Kong Baptist University – two linguistic corpora, Corpus of Political Speeches (1789-2015) and The Chinese/English Political Interpreting Corpus (1997-2017), both speeches from the USA, Hong Kong and China

India

Indonesia

  • Serajah Nusantara: Treasures from the 17th and 18th century VOC Archive, Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia, Jakarta – digitized archival records on the Dutch East India Company
  • Kong Koan Papers, Leiden University Library – some 630 items from the archive of the Kong Koan, the Chinese Council in Early Modern Batavia (Jakarta) which acted as a court for minor criminal offences and civil lawsuits between Chinese citizens
  • Sukarno Speeches, Monash University – some 150 speeches held between 1956 and 1966 by the first president of Indonesia

Iran

Iraq

  • Iraqi Jewish Archive, National Archives and Records Administration – in 2003 some 2,700 books and many thousand documents were found in the Iraqi intelligence headquarters, with a virtual exhibit

Japan

Lebanon

Macau

  • Memórias de Macau – a portal for the cultural heritage of Macau, with archival records, books and museal objects; interface Portuguese and Chinese

Nepal

Philippines

Russia

  • Berestjanye gramoty (Birch bark manuscripts) – one thousand texts, mainly letters from medieval Novgorod between the eleventh and fifteenth century
  • Stalin Digital Archive, Yale University Press and Russian State Archive of Social and Political History – with also a useful secton with links to relevant research institutions; full access after registration
  • Документы Советской Эпохи (Documents of the Soviet Era), Russian Federal Archival Agency – the digital archive of the Komintern (Communist International), interface Russian; there is a users guide at Hatful of History
  • Communist International (Comintern) Archives Project, European Reading Room, Library of Congress and Russian State Archives for Social and Political History (RGASPI), Moscow – a database for searching among 1 million digitized pages of the 20 million pages in this archive
  • History of Russia in Photographs, Moscow Multimedia Art Museum – photographs from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
  • Prokudin-Gorskii Collection, Library of Congress – the famous collection with some 2,600 early colour photographs taken between 1905 and 1915

Singapore

South Korea

Taiwan

Tibet

Turkey

Australia and New Zealand; Oceania

Australia

New Zealand

Oceania

More links