Electronic Resources

Oxford’s African American Studies Center, covers African American life for almost five centuries, from the arrival of Esteban in Spanish Florida in 1528 to notable black citizens of the present day.

Full-text articles from hundreds of journals in the arts, from 1997-present. Abstracts also available from 1994; titles and authors can also be searched from 1984. The wide variety of subjects includes architecture, art education, craft, painting, and film.

A list of names, addresses and occupations for approximately 5800 African Americans who lived in Boston during the period from 1820 to 1863.

A guide to the theater programs and playbill collection at the Boston Athenaeum. More than 90% of the material represented in the database consists of playbills or portions of playbills from about 45 Boston theaters. The bulk of the playbill collection dates from circa 1860 to 1900.

Access to this resource has been suspended as of July 1, 2025.

Full-text access to the Boston Globe from 1980-present in a text-based format. Provided by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC).

Full-text access to the Boston Globe from 1872–2007 in the original formatting, including news articles, photos, advertisements, classified ads, obituaries, cartoons, etc. Offers PDF format with page images.

An online learning and research platform, developed by Encyclopædia Britannica, offering access to age-appropriate content from three main levels: Children (grades 3 to 5), Young Adults (grades 6 to 8), and Reference Center (for high school and adult researchers). Provided by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC).

The 18th edition of the venerable, time-tested guide to style, usage, grammar, and citations in an accessible online format.

Hosted by the Library of Congress, the database contains a selection of America’s historic newspapers pages from 1836-1922. An U.S. Newspaper Directory also offers information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.

A selection of eBooks and audiobooks you can read or listen to on a smartphone, tablet, or computer. Use this website or download the CloudLibrary app from Apple’s AppStore, Google Play, or wherever you get your apps. The first time you log in, you will need the barcode on the back of your Athenaeum membership card. Don’t know your barcode? Email reference staff, or call us!

A work in progress; currently, entries under A-Le are available online. The Dictionary of Old English (DOE) defines the vocabulary of the first six centuries (C.E. 600-1150) of the English language.

Contains more than 700 historical American newspapers from 23 states and the District of Columbia printed between 1690 and 1820 downloadable in PDF format. Based on Clarence S. Brigham’s History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820 and other authoritative bibliographies.

The English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) contains bibliographic information for more than 460,000 items published mainly in the British Isles and North America between 1473 and 1800.

FirstSearch provides access to OCLC’s WorldCat, a union catalog of tens of thousands of (mostly library) institutions with over 540 million bibliographic records.

Provides access to a substantial number of articles from scholarly journals and other authoritative sources with extensive coverage in key subject areas, such as biology, chemistry, criminal justice, economics, environmental science, history, marketing, political science, and psychology. Provided by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC).

Access to this resource has been suspended as of July 1, 2025.

Indexes more than 5,000 periodicals, over 2,800 in full text, dedicated to a broad range of subject matter, including art, literature, economics, and the sciences. Provided by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC).

Access to this resource has been suspended as of July 1, 2025.

A searchable collection of general interest and scholarly publications on topics including Careers, Computers & Technology, Education, Health, History, Personal Finance, and Self-Help. Content includes reference books, newspapers, magazines, journals, and audio & video files.. Provided by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC).

Access to this resource has been suspended as of July 1, 2025.

Provides contextual information on hundreds of the most significant people, events and topics in U.S. History. U.S. History merges 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 organized into a user-friendly portal experience. Provided by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC).

Access to this resource has been suspended as of July 1, 2025.

Provides contextual information on hundreds of the most significant people, events and topics in World History. World History merges 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 organized into a user-friendly portal experience. Provided by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC).

Access to this resource has been suspended as of July 1, 2025.

Find up-to-date biographical information, overviews, full-text literary criticism and reviews on more than 130,000 writers in all disciplines, from all time periods and from around the world. Provided by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC).

Provides access to major U.S. regional, national, and local newspapers as well as leading titles from around the world, including text, images, radio and TV broadcasts, and transcriptions. Provided by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC).

Access to Gale In Context: U.S. History was suspended on July 1, 2025. This resource serves as an alternative.

Updated daily, this database provides access to scholarly journals and magazines focused on U.S. history. It’s designed to be useful for both novice and advanced researchers in the field. Provided by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC).

Access to Gale In Context: World History was suspended on July 1, 2025. This resource serves as an alternative.

A collection of nearly 40 journals containing current and historical perspectives on events in World History. Useful both to the novice historian and to the advanced academic researcher. Provided by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC).

A digital library that provides full-text access to approximately 2,000 academic journals, books, and primary sources in the humanities and social sciences.

A bibliographic database indexing over 410 library and information science periodicals, books, theses, and pamphlets (1984-present). Full-text access begins in 1997 (varies by publication).

A digital version of the Loeb Classical Library, providing access to over 550 Latin and Greek texts with English translations, encompassing epic and lyric poetry; tragedy and comedy; satire; history, philosophy, and oratory; medical works; and mathematics.

A searchable collection of links to full-text, digitized, historical newspapers published in the United States and the Caribbean.

Contains more than 20,000 digitized regional and local English language newspapers, dating from 1690 to the present with the majority from the 20th century. Primarily United States publications, with additional titles from Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Panama, and the United Kingdom

Access to the full text of the New York Times from 1985 to the present, via Gale OneFile. Provided by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC).

Full access to issues of the New York Times from 1851–2021, including news articles, photos, advertisements, classified ads, obituaries, cartoons, etc. Offers PDF format with page images.

A comprehensive historical dictionary that documents usage of the English language in all its varieties from the eleventh century to the present day.

A collection of scholarly art encyclopedias and dictionaries from Oxford. Includes 45,000 articles on every aspect of the visual arts, and more than 6,000 images from Grove Art Online, the Benezit Dictionary of Artists, the Oxford Companion to Western Art, Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, and the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms.

A biographical dictionary containing entries for the men and women who have shaped British history and culture, worldwide, from the Romans to the 21st century.

A comprehensive online platform that provides access to the Smithsonian Institution’s collections held by the institution’s libraries, archives, and research units.

An OCLC platform that offers single-search discovery for electronic, digital and physical materials in local library collections and in libraries worldwide.