Research Guides: Literature: Useful Websites

American Women's Writing
British Library Collections
Ethnic Literature (American)
Native American Literature Websites
Slave Narrative Websites

Early American Women Writers
Society for the Study of American Women Writers
Voices from the Gaps: Women Writers of Color
Part of VoS (Voices from the Shuttle)

British Library-Children's Book Illustration Collection
The British Library has released over a million public domain illustrations and other images to the public through Flickr for anyone to reuse, remix or repurpose from public domain books in its digitized collection, which includes over 65,000 books from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
British Library -image collection
the British Library has released over a million public domain illustrations and other images to the public through Flickr for anyone to reuse, remix or repurpose. So far, these images, which range from Restoration-era cartoons to colonial explorers’ early photographs, from public domain books in its digitized collection, which includes over 65,000 books from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
The British Library-open images
Over a million images released into Flickr Commons for anyone to use, remix and repurpose. These images were taken from the pages of 17th, 18th and 19th century books digitized then released back into the Public Domain.
There are maps, geological diagrams, beautiful illustrations, comical satire, illuminated and decorative letters, colourful illustrations, landscapes, wall-paintings and more.
British Library Manuscripts
The British Library Online Newspaper Archive
The archive allows you to search historical issues of the British newspapers Manchester Guardian, Daily News, News of the World, and Weekly Dispatch.

Below are links to Voices of the Shuttle, a weblink list.

African American Literature
Voice of the Shuttle list of African American Literature websites
Asian American
Asian Pacific American
Jewish
Native American/American Indian
Vatican Library Manuscripts
The Vatican Apostolic Library is now digitising its valuable ancient religious manuscripts free.
founded in 1451 AD and holds over 80,000 manuscripts, prints, drawings, plates and incunabula (books printed prior to 1500 AD) written throughout history by people of different faiths from across the world. This alsoincludes letters from important historical figures, drawings and notes by artists and scientists such as Michelangelo and Galileo, as well as treaties from all eras in history.
Voices from the Gaps: Women Writers of Color:

How Do I Know?

The World Wide Web is full of websites that may or may not be of any use in your research. How can you tell whether you're looking at a good source or a bad one? Here are some tips:

Look at the name: Take a look at the url (web address) - what is the domain? Typically .edu and .gov websites will have stricter guidelines about what can be published and by whom.

Find the contact information: Authors love to be recognized! When you put a lot of work into finding and synthesizing information for publication, you want people to know who you are, or at least the organization you wrote it for. Be wary of websites with no way of contacting the creators.

Look for sources: Good researchers, even when writing informally, will cite their sources. This may be a link embedded in their post, mentioning the source by name in the content, or a more formal footnote or list of works cited. This gives you the opportunity to read the original material and see if you come to the same conclusions!