American Studies

American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.

Archival collection of over 97,000 documents related to the study of the Presidency.

Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes fifteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.

Over 2,800 advertising items and publications dating from 1850 to 1920, illustrating the rise of consumer culture and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States.

A national preserve of hard-to-find documentary films about American folk or roots cultures. The films focus on the culture, struggles, and arts of unnoticed Americans from many different regions and communities.

Historic Government Publications from World War II contains 343 Informational pamphlets, government reports, instructions, regulations, declarations, speeches, and propaganda materials distributed by the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) during the Second World War.

Archive's Moving Images library of free movies, films, and videos. Film collections that are especially helpful for American Studies include the Prelinger Archives, the Cultural & Academic Films, and the News & Public Affairs items.

Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today.

The Voices of Democracy project is designed to promote the study of great speeches and public debates. The emphasis of the project is on the actual words of those who, throughout American history, have defined the country’s guiding principles, debated the great social and political controversies of the nation’s history, and shaped the identity and character of the American people.