raries
Group and the California
Digital Library are exploring ways of improving access to
primary materials. For historians of the Cold War, as for scholars
generally, such databases bring to the desktop the ability to search
enormous bibliographic and archival collections. They also require new
skills on the part of scholars and students and new partnerships between
faculty members and technologically savvy librarians.
I can only touch on the Web sites (and services) offered by national libraries and archives around the world. Ready, Net, Go! Archival Internet Resources, a Tulane University Web site serving professional archivists, contains an extensive "meta index," or index of archival indexes such as the European Archival Network or UNESCO's Archives in the World. Examples of national archive Web pages include the Bundesarchiv Online (Germany), the Österreichische Staatsarchiv (Austria), the Archives Nationales of France and Great Britain's venerable Public Record Office. Cold War historians will find information of interest at the NATO archives (see below), and at the Historical Archives of the European Communities in Florence, which holds archival collections dating from the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951, through the creation of The European Union (EU) by the Maastricht Treaty. ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia is an overview (online) of Russian Archives, drawn from the ArcheoBiblioBase information system on archival repositories in the Russian Federation, maintained by Patricia Kennedy Grimsted in collaboration with Rosarkhiv, the Federal Archival Service of Russia. For the more detailed print edition, see Grimsted, Archives of Russia: A Directory and Bibliographic Guide to Holdings in Moscow and St. Petersburg (Armonk, NY, and London: M.E. Sharpe Publishers, 2000). For background on Soviet archives, see especially Grimsted's report, "Archives in Russia Seven Years After," Research Report 20, on the Cold War International History Project Web site. The Web site of the Open Society Archives, a Soros Foundation project, contains extensive guides to the Archive's holdings on Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, including (among many other things) the research files of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. For an introduction to Chinese archival sources, see the Chinese History Research Site at the University of California, San Diego.
Scholarship On-LineThe work of historians and their students is also being transformed by the widespread online availability of scholarly journals. Indeed, H-Diplo, the H-NET discussion list dedicated to the study of diplomatic and international history, lists over fifty journals accessible in whole or part through the Web. Back issues of many journals, including the Journal of American History and the American Historical Review, are available through JSTOR, the large database of scholarly journals to which many libraries now subscribe.
Primary Sources On-lineIn addition to online databases and other bibliographic guides, libraries, government agencies and other public and private organizations are placing more and more of the historical record online. For example, the University of Michigan's outstanding government documents collection University of Michigan Documents Center includes many valuable resources. Cold War scholars will be especially interested in its extensive collection of documents, indexes and links on U.S. Foreign Policy. The Yale University Law School has created a rich documentary archive on U.S. foreign relations, the Avalon Project on the Foreign Relations of the United States. Both the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the Library of Congress offer online materials on the Cold War. For an overview of documents, together with finding aids and other resources available through the National Archives, for example, see The Cold War Era: Records and Research at the National Archives and Records Administration. Many of the presidential libraries, in addition to extensive guides to their own collections, have digitiz