links of interest on the web

This listing is not meant to be all-inclusive, but rather to provide a starting point for the exploration of business and economic history materials available on the Web. Many of the links provided will lead to other useful resources. We concentrate primarily on academic sites and on materials useful for teaching and research. Except for journal subscription information, we generally do not include sites that require payment, and we include commercial sites only if they offer free on-line examples of materials.

Please send corrections or suggestions for additions to the BHC Web Editor.

Items marked with an * are Business History Conference resources.

Meta-Lists	Organizations	E-mail Lists	Blogs	Journals
Magazines	Book Series	Prizes	Grants	Centers
Working Papers	Museums	Archives	Libraries	Audio-Visual
Documents	Data Sets	Web Exhibits	Topics	Tools
Consulting Firms

meta-lists

organizations

e-mail lists

*H-Business
Index of H-Net Lists
EH.Net Lists
Business-Research
Histoire_Eco
Euro-Business-History
H-Southern-Industry
Management-History
NEP-HIS (business and economic history papers from RePEc--see Working Papers section)

blogs

HNN's Cliopatria Bloglist
Economists' Blogs
Business History Matters, The History Factory
Echoes
Hagley Library Blog
SHOT Newsnet
Adam Smith Lives, Sandra Peart (History of Economics)
AMHE, Asociación Mexicana de Historica Económica
Autos and Economics, Michael Smitka
The Business History Blog, Kevin Tennent
The Conscience of a Liberal, Paul Krugman
East Asian Business History
Economic History Blog
Economic History of the World, Simun Selak
Finance: History and Policy, Robert C. Wright
Grasping Reality..., Brad DeLong
Guided by History, Wells Fargo
History Talk, Paula Petrik
Legal History Blog
Liberty and Power, Jon Bean (part of group blog)
NEP-HIS, Bernardo Batiz-Lazo
NIRFF (Network of Interdiciplinary Research in Family Firms), Paloma Fernández
Old Is the New New, Rob MacDougall
On Capitalism, etc., Colleen Dunlavy
Organizations and Markets, Nicolai Foss, Richard Langlois, et al.
The Past Speaks (Andrew Smith)
Per Hansen (in Danish)

journals

magazines and newspapers

Most of these journals have some free content but complete access requires a subscription. Many academic libraries carry institutional subscriptions.

working papers

museums

Hagley Museum and Library
Baltimore Museum of Industry
Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation
Computer History Museum
Henry Ford Museum
Lowell National Historical Park
The Money Museum
Musée des Arts et Métiers
Museum of American Financial History
National Iron and Steel Heritage Museum
National Railway Museum, York, UK
National Museum of American History, Division of Work and Industry
National Postal Museum, Smithsonian Institution
Tax History Museum

libraries and links: holdings, guides, finding aids

Company Histories (large sampling from International Directory of Company Histories)
Guide to Business History at the Library of Congress
Master Companies List, Library of Congress
Finding Aids for the Hagley Collections
Business History at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
Business History Research Guide, UK National Archives
Canadian Corporate Reports, McGill Library
Corporate Reports Online, Penn
The European Business Directory
Finding Aids in Business History, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center
First Industrial Revolution, UCLA
Guide to Australian Business Records
Guide to Business History, British National Archives
Guide to Business History at LSE
Guide to Business History, Thomas Long Library, University of California, Berkeley
Guide to Lehman Brothers Collection, HBS
Guide to R. G. Dun Business Records
Hartman Center Collection Guides
Harry W. Bass Business History Collection, University of Oklahoma
National UK Catalogue of Printed Company Reports (locations, not digitized reports)
PEAES Guide to Economic History Research in the Philadelphia Area
Research at the Chemical Heritage Foundation Museum
Sources for Research in Railroad History, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, UConn
Web Guide to Photograph Collections, HBS

audio and video resources (This section contains links to historical and documentary films; links to entertainment-style films are still to come.)

The Internet Archive, massive audio and video collection, searchable by topic
MATRIX Audio Resources Links
Library of Congress
- Library of Congress Moving Image Finding Aid
- Library of Congress Recorded Sound Collections Guide
- America at Work, America at Leisure: Motion Pictures, 1894-1915, Library of Congress
- Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry
- Films of the Westinghouse Works, Library of Congress
- Motion Picture and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies, Library of Congress
AdViews, Duke University Library
AFSCME Radio Spots
All-Ohio Economic History Seminar, archived recordings
American History audio and video clips
Aural and Video Histories, from the Lemelson Center
Business in History, Louis Galambos at the Library of Congress
Chicago Board of Trade Documentary, "My Word Is My Bond"
Detroit News 1920s Newsreels
Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project, UC Santa Barbara Library
Historians on the Record, Podcasts from the Gilder Lehrman Institute
Historical Audio and Video
Historical Voices, MATRIX, Michigan State University
History and Politics Out Loud, Northwestern University
Library of American Broadcasting Soundbites, University of Maryland
Prelinger (Video) Archives
Radio News Clips, from Radio Days
Tupperware!
U.S. Labor and Industrial History WWW Audio Archive
Video-based Lesson Plans from PBS Frontline
Voices of History, from the British Library

documents and e-texts

Archive for the History of Economic Thought, McMaster University
Classic Works in Economic History, from SUNY-Oswego
EuroDocs: Primary Historical Documents from Western Europe
Making of America, primary source collection
UCLA's Gross Collection of Rare Books in Business and Economics, Internet Archive
Avalon Project, Historical Legal Documents; a sampling:
- Alexander Hamilton's Opinion on the Bank of the United States
- Charter of the Dutch West India Company
- The Currency Act, 1764 (Britain)
- Jackson's Veto Message, Bank of the United States
- John Law, "Money and Trade Considered
Arthur H. Cole, "What Is Business History?"
Lorna Daniells, Studies in Enterprise
Albert Fink, "An Investigation into the Cost of Transportation on American Railroads," Google Books
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and Economics
"The Great Mirror of Folly", from Beinecke Library, Yale
Hamilton, "Report on Manufactures," 1791 Google Books
Historical Trade Directories (England and Wales, 1750-1919)
Horatio Alger Books Online, Google Books
John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
The Lowell Offering
Virginia Penny, The Employments of Women
Harriet H. Robinson, Loom and Spindle, or Life Among the Early Mill Girls
Ida Tarbell, The Business of Being a Woman
Frederick Winslow Taylor Collection, Stevens Institute of Technology
Taylor, Principles of Scienfific Management, full text
William Whyte, The Organization Man

data sets, statistics, and annual reports

AHDS History Data Service (UK)
Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP)
Databases from EH.Net
European State Finance Database
Federal Reserve Data
FirstGov Data and Statistics Portal
Business Plan Archive (use requires approval)
Columbia Historical Annual Reports
Global Price and Income History Group
Historical Census Browser, University of Virginia
Historical Edgar Data (SEC)
Historical Financial Statistics
Historical Statistics of Canada
Historical Statistics of Japan
ICPSR, University of Michigan
IISH List of Datafiles of Historical Prices and Wages
Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), from the University of Minnesota
IPUMS, International Series
IRIN Annual Reports Online
Measuring Worth (Annualized Growth Rate of Various Historical Economic Series)
NBER Data Sets
Northwest Historical Annual Reports, University of Washington
Oxford Latin American History Database
Penn World Table
Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, Library of Congress
Slavery Era Insurance Registry
Slave Trade Database
Statistical Abstracts of the United States
US Government Statistics Gateway page

digitized materials and on-line exhibits

Searchable Database of Digital Exhibitions
Hagley On-Line Exhibits
Hagley Digitized Holdings
HBS Working Knowledge on Business History
Remembering Alfred Chandler, HBS Working Knowledge
Exhibits from Harvard Business School
- American Business Leaders of the Twentieth Century
- Bubbles, Panics, and Crashes
- Buy Now, Pay Later: A History of Personal Credit
- Coin and Conscience
- Emergence of Ring Spinning
- The Funny Side of the Street: Cartoons from the WSJ
- The High Art of Photographic Advertising
- Historical Returns: Linking Ideas across Time
- The Human Factor
- Human Relations Movement (Hawthorne Experiments)
- Marketing in the Modern Era
- Railroads and the Transformation of Capitalism
- Sunk in Lucre's Sordid Charms: South Sea Bubble Resources in the Kress Collection
The 1907 Crisis in Historical Perspective
The Advertising Century
Advertising from Harper's Weekly
Early Advertising of the West, 1867-1918
Agents Wanted: Subscription Publishing in America
Alcohol, Temperance, and Prohibition, Brown University Library
Alexander Hamilton Exhibit, New-York Historical Society
Antique Prints of Bankers, Minting, and Money
The Automobile in American Life and Society
The Basics of Business History: 100 Events That Shaped a Century
Before e-Commerce: A History of Canadian Mail-Order Catalogues
Beyond Face Value: Depictions of Slavery in Confederate Currency
Beyond Steel: An Archive of Lehigh Valley History and Culture
Big Business: Food Production, Processing & Distribution in the North 1850-1900, American Antiquarian Society
Black Gold: Canada's Oil Heritage
A Brief History of Marketing, from Advertising Age
British Steel Collection
Burroughs Corp. Image Database, from the Charles Babbage Institute
Business Machinery from HarpWeek
California Business History
Canadian Mail-Order Catalogues
Canadian-Pacific Railway Company, UBC Library
Captured: America in Color, 1939-1943, Farm Security Admin. photos
Central Pacific Railroad Photographic Museum
Centro On Line Storia e Cultura dell'Industria
The Circus in America
Coins and Currency in Early America, Colonial Williamsburg
Currency Exhibit from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
Dates in Business History (French)
Digital Accounting Collection, University of Mississippi Libraries
Digital Fordism
Digital Library on American Slavery, searchable on topics such as "property owners"
Dime Novels and Penny Dreadfuls
Du Franc à l'Euro," an illustrated history of French money (in French)
The Early Office Museum
Early Advertising of the West, 1867-1918
Economic History of the Ottoman Empire, University of Connecticut
Economy and Society of the Low Countries
eHistory at Ohio State, several business and economic history topics
Enterprising Images: The Goodridge Brothers
Exploration, the Fur Trade, and the Hudson's Bay Company
Fill 'er Up: A Historical Look at Service Stations
Financial Multimedia, Ohio State
Flint Sit-Down Strike, from Historical Voices Project at MSU
Freshly Brewed: The Coffee Trade and the Port of New Orleans
Geography of Slavery in Virginia, includes database of runaway ads
German Hanseatic League
Glovers of Fulton County
The Great Depression, Gilder Lehrman Center
Great Projects: The Building of America, from PBS
Hartman Center, Duke University Library
- Ad*Access
- AdViews
- Emergence of Advertising in America
- Medicine and Madison Avenue
- Road 2.0: Resource of Outdoor Advertising Descriptions
Haymarket Affair Digital Collection Chicago Historical Society
Hazardous Business: Industry Regulation and the Texas Railroad Commission
History of Canadian Mail-Order Catalogues
History of Capitalism, Colleen Dunlavy
History of Economic Thought, New School
History of the Borsa Italiana (in Italian)
Images of Labor and Urban Affairs, Reuther Library, Wayne State University
Images of the Industrial Era
Immigrant Entrepreneurship: German-American Business Biographies, 1790 to the Present, German Historical Institute
The Industrial Revolution and the Railway System, Mt. Holyoke College
"Industrialization", BBC Society and Culture Series
In Pursuit of Adventure, Fur Trade in Canada
J C Penney Dynamo Newsletters, Southern Methodist University
Josiah Barker's "Negro Ledger Book,1808-11," University of Delaware
Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera, New-York Historical Society
Library of Congress Exhibits
- An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Printed Ephemera
- 50th Anniversary of the Marshall Plan
- The Haymarket Affair
- Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era
- Railroad Maps, 1828-1900
- Uniting a Nation: Bell and Morse
- Working in Paterson
- The Wright Brothers Papers
Lightning Fast: Wells Fargo and the Pony Express—150 Years
Lost Labor
Making Steel in Pennsylvania
Making the Macintosh: Technology and Culture in Silicon Valley, Stanford University Library
McCormick-International Harvester
Money: Past, Present, and Future, from Roy Davies
A Nation of Shopkeepers: Trade Ephemera from 1654 to the 1860s, Bodleian Library
New Deal Network
New York Public Library Digital Galleries
- Art from the George Arents Collection on Tobacco
- GM Cars and Trucks, 1902-1938
- Henry George and the Single Tax
- Taking the Wheel: Manufacturers' Catalogs from the First Decade of American Automobiles
Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Labor Prints , Georgia State University Library
The Old Country in the New World: St. Clair, a 19th-Century Coal Community, American Philosophical Society
Origins of Business Images
Philadelphia on Stone: Commercial Lithography in Philadelphia, 1828-1878
Picturing Business in America: Headcuts from the Wall Street Journal
Picturing Business: The Photography of Fortune, 1930-1965
Postal Service in Colonial America, bibliography from the Smithsonian
Probing the Past: Virginia and Maryland Probate Inventories, 1740-1810
The Pullman Era
Radical Responses to the Great Depression
Railroads and the Making of Modern America
Risky Business: Winning and Losing in the Early American Economy
Savings Bank History, Savings Banks Museum, Scotland
Shifting Gears: The Automobile Industry in St. Louis, 1890-1930, Missouri History Museum
Silicon Valley History OnLine
The Silk Road
Silk Road Images and Documents, International Dunhuang Project
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
- Doodles, Drafts, and Designs: Industrial Drawings from the Smithsonian
- The Making of a Homemaker
- Parcel Post: Delivery of Dreams
- From Horses to Horsepower: Studebaker Helped Move a Nation
- Underwater Web: Cabling the Seas
- Taking to the Skies: The Wright Brothers and the Birth of Aviation
Southern New England Telephone Company, 1878-1928
Spinning the Web, on the Lancashire Cotton Industry
Stock Ticker History
Teaching with Historical Places (National Park Service): Examples
- Lesson Plans by Topic
- Boott Cotton Mills
- Chesapeake & Ohio Canal
- Hopewell Furnace: A Pennsylvania Iron-making Plantation
- Madame C. J. Walker and J. C. Penney
The Telephone, PBS American Experience On-line Materials
Temperance and Prohibition, Ohio State University (created by Austin Kerr)
This Month in Business History
Thomas A. Edison Papers
Traces of Advertising Giants, University of Texas
Trade Products in Early Modern History, from the James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota
Trading Places: British East India Company, 1600-1834
US Steel Gary Works Photograph Collection
U.S. Trademark History Timeline
Virtual Motor City, Reuther Library
Virtual Museum of the SEC
Walter B. Wriston Archives, Tufts University
The Way We Worked, US National Archives
Work and Industry, On-line Exhibitions, NMAH

specific topics (a few examples of what can be found by searching under specific themes.)

Women in Business History
World's Fairs
- Progress Made Visible: American World's Fairs and Expositions, University of Delaware Library
- Revisiting the World's Fairs and International Expositions
- The Great Exhibition, 1851
- Crystal Palace, from McGill University
- International Exhibitions 1851-1951, from Glasgow University Library
- Centuries of Progress: American World's Fairs, 1853-1982
- A Treasury of World's Fair Art & Architecture, University of Maryland Library
- World's Fairs and the Landscapes of the Modern Metropolis
- National Gallery of Art Exposition Images
- Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia, 1876
- World's Columbian Exposition, 1893
- World's Columbian Exposition, 1893
- Paris, 1900, Exposition universelle
- Paris Exhibitions, 1899, 1900, and others
- Les vestiges des expositions universelles de Paris
- St.Louis, 1904
- St. Louis, 1904, St. Louis Public Library Exhibit
- Century of Progress, 1933-1934
- Century of Progress, 1933-1934
- Century of Progress, 1933-1934
- Century of Progress, 1933-1934
- New York World's Fair, 1939
- New York World's Fair, 1964
Trade Cards
- Cigarette Cards, New York Public Library
- Cigarette Trade Cards, Wisconsin Historical Society
- Fulton Street Trade Card Collection
- Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards
- Ivory Project: Advertising Soap in America, NMAH
- "Mikado"-Themed Trade Cards
- 19th-Century Clipper Ship Trade Cards
- 19th-Century Pharmacists' Trade Cards, Library Company of Philadelphia
- The 19th-Century Trade Card, HBS
- Patent Medicine Advertising, Hagley
- Patent Medicine Trade Card Collection, UCLA
- Sammelbilder Trade Cards
- Smithsonian Institution Libraries' Trade Literature Collections
- Trade Card Collection, NYPL
- Trade Card Exhibit, American Antiquarian Society
- Trade Cards, c. 1886-1890, Chicago Historical Society
- Trade Catalogs, University of Delaware Library
- Victorian Trade Card Collection, Miami University of Ohio
- Warwick/Waddesdon Trade Card Project
- Die Welt der Sammelbidler: Kaufmannsbilder

useful tools

Currency Converter
Early Modern Europe Currency Converter
EH.Net Encyclopedia of Economic and Business History
History Shots, Data Visualization (commercial site)
International Business Resources from GlobalEDGE
International Calling Codes
International Search Engine List
JEL Classifications
Karlsruhrer Virtueller Katalog, simultaneous search in large number of library catalogs
Mendeley, free research management tool (software)
NAICS codes
Portals to the World, Library of Congress links to Electronic Resources around the World
SIC codes
Stock Markets of the World
Voting America, US Politics, 1840-2004
WorldCat, international library search tool
World Clock
Zotero, Firefox add-on for managing research (software)

consulting firms

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Page created March 23, 2009; last updated, January 30, 2013.
Please report corrections or suggestions to the BHC Web Editor.
© 2013 by the Business History Conference.