Full-Text Resources

Family History Books

Family History Books is a substantial collection of digitized books from many important American family history libraries. Major additions are being made to this collection right now. Check back often.

Internet Archive

Archive.org has a large collection of family histories and local history material. It offers downloads for ebook reading devices as well as for PDF, plain text, and online viewing of books with a search function.

Google Books

Among Google's digital books, look for family and local histories and directories.

Our Roots / Nos Racines : Canada's Local Histories Online

Our Roots is a collection of Canadian local histories in French and English that can be viewed and searched online.

Chronicling America – American Newspapers

Search and view America's historic newspapers from 1836-1922 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.

Making of America Digital Library (University of Michigan)

MOA is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. Of greatest interest to genealogists are some state and county histories and directories.

Online Archive of California

The Online Archive of California provides detailed descriptions of primary resource collections held by 200 contributing institutions throughout California and the 10 University of California campuses. Some of these collection descriptions link to image files of books and other documents.

WorldCat

Use WorldCat to find libraries owning actual books.

You will find books on many other web sites as well. Be sure to check for online collections on library, museum, historical society or university web pages.