Cornell University Library Windows on the Past
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The Cornell University Library Windows on the Past is a grouping of selected digital collections of historical significance.     These collections are open to the general public (unless otherwise noted), in accordance with the terms set forth in the Guidelines for Using Text and Images from Cornell Digital Library Collections.
The Cornell University Library offers a wide variety of digital repositories and collections. For a complete list visit our Registry of Digital Collections.

Please click on the images below to view the particular collection:
(NOTE:    = Cornell University Access Only  ).

CHLA is a core electronic collection of agricultural texts published between the early nineteenth century and middle to late twentieth century. Full-text materials cover agricultural economics, agricultural engineering, animal science, crops and their protection, food science, forestry, rural sociology, and soil science.
The Core Historical Literature of Agriculture		 The Cornell University Library and the Cornell Daily Sun are collaborating on an ambitious new digitization project to provide online access to the Sun's historical files. All of the original newspapers will be scanned and made available on a web site maintained by the Cornell University Library.
Cornell Daily Sun Archives		 The Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections and the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives have finding aids for several thousand of their archival and manuscript collections. The two units have begun to put these guides into electronic format using a standardized encoding system called Encoded Archival Description (EAD) that is coming into wide use in archives
Cornell University Archival Guides		 The Cornell University Digital Archives is a collection of historical documents relating to the University
Cornell University Digital Archives		 The papers of Ezra Cornell include over 30,000 scanned pages from letters, diaries, photographs, documents, and publications, and represent the Cornell University Library's first effort to make a large manuscript collection digitally available.
Ezra Cornell Materials
Friend of Man is one of the most significant and little studied newspapers documenting early anti-slavery and other reform movements. The periodical is of special significance because with the exception of religion, scholars know little about the resources of social movements in rural areas such as Central New York, where Friend of Man was published.
Friend of Man		 The Cornell University Historic Math Collection consists of 512 titles. The original collection was scanned as a result of a research collaboration between Cornell University and Xerox Corporation, with the support of the Commission on Preservation and Access in the early 1990's.
Historic Math Book Collection		 441 monographs that were originally scanned in the 1990s as part of a joint digital preservation research project with Cornell University Library and Xerox are now available for online viewing. These books are part of a group of materials that included the Historical Monographs in Mathematics, Cornell Dissertations, New York State Historical Literature, and Core Historical Literature of Agriculture.
Historic Monographs Collection		 History of the Left in Latin America
History of the Left in Latin America		 A History of Social Welfare
A History of Social Welfare
The Hive and the Honeybee consists of the full text of ten books from the E. Franklin Phillips Beekeeping Collection, chosen by a team of scholars for their historical importance and usefulness to beekeepers today. The collection will grow as funding allows. The texts in this digital collection are fully searchable, and will also eventually become part of the Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA).
Hive and the Honeybee Collection		 Funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, HEARTH is a core electronic collection of home economics texts published between the early nineteenth century and mid-twentieth century. The digital library covers home economics in its broadest sense, including applied arts and design; childcare, s; clothing and textiles; food and nutrition; home management; housekeeping and etiquette and more.
The Home Economics Archives		 Magazine and journal publications were an important form of communication during the mid 1800s through 1920s. Written primarily for women by both men and women, these periodicals offer a wide array of views about the roles of women in society and business. Suffrage and anti-suffrage writing, domesticity columns, and literary genres are included.
International Women's Periodicals 		 The Kinematic Models for Design Digital Library (K-MODDL) is an open access, multimedia resource for learning and teaching about kinematics - the geometry of pure motion - and the history and theory of machines. The core of K-MODDL is a collection of late 1th-century model machine elements designed for research and teaching by German engineering professor Franz Reuleaux (1829-1905), founder of modern kinematics and a forerunner of modern design theory of machines. This subset of the collection features electronic versions of 61 articles and monographs.
Kinematic Models for Design Digital Library (e-Books)		 Liberian Law contains documents dealing with the creation of the nation of Liberia and the laws enacted at its foundation. These materials include the Constitution and the Laws of the Commonwealth going back to the Colonization Society.
Liberian Law
The MOA project is a multi-institutional initiative to create and make accessible over the Internet a distributed digital library of important materials on the history of the United States. Cornell University Library and the University of Michigan libraries cooperated in the initial phase of MOA.. This site provides access to 267 monographs and over 100,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints.
The Making of America Collection		 691 monographs and pamphlets that were originally scanned in the early 1990s as part of a joint digital preservation research project with Cornell University Library and Xerox are now available for online viewing. These books are part of a group of materials that included the Historical Monographs in Mathematics, Cornell Dissertations, New York State Historical Literature, and Core Historical Literature of Agriculture.
New York State Historical Collection		 Preservation News, a formerly monthly publication of the Preservation Press of the National Trust for Historic Preservation of the United States, was the official journal of the organization between 1961 and 1995. With a mission to
Preservation News		 Mahesh Chandra Regmi, Nepal's leading historian and archivist opened the Regmi Research Centre in 1959. Regmi was a world-class scholar and in 1977 became the first Nepali to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award for creating the Research Series. The award was granted to him in recognition of his chronicling of Nepal's past and present, enabling his people to discover their origins and delineating national options.
Regmi Research Series		 The Samuel May Anti-Slavery Collection gathers together over 8,500 of the important pamphlet and leaflets relating to the anti-slavery struggle at the local, regional, and national levels. Sermons, position papers, off-prints, local Anti-Slavery Society news letters, poetry anthologies, Freedmen's testimonies, broadsides, and Anti-Slavery Fair keepsakes all document in an intimate manner the social and political implications of the movement.
Samuel May Anti-Slavery Collection
The Data Papers were published by the Cornell University Southeast Asia Program from 1950 through 1982 as a means to foster research and broadcast original scholarship related to an emerging academic field - Southeast Asian Studies. This series includes dictionaries, annotated translations of significant works, fieldwork reports, bibliographies, and historical analyses of important social and political developments in Southeast Asia.
Southeast Asia Program Data Papers		 Southeast Asia Visions is a collection of European travel accounts of pre-modern Southeast Asia from Cornell University Library's John M. Echols Collection. The site provides online access to more than 350 books and journal articles written in English and French. The works in the collection were selected for the quality of their first-hand observations and, together, provide a comprehensive representation of Southeast Asia. Along with their narratives, these accounts include some 10,000 images, drawings, photographs, prints and maps, many of them in color.
Southeast Asia Visions		 This is a collection of correspondence and other papers relating to Robert S. Stevens' work as manager of the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railway and the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, and to his investments in Kansas lands. This collection is dated from 1805 - 1899.
Stevens Family Papers		 'Study of Greek Revival Architecture in the Seneca and Cayuga Lake Regions' by Clifford H. Ruffner, Jr. is a Bachelor Degree of Architecture Thesis from Cornell Universitydated June 1939 with critic William McL. Dunbar.
Study of Greek Revival Architecture		 Selected scanned works from Cornell Library's Witchcraft Collection which contains over 3,000 titles documenting the history of the Inquisition and the persecution of witchcraft.
Witchcraft Collection
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