All Digital Collections

The AdHoc Image and Text Database on the History of Christianity is no longer available. 

Any questions should be directed to divinity.library@yale.edu.

AMEEL holds approximately 350,000 pages of full text, indexed and searchable in the language of publication including Arabic and Western scripts. The full text in AMEEL was originally extracted using Optical Character Recognition software (OCR) rather than re-keying all works, resulting in accuracy rates of higher than 90%. The current version of AMEEL provides OCR data based on the images, and may be considerably less accurate.

What's in AMEEL?

This digitized collection of selected volumes of medical books and manuscripts, dating from 1300 to 1921, is drawn from the Medical Historical Library, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library.  This collection reflects the Arabic and Persian intellectual efforts that translated, augmented, and transmitted Greek and Roman medical knowledge to Western societies during the Renaissance.  It includes iconic works by authors such as Avicenna and al-Razi.

Digital historical documents relevant to the fields of law, economics, politics, diplomacy and government on the World Wide Web. Currently contains, among other things, The debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, reported by James Madison, materials relating to the Nuremberg trials, works by Thomas Jefferson, and materials relating to diplomatic relations between the United States and Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library is Yale University's principal repository for literary papers and for early manuscripts and books in the fields of literature, theology, history, and the natural sciences. The Beinecke houses outstanding special collections devoted to American literature, German literature, Western Americana, and British literary and historical manuscripts. The Beinecke Digital Collections database includes hundreds of thousands of digital reproductions of historical materials in its holdings.

Faber Birren (1900-1988) was a leading authority on the effects of color on humans as well as a dedicated collector of texts on color. The Birren Collection is particularly strong in color systems, color standards, and color nomenclature. Color theory, artists' manuals and treatises, and color techniques are also well represented. In addition, the collection has materials on vision, psychology, printing and the graphic arts, textiles, music, religion, biology, medicine, heraldry, and the occult and ranges from the 16th century to the contemporary.

The Chinese Rare Books at Yale database brings together information about Chinese rare books and manuscripts held primarily in East Asia Library Special Collections in SML and also in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The collection consists predominantly of printed works published before 1796. There are 439 works represented in the database and each record contains extensive bibliographic data and notes, an image of the first page of the text, and a link to the catalog record in Orbis, Yale’s online catalog.

The Classics Collection comprises images from the teaching and research collections of the Classics Department. Some have kindly been provided by members of staff; others have been digitized from the collection that has been built up over the years by students and faculty of the Departments of Classics, History, and History of Art. The collection, which is in the process of development, ranges over the whole Mediterranean world.

Over 6,500 maps in 470 atlases for Connecticut towns ranging from 1880 to 1970 at 1:600 scale.  These highly detailed maps provide building, outbuilding, and property footprints,  labeled streets, addresses, and information about building materials and construction features for urban and residential areas of Connecticut.

The Cushing/Whitney Medical Digital Library is a growing collection of digitized resources made available on the Web for scholarship. The Medical Digital Library Committee coordinates the library's digitization activities. Its goals include expanding access to the library's unique collections for scholarly research, and life-cycle management of digital objects. The collections are powered by Greenstone digital library software.

This digitized collection of annual reports of Christian mission agencies and institutions is drawn from the Day Missions Collection of the Yale Divinity Library. The annual reports, dating primarily from the nineteenth century through the mid‐twentieth century, provide rare and valuable information about events and issues in urban and rural areas on all continents.

This digitized collection of periodicals published by Christian mission agencies and worldwide religious organizations is drawn from the Day Missions Collection of the Yale Divinity Library. The periodicals, dating primarily from the nineteenth century through the mid‐twentieth century, provide documentation not only of the agencies and organizations' own activities in evangelization, education, and medical work, but also about the cultures in which they were active.

This collection consists of photographs from manuscript and archival collections held at the Divinity Library. Currently the photographs in this collection relate primarily to missions and world Christianity. They include the Divinity Library's contributions to the International Mission Photography Archive hosted by the University of Southern California, as well as photographs previously delivered by the Library's China Colleges and Universities Image Database. The photographs date from 1855 to 1978.

A selection of Mexican state statistical abstracts and a selection of Nigerian commodity price statistics volumes from the Yale University Library’s Economic Growth Center Library Collection have been digitized and are available:  

• Annual state statistical abstracts of Mexico, spanning the years 1994-2000 for all 31 Mexican states.
• Annual data are available at the state and municipal level and cover a variety of social and economic indicators including education level, employment, agricultural and industrial production and service sector activity.

The EIKON Image Database for Biblical Studies is no longer available.

Any questions should be directed to divinity.library@yale.edu.

Edward Mandell House was born July 26, 1858 in Houston, Texas. He became active in Texas politics and served as an advisor to President Woodrow Wilson, particularly in the area of foreign affairs. One of America's greatest diplomats, he served as Wilson's chief negotiator in Europe (1917-1919) and as chief deputy for Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference. His major achievements were participating in the drafting of Wilson's Fourteen Points and the Covenant of the League of Nations; and securing an armistice based on American ideals. He died on March 28, 1938 in New York City.

Short interviews with book artist Richard Minsky about specific items in the Archive are available. Each interview sheds light on Minsky’s creative process and situates the artifacts in the Archive into the picture of his career. Recounted with Minsky’s characteristic humor, the interviews are entertaining as well as educational.

Scholars and students accessing the Israel Sack, Inc., Archive will find records of more than 2,600 objects that were sold by the firm of Israel Sack, Inc., during its nearly 100 years of operation. Lithuanian immigrant Israel Sack started a furniture repair business in Boston in 1903, relocating to New York City in the early 1930s, and was later joined in the operation by his three sons, Harold, Albert, and Robert. Until the business closed its doors in 2002, it was the premier vendor for early American furniture, due in large part to the knowledge and experience of the Sack family.

The collection of digital images represents a portion of the Lewis Walpole Library’s collections of eighteenth-century British prints, drawings, ephemera, and material related to the world in which Horace Walpole lived. Topics covered include politics, fashion, famous figures, notable places, society, daily life, trade, architecture, collecting, antiquities, the performing arts, fine and decorative arts, natural history, and more.

Manuscripts and Archives houses more than 1700 collections of personal and family papers and organizational records, the Yale University Archives, Yale publications, and over 12,000 hours of video testimonies from Holocaust survivors, liberators, and witnesses in the Fortunoff Video Archive. The Yale Library digital repository contains reproductions of photographs, posters, drawings, text documents, and other materials from our holdings. These reproductions comprise only a small percentage of the department’s materials and should be seen as a starting point for research.

The Manuscripts and Archives Digital Library contains digital reproductions of photographs, posters, drawings, text documents, and other images taken from the research collections of Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. These images comprise only a small percentage of the department's holdings, being those requested by departmental patrons over the past several years.

Original woodblock or brush ink texts and translations of Han Nom texts into modern Romanized Vietnamese collected by Maurice Durand, a prominent Vietnamese/French scholar of Han Nom from the mid-20th century. Han Nom script uses classical Chinese characters to represent Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and some native Vietnamese words, while other words are represented using locally created characters based on the Chinese model.

A collection of late 18th-century and 19th-century treatises in music theory. These materials focus on important late eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century writings in music theory (tonality, harmony, counterpoint, rhythmic theory, form, pedagogy of musical composition) and musical aesthetics. Authors such as Albrechtsberger, Cherubini,  Czerny, Fetis, Lussy, Marx, Reicha, Riemann, Vogler, and more are represented. 

The South Asia Collection at Yale began in earnest in the 1840s after Prof. Edward Salisbury began teaching Sanskrit and consequently endowed the Edward E. Salisbury Professorship of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology. Through the Arcadia grant, the South Asia Collection at Yale University is expanding its digital presence. Twenty Persian philology books, some of which were signed by Salisbury himself, were cataloged, preserved, and digitized.

Established in 2010, the James J. Ross Archive of African Images (RAAI) contains approximately 5000 images of figurative African art published before 1921. RAAI is the result of an eight-year collaboration between James J. Ross and Susan Vogel, the project's co-directors. The Archive aspires to include all figurative African objects in books, periodicals, catalogues, and other publications appearing prior to 1921 - the oldest dates to 1591.

This digitized collection of selected photographs and posters documenting productions at the Yale School of Drama and Yale Repertory Theatre, 1927-2001, is drawn from the larger collection of Yale School of Drama Photographs and Posters, RU 397, housed in Manuscripts and Archives.

Collection Contents

The papers consist of correspondence, memoranda, writings, speeches, photographs and other material that document the career of the diplomat, author and foreign policy expert and scholar Henry A. Kissinger.  Dr. Kissinger served as United States secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 and as assistant to the president for national security affairs (national security advisor) from 1969 to 1975.

The New England Indian Papers Series is a scholarly critical edition of New England Native American primary source materials gathered into one robust virtual collection. It offers students, educators, researchers, Native communities, and the general public, visual and intellectual access to significant historical knowledge for the purposes of teaching, scholarly analysis, and research.

The Yale Visual Resources Collection (VRC) manages collections of images related to global art, architecture and material culture to support teaching and research in the Arts and Humanities.  The VRC digital image collection contains more than 370,000 items.

The Silk Road, as an interconnected web of trade routes linking the ancient societies of Asia with those of the Subcontinent and the Near East, has contributed to the development of most of the world's great civilizations. The Yale Silk Road Database presents over 11,000 images of major sites in the Silk Road region taken during faculty site seminars led by Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan (Professor, History of Art) under the auspices of the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University in the summers of 2006-2010.