Research & Subject Guides: History of Food: WEB SITES

Audio-Visual Collections

There are an increasing number of excellent web sites that have historic audio-visual material.

YouTube - Great resource for finding speeches and historic news items, as well as musical and cinematic trasures.

Internet Archive - Probably the best overall collection of audio-visual material that could be used for primary sources. The Archive currently contains almost 400,000 moving images and nearly 700,000 audio items, along with software and other material.

American Memory Motion Pictures - Sixteen different collections of motion pictures from the Library of Congress, including:

History.com - Web site from the History Channel. Covers numerous topics, with video and other media.

Primary Source Materials: Moving Images and Sound Recordings - An excellent guide to finding primary soruce material from the Media Resources Center at the University of California Berkeley.

Photography Collections

Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog
More than 1.2 million digitized images from the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC), including photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters, and architectural and engineering drawings. While international in scope, the collections are particularly rich in materials produced in, or documenting the history of, the United States and the lives, interests and achievements of the American people.
American Memory Photography & Print Collections
Sixty-six different collections, including Selected Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865; Chicago Daily News Photographs, 1902-1933; Edward S. Curtis's North American Indian Photographs, Ca. 1900; Daguerreotype Photographs, 1839-1864; William P. Gottlieb Photographs from the Golden Age of Jazz 1938-1948; and three collections on Women’s Suffrage, 1850-1938. Some overlap with the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog.
New York Public Library Digital Gallery
The Digital Gallery provides free and open access to over 700,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more.

Featured Web Sites

The Food Bibliography
An on-line resource providing a growing data base of bibliographic materials for researchers in the field of food history and, more generally, food studies. It is meant to help ensure the circulation of information to the increasing number of scholars working in these fields. The bibliography (presently version 3.2) contains some 18,750 records in 8 different languages (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese and Dutch). Special attention has been devoted to areas that are not usually covered by on-line library catalogues: articles appearing in journals, papers printed in conference proceedings, etc.
A feminist food studies bibliography
The Feminist Food Studies Bookshelf
Food Timeline
Ever wonder how the ancient Romans fed their armies? What the pioneers cooked along the Oregon Trail? Who invented the potato chip...and why? So do we!!! Food history presents a fascinating buffet of popular lore and contradictory facts. Some experts say it's impossible to express this topic in exact timeline format. They are correct. Most foods are not invented; they evolve.

General History Websites

Library of Congress Digital Collections
Coverage varies. Free and open access to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. A digital record of American history and creativity. From the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions.

Making of America Project (Cornell)
Digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. This site provides access to 267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints.
Internet History Sourcebooks Project Collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts. The main sourcebooks have primary documents for Ancient, Medieval, and Modern history. Other subsidiary sourcebooks include: African, East Asian, Global, Indian, Jewish, Islamic, Lesbian/Gay, Science, Women.
Voice of the Shuttle
Searchable database of websites for research in the Humanities; includes a large section of primary and secondary material about European History.
Best of History Web Sites
Best of History Web Sites contains annotated links to over 1200 history web sites as well as links to hundreds of quality K-12 history lesson plans, history teacher guides, history activities, history games, history quizzes, and more.

Historic Menus

New York Public Library’s Restaurant Menu Collection
Approximately 45,000 menus dating from the 1840s to the present, The New York Public Library’s restaurant menu collection is one of the largest in the world, used by historians, chefs, novelists and everyday food enthusiasts. Trouble is, the menus are very difficult to search for the greatest treasures they contain: specific information about dishes, prices, the organization of meals, and all the stories these things tell us about the history of food and culture.
Nestlé Library Restaurant Menus Collection
Menus from a wide variety of restaurants; everything from fine dining to quick service.
Los Angeles Public Library Menu Collection
Database of menus stored in the Rare Book Room of the Central Library, with some images of the actual menus.

History of Food: WEB SITES

Audio-Visual Collections

Photography Collections

Featured Web Sites

General History Websites

Historic Menus

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