I am pleased to report that the Vere Harmsworth Library has organised trial access to two ProQuest History Vault databases for Bodleian Readers: Planning for the Post-World War II World, State Department Records of Harley A. Notter and Revolutionary War and Early America: Collections from the Massachusetts Historical Society. The trial for both databases runs from the 8th May-7th June, 2025.
Find out more about both databases below:
Planning for the Post-World War II World
Planning for the Post World War II World: State Department Records of Harley A. Notter, 1939-1945 chronicles U.S. planning for postwar peace and spans nearly 300,000 pages. Declassified in 1974, the Notter File contains virtually all extant records of the State Department’s intensive wartime planning, as well as those of several bodies (notably the Policy Committee and the Committee on Postwar Programs) where actual policies were developed and implemented.
Many scholars regard the State Department files assembled by Dr. Harley A. Notter-a key State Department official during the war years-as one of the most important primary sources on postwar planning. The documents in the Notter records detail the foundations on which much of post-1945 U.S. foreign policy was built. The Notter collection includes research reports, official policy papers, memoranda, meeting minutes, State Department organization charts, and many other internal documents.
You can access Planning for the Post World War II World: State Department Records of Harley A. Notter, 1939-1945 using your Single Sign On here.
Revolutionary War and Early America
This module on one of the most-studied periods in American history consists of 26 collections from the holdings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the first North American historical society and the first library to devote its primary attention to collecting Americana. The collections digitized by ProQuest from the holdings of the Massachusetts Historical Society focus on the Colonial Era, the Revolutionary War and the Early National Period, with some collections extending into the Civil War era.
The collections include:
- Papers of key individuals such as Benjamin Lincoln, Artemas Ward and Samuel Cabot.
- Papers of key families spanning generations, such as the Revere and Hancock Family Papers.
- Military records such as Orderly Books for French & Indian War and Revolutionary War, recording day to day activities of specific units.
- 275 individual Pre-Revolutionary Era Diaries (1635-1774), written by more than 109 individuals from a range of working backgrounds and professions.
- Organisation papers of the Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society Papers, one of the earliest American philanthropic organisations of it’s type. This includes petitions from those who had lost property from fire, and sometimes included detailed inventories of property and furniture.
You can access Revolutionary War and Early America: Collections from the Massachusetts Historical Society using your Single Sign On here.
You may also be interested in our currently ongoing trial of American History: 1493-1945. Find out more via our blogpost.
Please send any feedback you have regarding this resource to bethan.davies@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.
