General Information Sources

Full-text searchable access to the complete backfile of Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2002), a major African American community newspaper.  Includes original page images digitized from microfilm.

Full-text searchable access to the complete backfile of New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993), a major African American community newspaper.  Includes original page images digitized from microfilm.

Full-text searchable access to the complete backfile of Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005), a major African American community newspaper.  Includes original page images digitized from microfilm.

Full-text searchable access to the complete backfile of Atlanta Daily World (1931-2003), a major African American community newspaper.  Includes original page images digitized from microfilm.

ArticlesPlus is perhaps best described as "Google for the library's online content - without the ads!" From a simple single search box, ArticlesPlus searches full-text content as well as metadata from a wide variety of sources and returns a list of relevancy-ranked results.  Over 6,800 publishers are represented in ArticlesPlus, totaling over a half-billion articles from nearly 100,000 journals, newspapers and magazines.

Note:  Access to the ArticlesPlus index is open to all users; but access to the full text of articles through the MGet It buttons is generally restricted to current faculty, students, and staff of the University of Michigan.

Sanborn maps are large-scale plans of American cities and towns, created 1867-1970.  They were created to assist fire insurance companies to assess the risk associated with insuring a property.  The maps were drawn at a scale of 50 feet to one inch.  ProQuest Sanborn Maps Geo Edition provides geo-coding and indexing by address for a selection of Sanborn maps.  Searching can be done by address or by latitutde/longitude coordinates.  Maps from different years can be layered, including modern maps using the Google Map interface.

Eight states are included:  Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia. 

Cities included: Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Richmond, Seattle and Washington DC.

For other all areas use Digital Sanborn Maps 1867-1970, without geo-coding.

Filmakers Library Online provides over 1000 documentary films (over 800 hours), originally distributed by Filmakers Library.  Films are on a variety of topics such as health, history, education, gender studies and psychology.  MLibrary has Filmakers Library Online Volume 1 and Volume 2.

Each film has a transcript; many include filmmaker biography and notes. Clips and playlists can be created, saved and shared. Videos can be downloaded to an Apple OS or Android phone, available for 48 hours. 

Music Online is a cross-searchable portal of audio and video products from Alexander Street Press, including American Song, Classical Music Library, Dance in Video, Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Jazz Music Library, Opera in Video, and Smithsonian Global Sound.

Upon completion, American History in Video will contain over 5700 documentary films and newsreels (over 2000 hours) of significant events in U.S. history, in streaming video. Each film includes a transcript. Clips and playlists can be created, saved and shared. Videos can be downloaded to an Apple OS or Android phone, good for 48 hours.