On this page you will find a collection of links to digital libraries – in the sense of digitized library collections – with a special interest for legal history. Ordering them by country is a random affair, in particular when modern borders do not fit with historical frontiers. The links collections on the pages for the different law systems mention relevant digital libraries. On the page for common law you will find extensive information for the United Kingdom, here you will find a number of general digital libraries. The Netherlands and Belgium, too, are treated more extensively on the page for Old Dutch Law. Materials concerning legal history are of course present elsewhere, too. Currently this page contains information for around eighty countries with a clear focus on digital libraries containing historical collections. Additions and corrections are not only welcome, but really necessary.

The section Other libraries is a first small effort to guide you to collections for legal history for a number of topics and countries in more general digital libraries. Websites for constitutions, treaties and international projects are dealt with in a separate section, with special attention for Asia. The information presented here focuses on freely accessible materials. Major scientific libraries offer access to subscribed websites and databases, often even accessible at home for card holders.

However incomplete these listings are, it is most practical to arrange them along the continents, in alphabetical order Africa, America, Asia – with a section for the Middle East – and Australia. This arrangement shows the gaps or absence of resources more clearly. It should work also as an invitation to submit suggestions.

Their sheer number, variety and qualities prompted me in June 2022 top place digital libraries in Europe on a separate page. For good reasons some special categories with a clear European character will remain here.

For tracking official gazettes the Foreign Official Gazette Database (Center for Research Libraries, Chicago, IL), even though not updated since 2007, is very helpful. CRL has digitized also rare African, Iraqi and Iranian gazettes, these have move to LLMC Digital with gazettes from other countries (licesned access). In some cases older editions have been digitized at the websites for current gazettes which can be found using portals for contemporary law such as Globalex and the World Legal Information Institute. Sometimes the overview at Government Gazettes Online will help you; the list at the English Wikipedia is also helpful. You can also try the Foreign Official Government Gazettes Database (IALS, School of Advanced Studies, London). Another important overview with links to online versions of current gazettes is the Gazette Collection of the Library of Congress. The Law Library of the Library of Congress is the largest law library of the world, with often uniquely rich holdings for many countries. A number of rare gazettes has been digitized, some foreign websites for gazettes have been archived. The Library of Congress created an interactive map of (historical) gazettes. For Latin America you might want to look at the Red de Boletines Oficiales Americanos. The Digital South Asia Library (University of Chicago) offers the International Union LIst of South Asian Newspapers and Gazettes. Harvard Law School Library has digitized a number of issues of official gazettes from some countries in Africa and South-East Asia. Here I aim at mentioning those gazettes for which you can find historical issues online.

I have started to include here also digitized parliamentary proceedings. Legal historians naturally often deal with old books. Thus this page offers also some guidance to old printed books, including incunabula and block books, both in online bibliographies and digital libraries. I mention also a number of online historical bibliographies for European countries. Digitized pamphlets are presented on a separate special page.

Africa

Some general digital libraries:

• Biblioteca Digital, Memórias de África e do Oriente – a project for a digital library concerning countries within the former Portuguese empire (Cabo Verde, Goa, Angola, Mozambique, São Tomé, Guinée-Bissau, Macau)
• African Digital Research Repositories, International African Institute, School of Oriental and African Studies, London – a very rich overview of digital libraries and also some archives
• Internet Library Sub-Saharan Africa (ILSSA), Frankfurt am Main – a digital library and searchable web directory; interface German, English and French
• Africa Online Digital Library, Michigan State University
• Aluka – now part of JSTOR but in Africa free accessible
• African Digital Library – only accessible within Africa after free registration
• African Legal Information Institute (AfricaLII)
• African Constitutions, Oxford Constitutions of the World and Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa, University of Pretoria – constitutions and country reports for African countries
• Database of the Constitutions of Sub-Saharan Africa (DCSSA), Universität Konstanz – with also drafts and proposals
• Laws.Africa – with a subdomain for gazettes, for some countries (Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria) also older issues
• Southern Africa Legal Information Institute (SAFLII)
• Legis-PALOP – a digital legal library for five former Portuguese colonies in Africa, with current materials, and also items created between 1926 and 1975; access after free registration
• African Newspapers Union List (AFRINUL), Center for Research Libraries – a database listing library holdings for African newspapers
• Middle Eastern and North African Newspapers (MENA), CRL and Eastview – with 84 newspapers from 1870 onwards from Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Israel (Palestine), Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi-Arabia and Syria
• Press Archive, Institut Français de Recherche en Afrique (IFRA), Nairobi – digitized newspaper articles, in particular from Kenya
• Publications officielles de l’Afrique, Gallica – a section of this digital library with Francophone gazettes from the French colonial period in Africa
• DigitUNO: Collezioni digitalizzate dell’Università di Napoli “L’Orientale” – digitized books, maps and some manuscripts, all documenting the period of Italy’s colonial empire, for example in Somalia

Algeria

• Bibliothèque virtuelle de l’Université de Alger – a repository functioning as a virtual library with also old books
• Algérie Ancienne – a digital library with numerous old texts

Congo-Kinshasa

• Bulletin officiel du Congo belge (1885-1959), Académie Royale des Sciences d’Outremer, Brussels – the gazette of the former Belgian colony Congo

Egypt

• Digital Assets Repository, Alexandria, Bibliotheca Alexandrina – this digital library contains many juridical works; user interface in Arabic, English or French; in a subdomain you can consult a digital version of the Description de l’Égypte (23 vol., Paris 1809-1829); the BA proudly presents a mirrorsite of the Internet Archive
• Memory of Modern Egypt, Bibliotheca Alexandrina – with books from the last two centuries; interface Arabic
• Rare Books and Special Collections Digital Library, American University in Cairo
• La presse francophone d’Egypte numérisée, Centre d’Études Alexandrines, Alexandria – French journals published in Egypt since 1798
• Archives de la Presse Egyptienne, Bibliotheca Alexandrina and CEDEJ, Chatillon – a database with articles published between 1970 and 2010; interface in Arabic, French and English

The HathiTrust Digital Library has a digitized copy of the second version of the Description de l’Égypte including some of Champollion’s decipherings of hieroglyphs.

Ghana

• Cases in Ghana Land Law – a selection of cases since the nineteenth century

Ivory Coast

• Akwaba, Bibliothèque numérique, Bibliothèque Nationale de Côte d’Ivoire / Gallica

Liberia

• Liberian Law, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, NY – some 1,200 items
• Maps of Liberia 1830-1870, Geography and Maps Division, Library of Congress
• Acts of the Liberian Legislation 1857-1940, Patrick’s Place / Liberiapedia – a guide to laws and acts
• Indiana University Liberian Collections – among the variety of sources are the Liberian constitutions since 1820
• Daily Observer Digital Archive, CRL and Eastview – issues since 1981 of an imprtant newspaper

Morocco

• Bibliothèque numérique, Bibliothèque nationale du Royaume de Maroc, Rabat
• Bibliothèque numérique, Fondation du roi Abdul-Aziz Al Saoud pour les études islamiques et les sciences humaines, Casablanca – with 470 lithographed books, and also digitized manuscripts and a small section Archives marocaines
• Bulletin officiel, Royaume du Maroc – available in Arabic and French, there is a separate page for issues since 1912 of this gazette

Mozambique

• Biblioteca Moçambique, Magno Antunes, Braga – a small digital library on various subjects

Namibia

• Namibian Digital Archive, Polytechnic of Nambia, Utah Valley University and National Archives of Namibia – digitized archival collections, photographs, films and books

Senegal

• Bibliothèque numérique Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar – with some legal works among the ouvrages rares

Somali

• Online Somali Library – a general digital library
• The Digital Somali Library, Indiana University, Bloomington – 137 digitized books, only accessible thourgh the main catalogue

South Africa

• Digital collections, National Library of South Africa – with some books, posters, postcards and a number of newspapers
• Open Gazettes South Africa – a portal to digitized gazettes, both the national gazette and provincial gazettes, with as for now great gaps
• Government gazette, 1910-1961, LLMC – a digital collection in open access, with gaps,195 volumes
• Staatskoerant, 1961-, LLMC – a digital collection in open access, 4442 volumes
• Laws of South Africa: Consolidated Legislation, University of Pretoria
• Statutes of the old South African Colonies, 1714-1910, University of Pretoria
• Native Appeal Court Cases (1894-1971), University of Pretoria
• Digital collections, University of Cape Town Libraries
• SEALS Digital Commons – a platform for the digital collections of several universities

Sudan

• Sudan Open Archive, Rift Valley Institute
• The Mahmoud Salih Collection, Digitalt, Universitetsbiblioteket i Bergen – a general collection of rare books about Sudan
• University of Khartium Repository – with some 400 books
• The Sudan Archive, Durham University – a digital archive with not only archival records, but also governmental reports, maps and official gazettes

Uganda

• World Digital Library: Uganda – some sixty items with thirty books, dealing for example with treaties and land tenure

America

General digital libraries

• Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) – with special attention for law in Cuba and Haiti, and also a number of official gazettes, newspapers, maps and archival materials – see for newspapers now also the project dLOC as Data: A thematic approach to Caribbean newspapers
• The Early Caribbean Digital Archive, Northwestern University
• Manioc, Bibliothèque numérique Caraibe-Amazonie-Plateau des Guyanas – as for now resources from Guadaloupe, Guyana and Martinique, including databases with documents about slavery
• Caribbean Law and Jurisprudence, eCollections, Florida International University Law Library, Miami – acts, ordinances and case law reports from sixteen countries
• Digital collections, George Smathers Libraries, University of Florida – various digital collections, a number of them concerning the Caribbean, for example Cuba and Haiti, and also law, for example the Florida Historical Legal Documents,
• Dutch Caribbean Digital Platform, University of Curaçao – interface English, Dutch, Papiamentu and Spanish
• Caribbean Books, Leiden University Library and KITLV – 950 digitized books, only some 200 in open access
• Biblioteca Digital del Patrimonio Iberoamericano – a project of the Spanish national library and several national libraries in Latin America, with mainly manuscripts, drawings, music scores and old maps, but also early printed works, newspapers and journals; interface in English, Spanish and Portuguese
• Biblioteca americana, Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes
• Civil Codes (1800-1923), eCollections, Florida International University Law Library, Miami – 23 codes of civil law, mainly from Latin America, but also for Spain, Portugal, Japan and the Netherlands
• Latin American, Caribbean, Latina and Iberian free online resources (LACLI), Latin America Northeast Libraries Network (LANE) – a searchable web directory with concise introductions to resources
• Constituciones Hispanoamericanas, Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes
• Bicentenario de las Independencias Iberoamericanas – between 1808 and 1814 many Latin-American countries gained their independence from Spain
• Biblioteca Digital Andina – libraries in Latin-American countries along the Andes
• Latin American Series, Digital Collections, La Trobe University, Melbourne
• Ibero-American Electronic Text Series, University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries – a selection of works
• Latin American Travelogues, Brown University – a digital library with accompanying essays and bibliographies
• Latin American Pamphlet Digital Collection, Widener Library, Harvard University
• Spanish America Collection, Internet Archive – John Carter Brown Library, Brown University – some 4,300 titles, in particular voluminous for Argentina, Chile, Guatemala and Peru
• Americanae, AECID – a Spanish portal to digital collections with Americana, and also a directory of institutions elsewhere for Ibero-American studies
• Indigenous Collection, Internet Archive – John Carter Brown Library – yet another 750 early printed books, this time also in one or more indigenous languages
• De Indiarum iure, Max-Planck-Institut für Rechtsgeschichte und Rechtstheorie, Frankfurt am Main – some forty Early Modern works
• The School of Salamanca, Akademie der Wissenschaften, Mainz – a project for a digital collection with some 120 works and an accompanying historical-political dictionary; interface German
• Biblioteca Digital de los Derechos Humanos, Equipo NIzkor – for Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru
• Biblioteca Digital del ILCE, Instituto Lationamericano de la Comunicación Educativo, Ciudad de México
• Biblioteca Virtual de Prensa Histórica, Ministero de Cultura y Deporte – with a Colección iberamericano
• Legislación Histórica de España, Ministério de Cultura, Madrid – a searchable database with digital facsimiles on both Iberian and Latin-American legislation
• Biblioteca digital, Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, San José, Costa Rica
• Repositorio IIDH, Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos, San José, Costa Rica
• Biblioteca Digital Curt Nimuendaju, línguas e culturas indígenas sul-americanas – a digital library for indigenous languages in South America

Argentina

• Archivo Parlamentario y Museo, Cámara de Diputados – a digital library with information about members, committees, debates and decisions
• Biblioteca Digital de Tratados, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, República Argentina
• Biblioteca Digital, Sala del Tesoro, Biblioteca Nacional de Maestros – with some juridical works from the sixteenth century
• Colecciones digitales, Biblioteca Nacional de Argentina
• Dossier legislativo, Biblioteca del Congreso de la Nación – with presidential messages and legislation since 1854
• Biblioteca digital, Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación Argentina – with for example constitutions
• Biblioteca digital, Ministerio de Justicia y Derechos Humanos de la Nación – with sections for Patrimonio histórico and Política criminal – Archivo histórico
• Horizontes y Convergencias: Lecturas Históricas y Antropológicas sobre el Derecho – an online journal and portal site
• Catalogo, Sistema de Bibliotecas Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina, Buenos Aires – with a Anticuariato for Early Modern printed works; note also the repositorio institucional
• Argentina Collection, John Carter Brown Library – Internet Archive – some 1,600 digitized works
• Gazeta de Buenos Ayres, John Carter Brown Library – Internet Archive – this newspaper was published from 1810 to 1821 and documents the transition to independence
• Projecto Patrimonio Historico, Instituto Ravignani, Buenos Aires – digitized maps, journals, archival and book collections, with for example the source edition Asembleas Constituyentes Argentinas (6 vol., 1935-1937)
• Archivo Histórico de Revistas Argentinas (Ahira)
• Red de Bibliotecas Virtuales, Consejo Latinamericano de Sciencias Sociales
• Biblioteca digital, Biblioteca Jorge Luis Borges, Academia Argentina de Letras

Aruba

• Biblioteca Nacional Aruba – Coleccion Digital, Internet Archive – with subcollections for legislation (wetgeving), government publications, rare works, books in Papiamento, newspapers, maps and audiovisual materials

Bermuda

• Digital collection, Bermuda National Library, Hamilton – mainly newspapers and periodicals

Bolivia

• El Dorado, Biblioteca Virtual Iberoamericano y Caribeña, Archivos y Biblioteca Nacional
• Bolivian Digital Pamphlets Collection, Cornell University – 715 pamphlets from the collection of Alfredo Montano
• Biblioteca del Bicentenario de Bolivia
• Fondo digital de libros antiguos, Biblioteca Municipal de La Paz
• Lexivox – a juridical portal with also older legal documents from 1825 onwards
• Hemeroteca, Vicepresidencia, Biblioteca y Archivo Histórico de la Asamblea Legislativa Plurinacional, La Paz – with a small number of digitized journals and newspapers

Brazil

• Biblioteca Nacional Digital, Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil
• Hemeroteca Digital, Biblioteca Nacional Digital
• Diario de Pernambuco (1825-1924), George Smathers Libraries, University of Florida – the first Brazilian newspaper
• Rede Memória, Biblioteca Nacional – a portal for several major museums, libraries, in particular obras raras of the Senado Federal,  and also some archival collections
• Biblioteca Digital Luso-Brasilieira – a project of the Brazilian and Portuguese national libraries
• Brasiliana USP, Universidade de São Paulo – a general digital library with also works of interest for legal history
• Obras Raras e Especiais, Universidade de São Paulo
• Biblioteca Virtual de Direitos Humanos, Universidade de São Paulo
• Biblioteca Digital, Câmara dos Deputados – with separately the Coleção de leis anuais do Brasil with legislation since 1808
• Biblioteca Digital, Biblioteca do Senado Federal
• Memória Estatística do Brasil, Ministerio da Fazenda no Rio de Janeiro – Internet Archive – some 5,100 works concerning statistics
• Brasilian Government Documents, CRL – provincial and presidential reports, presidential messages and the Almanak Laemmert
• Biblioteca Digital do Superior Tribunal de Justiça – with also digitized information from its own museum
• Biblioteca Digital, Suprema Tribunal Federal
• Julgamentos Históricos, Supremo Tribunal Federal – a selection for this tribunal starting in1891, for the Supremo Tribunal da Justiça (1829-1891) and the Casa da Suplicação (1808-1829)
• Historic Sources of Brasilian Law, Library of Congress – 42 items, some from the Early Modern period, most of them from the nineteenth century
• The Código Brasiliense at the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University – a digitized version of a three volume collection of Brazilian laws printed between 1811 and 1822
• Portugal and Brazil Collection, John Carter Brown Library – Internet Archive – a collection with some 1,800 titles, including the Código Brasiliense
• Diariós Oficiais, JusBrasil – the official gazettes of Brazil, with also older issues
• Legislação histórica, Portal da Legislação, Centro do Estudos Jurídicos – eight sections with text-only versions of legislation
• Anais do Senado Federal – this series for the debates in the Brazilian Senate unfortunately has lacunae
• Biblioteca Digital do Senato Federal – rare books, but also more recent items
• Acervo Historico, Assembleia Legislativa do Senado de São Paulo – various collections usefully presented for four main periods, both archival materials and books
• Biblioteca Digital, Assembleia Legislativa do Senado de São Paulo – here mostly modern works
• Biblioteca Digital, Fundação Alexandre de Gusmão, Ministério das Relaçóes Exteriores – with works on diplomatic history
• Acervo Digital, Biblioteca Brasiliana Guita e José Mindlin, Universidade de São Paulo
• Projetos Especiais, Biblioteca Digital, Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros, São Paulo – some 1,300 works from the sixteenth century onwards; note also the Projeto Brasil-África with some 600 works
• Biblioteca Digital de Coleções Especiais, Biblioteca Central, Universidade de Brasilia
• Biblioteca Digital de Literaturas de Lingua Portugues, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina – interface Portuguese, Spanish, English and French
• Obras raras, Acervo digital, Fundação Cultural do Estado de Pará

Canada

• Digital Library on Comparative Criminal Law, François Lareau, Ottawa – for the history of European penal law
• Canadian Constitutional Documents
• Canadian Parliamentary Historical Resources, Parliament of Canada and Canadiana – digitized debates held in the House of Commons and the Senate from 1867 onwards
• Canadian Hansard 1901-, Lipad – several search possibilities with parliamentary debates, including saving as textual corpus
• The Canada Gazette – official publications of the Canadian government, accessible in two databases, for the period 1841-1997 and from 1998 onwards
• Government publications, Canadiana – with books and journals before 1900; interface English and French; some 10,000 items now also available at JSTOR
• Early Canadiana Online – partially free accessible; the advanced search enables searching for subjects
• British North American Legislative Database, 1758-1867, University of New Brunswick Libraries and Stephanie Pettigrew – legislation for the Canadian territories
• Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales de Québec, Collection Numérique – a great variety of sources, some of them relevant for legal history, for example the Gazette officielle du Québec (1869-1995), with a special index
• British Columbia Reports, University of British Columbia – law reports between 1884 and 1948
• British Columbia Sessional Papers, University of British Columbia – a wide variety in this selection of 3,700 printed items concerning legislation, in two series, 1865-1871 and 1872-1982
• British Columbia Royal and Special Commissions 1872-1980, Legislative Library of British Columbia
• Peel’s Prairie Provinces, University of Alberta Libraries – several digital collections, including one with digitized books, among them bylaws and studies in law
• The CIHM-Monograph Collection, University of Alberta – Internet Archive – nearly 80,000 works scanned from microfilms
• Digital Collections, University of Calgary – among them is the Alberta Law Collection with some 4,000 items
• Osgoode Hall Law Library, Internet Archive – mainly digitized reports from the Ontario Law Reform Commission; also available at the Osgoode Digital Commons
• Osgoode Digital Commons – with among the items of the Law Library in particular the sections for Law Reports and Digests and statutes for Ontario
• National Aboriginal Documents Database – with among the links for example a number of treaties concerning indigenous people
• Casebooks, Bora Laskin Law Library, University of Toronto – Internet Archive – nearly 5,000 casebooks written since 1942 by staff members of the Toronto Law School
• Thomas Fisher Canadiana Collection, University of Toronto Libraries – nearly 7,000 books
• French digital books, University of Ottawa – Internet Archive – some 55,000 books
• Nahum Gelber Law Library, McGill University / JSTOR – a small collection on law in Quebec, including a multi-volume work on civil law from 1821, and French customary law
• Statutes of Newfoundland, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s – statutes from 1833 until 1989
• Newfoundland House of Assembly and Legislative Council Documents, Memorial University of Newfoundland – with journals and proceedings

Chile

• Biblioteca Virtual del Bicentenario, Biblioteca Nacional de Chile
• Memoria Chilena: Salas Virtuales, Biblioteca Nacional de Chile – this website features in the section Política y legislación for example Derecho indiano
• Selección de Textos Clásicos de Derecho, Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile
• Libros y folletos sobre historia politica, Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile
• Fuentes Documentales y Bibliográficas para el Estudio de la Historia de Chile, Universidad de Chile
• Chile Collection, John Carter Brown Library – Internet Archive – nearly 400 titles
• Biblioteca Digital, Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, Santiago de Chile – interface Spanish and English

Colombia

• Biblioteca Digital, Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá
• Libro Antiguo, Colecciones digitales, Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia – early printed works
• Documentos y Colecciones especiales, Red de Biblioteca del banco de la República, Bogotá
• Biblioteca Virtual Luis Ángel Arango, Banco de la República, Bogotá
• Biblioteca Digital de Bogotá – with a section Legislación y normatividad, with items from 1821 onwards
• The J. Léon Helguera Collection of Colombiana, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee – mainly pamphlets and broadsides, some of them pertaining to law and government
• Colombia Collection, John Carter Brown Library, Brown University – Internet Archive – 90 sometimes very rare digitized books
• Biblioteca Virtual, Red Cultural del Banco del República en Colombia – a wide variety of digitized resources
• Repositorio Institucional, Universidad de Antioquia – with the Biblioteca Virtual de Antioquia and Patrimonio histórico
• BPP Digital, Biblioteca Publica Piloto, Medellin

Costa Rica

• Biblioteca Digital, Sistema Nacional de Bibliotecas Costa Rica
• Repositorio Biblioteca Digital Carlos Meléndez, Centro de Investigaciones Históricas de América Central (CIHAC), Universidad de Costa Rica
• Repositorio Biblioteca Digital Rafael Obregón Loria, CIHAC, Universidad de Costa Rica

Cuba

• Cuban law, Digital Library of the Caribbean
• Colecciones digitales, Biblioteca Nacional de Cuba José Martí, Havana
• Biblioteca Digital de Cuba – a portal with digitized materials from four institutions
• Cuban Heritage Collection, University of Miami Libraries – several digital collections concerning the history of Cuba
• Cuban Law, eCollections, Florida International University Law Library, Miami – a small but important digital collection with materials printed and used before 1961
• Mario Diaz Cruz Collection, eCollections, Florida International University Law Library, Miami – materials collected by a prominent Cuban lawyer

Curaçao

• University of Curaçao, George Smathers Libraries, University of Florida – with mainly issues of the newspaper Amigoe de Curaçao (1884-1995) and the journal Nieuwe West-Indische Gids (1919-2014)
• Curaçao (Dutch Caribbean), Internet Archive – nearly 28,000 items

Dominican Republic

• Biblioteca Digital Dominicana, República Dominicana – a general digital library
• Biblioteca Digital del Patrimonio Dominicano, Biblioteca Nacional Pedro Henriquez Ureña – 1,400 books and 600 pamphlets
• Biblioteca Digital, Archivo General de la Nacion

Ecuador

• Repositorio digital, Biblioteca Nacional de Ecuador, Quito – with for example historical newspapers and official gazettes
• Bibiioteca Digital Ecuatoriana, Consorcio de Bibliotecas Universitarias de Ecuador (COBUEC) – a portal for digital collections at universities and the Biblioteca Nacional

El Salvador

• BINAES – Biblioteca Nacional de El Salvador “Francisco Gavidia” – three digitized collections at the national portal Repositiorio Digital de Sciencia y Cultura de El Salvador (REDICCES)

Guatemala

• Guatemala Collection, John Carter Brown Library – Internet Archive – some 200 early works

Haiti

• Remember Haiti, John Carter Brown Library – a digital library on Haiti’s history
• Haiti Collection, Internet Archive, John Carter Brown Library – a digital collection with some 1,100 titles – since July 2024 also searchable with ARTFL’s Philologic
• Haiti Digital Library, Haiti Laboratory, Duke University – an initiative for a digital library
• Haitian Law and Legal Materials, Digital Library of the Caribbean
• Haiti Legal Patrimony Project – Harvard Law School and LLMC – a very substantial digital legal library
• Legislation from Haiti, Library of Congress, University of Ottawa Libraries and Internet Archive – the Bulletin des Lois et Actes and the Code civil d’Haiti
• The Haitian Declaration of Independence, Duke University Libraries
• Constitutions, Haiti and the Atlantic World – Julia Gaffield provides here transcriptions of the constitutions between 1790 and 1860
• La Gazette Royale de Hayti, Marlene Daut – with the Gazette Officielle de l’état d’Hayti (1807-1811), its sequel, the Gazette Royale d’Hayti (1813-1820) and almanacs (Almanach royal de Hayti (1814-1820), brought together from several libraries worldwide
• Haiti, Une île lumineuse, George Smathers Libraries, University of Florida – an extensive virutal exhibit with (translated) texts; interface English, Fench and Creole – see also the separate digital collection
• Guantánamo Public Memory, George Smathers Libraries, University of Florida – a digital collection with interviews, phptos and documents about this U.S. naval base

Honduras

• Biblioteca Virtual Letras de Honduras – a project of a number of cultural institutions

Jamaica

• Digital collections, National Library of Jamaica, Kingston – with for example collections about riots, rebellions and the slave trade
• Government of Jamaica Dcuments, National Library of Jamaica – an online guide and digitized documents from 1960 onwards
• Jamaica Law, University of the West Indies, Mona – four volumes of the Laws of Jamaica between 1906 and 1910

Martinique

• Banque Numérique des Patrimoines Martiniquais, Collectivité Territoriale de Martinique and Direction régionale des Affaires Culturelles – a portal for digitized cultural heritage with digitized civil records, archival records, images, archaeological objects and books; interface French and English

Mexico

• Mexicana: Repositorio Digital de Patrimonio Cultural de México, Secretaria de Cultura – with a section for libros, textos y documentos; interface Spanish and English
• Biblioteca Virtual de México, Secretaria de Cultura – a selection with some 13,000 works, and also some archival records and a number of virtual exhibits
• Biblioteca Digital Mexicana – a digital library with books, manuscripts, maps and images from ten institutions
• Los Primeros Libros de las Américas – a portal of a number of Mexican, American and Spanish libraries to digitized books printed in America before 1601
• Mexican Incunables, John Carter Brown Library – some 100 books printed between 1539 and 1600
• Biblioteca Nacional Digital de México, Universidad Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM) and Biblioteca Nacional de México – some 6,100 works in eighteen collections
• Hemeroteca Nacional Digital de México, UNAM and Biblioteca Nacional de México – digitized newspapers and periodicals
• Independent and Revolutionary Mexican Newspapers, Eastview and CRL
• Historic Mexican and Mexican American Press, University of Arizona, Tucson
• Biblioteca Jurídica Virtual, UNAM
• Biblioteca Digital, UNAM – with several subcollections, among them the Fondo Antiguo
• Legislación Mexicana, UNAM – nearly 17,000 legislative acts, ordinances and much more between 1697 and 1902, collected by Manuel Dublán and José Maria Lozano, the “Dublán-Lozano”; the 42 volumes and indices have been digitized, too, at Nuevo Léon
• Diario Oficial de la Federación – the Mexican official gazette, with digitized issues since 1917
• Compendio Bandos de la Ciudad de Mexico, Periodo Colonial, Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (INAH) – a database for searching colonial ordinances concerning Mexico City
• Publicaciónes Digitales, UNAM – a portal to several digital collections
• Proyecto Independencia de México, UNAM
• Biblioteca Digital del Pensamiento Novohispano, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UNAM – a digital library with works of Early Modern authors and scholars
• Biblioteca digital de relaciones internacionales, Acervo Histórico Diplomático, Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, Ciudad de México
• Biblioteca Digital Bicentenario – a portal to digitized books on the struggle for independence around 1810 and the revolution of 1910; the Biblioteca Digital Independencia 1810-1821 seems comparable and offers also other elements
• Libros digitales, Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de las Revoluciones de México – a portal with several collections, for instance about the constitution
• Biblioteca Virreinal, Centre de Estudios de Historia de México, Fundacion Carlos Slim, Ciudad de Mexico – a digital library with Early Modern books with more than fifty collections, for example Alegatos juridicos (pleas and legal consultations), Bandos (ordinances), Derecho (legal books), Derecho administrativo and Legislación (legislation)
• Biblioteca CEHM, Centro de Estudios de Historia de México, Fundacion Carlos Slim – another digital library, with some 80 collections
• Colección Digital, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León – with some 8,200 old books in the Colección Libro Antiguo
• Guia de memorias de Hacienda de Mexico (1822-1910), Biblioteca Daniel Cosío Villegas, El Colegio de México – these annual guides give an unique view on public administration and the economy in Mexico
• Movimientos armados en México, Biblioteca Daniel Cosío Villegas, El Colegio de México – a small collection of publications on this important subject in Mexican history
• Morales de Escarcéga Collection, University of Arizona – with also an online exhibit of documents concerning Mexico’s history
• Mexican Incunabula (1559-1600) at the Latin America Library, Tulane University Digital Library – digitized versions of some of the earliest Mexican books
• Biblioteca Virtual de Letras Mexicanas, Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes – with apart from Mexican literature also a small number of Early Mexican printed works from the sixteenth century from the collections of the Centro de Estudios de Historia de México – there is a second URL for Letras Mexicanas
• Biblioteca Virtual de Yucatán – a general digital library with also older works in the Fondo Reservado
• Colecciones digitales, Sala de Archivos y Colecciones Especiales, Universidad de las Américas, Puebla – among thee archives and book collections the Fondo Antiguo-Biblioteca Franciscana is in particular interesting; note also the marcas de fuego database for tracing (institutional) book owners
• Libros y Documentos, Biblioteca Histórica José Maria Lafragua, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla – both Early Modern and modern works
• Calendarios mexicanos. Siglos XIX y XX, Fuentes para el estudio de la historia social, siglos XIX y XX, Instituto de investigaciones históricas, UNAM – almanacs and yearbooks published between 1850 and 1930
• Biblioteca Virtual, Biblioteca Publica de Estado de Jalisco – especially the Colección de Lenguas Indígenas is interesting
• Colección Lenguas Indigenas, Dirección General de Bibliotecas

Nicaragua

• Leyes, gacetas y tratados, Biblioteca Enrique Bolaños – constitutions, constitutional law, the official gazette Gaceta – Diario official de Nicaragua (1952-), and legislation
• Colección digital, Banco nacional de Nicaragua, Managua – in the corner Patrimoniales you will find a section Derecho

Panama

• Biblioteca Digital Panameña, Biblioteca Nacional, Panama – with a section Constituciones Panameñas

Paraguay

• Biblioteca Digital, Biblioteca Nacional de Paraguay, Asunción

Peru

• Biblioteca Virtual, Biblioteca Nacional del Perú, Lima
• Archivo Digital de la Legislación en el Perú, Congreso de la República de Perú – the Leyes de Indias, constitutions and laws
• Constituciones del Perú, Congreso de la República de Perú – constitutions from 1823 to 1993
• Peru Collection, John Carter Brown Library – Internet Archive – more than 1,100 digitized early printed books
• Biblioteca Indiana, Proyecto Estudios Indianos, Universidad de Pacifico, Lima and Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona – a small digital library with Early Modern books and a number of modern studies and editions; interface Spanish and English

Puerto Rico

• Biblioteca Digital Puertorriqueña, Universidad de Puerto Rico Recinto de Rio Piedras – a general portal to digitized resources such as books, manuscripts, maps, posters and photographs; interface in Spanish and English
• Gazeta de Puerto-Rico, Chronicling America, Library of Congress – issues from 1836 to 1902
• Documentos Históricos. Escuela de Derecho, Universidad de Puerto Rico – a nice selection of laws and law codes since 1886
• Puerto Rico Collection, John Carter Brown Library – Internet Archive – seventeen very rare books
• Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age: Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Perspectives, American Memory, Library of Congress – a fine selection of images, maps, pamphlets and books
• Colección Puertorriqueña, UPR RP – Issuu
• Biblioteca Virtual de Puerto Rico, Javier Almeyda Loucil – a blog about digitized books and jourmals
• Colección Digital Puertorriqueña, University of Connecticut – digitized journals, books and some archival collections
• Florida and Puerto Rico Digital Newspapers Project, University of Florida a.o. – with newspapers published between 1836 and 1922
• El Mundo Digital Archive, CRL and Eastview – issues of an important newspaper (1919-1990)

Suriname

• Suriname, Erfgoed, Universiteit van Amsterdam – only a few books but many old maps of Suriname
• Surinam literature, Digital Library for Dutch Literature – old literature about Suriname and modern literature from Suriname; almost all works are in Dutch, including the almanachs
• Buku – Bibliotheca Surinamica: Natalie Zemon Davis – online version of three of her essays about the history of Suriname on this book history blog by Carl Haarnack around his book collection
• World Digital Library: Suriname – a small digital collection with mainly prints and maps, but also two interesting British reports from 1920 about Suriname

The platform Delpher of the Dutch Royal Library contains more books about Suriname, newspapers (kranten) and journals (tijdschriften) published in Suriname and also official bulletins and gazettes; a number of this publications stem from the collection at Amsterdam (UvA). Searching the digitale collections of Leiden University Library yeilds a substantial number of results, partially in open access.

Trinidad and Tobago

• Digital Legislative Library, Government of Trinidad and Tobago – a digital law library with books, documents and records from 1838 to 2014
• Nalis: Digital Library of Trinidad and Tobago, National Library of Trinidad and Tobago, Port of Spain

United States of America

• Digital Public Library of America – a portal to a number of American digital libraries
• Government, Law & Politics, Library of Congress, Washington, DC – a section among the rich digital collections, only here already some 120 collections
• Digitized Materials, Law Library, Library of Congress – with for example the Federal Register (vol. 1-58, 1936-1993), United States Reports (vol. 1-542, 1754-2004), Statutes at Large and US treaties; the Law Library points also to databases elsewhere, a number of them is in open access
• Digital collections, Law Library of Congress – with such riches the existence of a separate entrance for digital collections is understandable
• US Congressional Serial Set, Library of Congress – an ongoing project
• United States Code, Library of Congress – a collection of federal statutory law
• Military Legal Resources, Federal Research Division, Library of Congress – also here among the digital collections
• U.S. Federal Documents Collections, Hathi Trust Digital Library – an ongoing program to create complete digital versions of some core publication series
• The Federalist Papers, Founding Fathers Info – there are also other text-only versions of these famous pamphlets discussing the role of the constitution, the organization of the state and much more at Congress.gov and at The Avalon Project
• The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Centre for the Study of the American Constitution, University of Wisconsin-Madison – a digital version with currently 26 of the projected 31 volumes with sources around this pivotal document
• The Quill Project, Pembroke College, Oxford – a portal with many resources around the US constitution and the Bill of Rights, a number of them earlier to be found conveniently at ConSource
• Legislative Source Book, Law Librarians’ Society of Washington, DC – primarily for current legislation, but with due attention to historical laws
• Harvard Law School Library, Exhibits – a wide variety of subjects concerning American, European and Asian legal history; see for the digital collection Curiosity en Harvard Digital Collections
• Legal History on the Web: Web Archives and Primary Sources – this rich list at Duke University of relevant websites focuses on the United States, the United Kingdom and South Africa
• LLMC Digital: Open Access – this commercial provider had already unlocked access to The Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789-1800, Maeva Marcus et alii (eds.) (8 vol., New York, 1985-2004), and now provides in open access a lot of resources for the various states and the earlier Territories, too
• American Legal History Sources Online, D’Angelo Law Library, University of Chicago – with constitutions of the states and US legislative, executive and judicial sources; note also the list of commercial digital sources, often accessible at subscribing libraries
• Supreme Court Decisions 1937-1975 – a version with only the text of decisions
• The Supreme Court Database, Washington University, St. Louis, MO – a database in open access for tracing decisions of this court
• Selected Historic Decisions of the US Supreme Court, Cornell University Law School
• Case Law Acccess Project, Harvard University – open access to millions of digitized cases
• Making of America, University of Michigan – a digital library with some 10,000 books, at least a few hundred of them touching law and justice
• Public Papers of the Presidents of United States, University of Michigan – a digital library with speeches, starting with Hoover
• American Legislation Project, Kellen Funk – a portal to state sessions laws, journals, reports, and statutory compilations, from 1800-1920
• American Civil Procedure: Law on the Books, Kellen Funk – a very practical overview of digitized codes for civil procedure in US states between 1820 and 1920
• Database of Federal Statute Names, Yale Law Library, New Haven. CT – a tool for searching both the official and common names of federal statutes
• Native American Constitutions and Legal Materials, Library of Congress, Law Library
• DigiTreaties: The IDA Treaties Finder, National Archives and Indigenous Digital Archive – with currently 374 socalled ratified Indian treaties
• Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Oklahoma State University – both the five original volumes edited by Charles J. Kappler (1902-1941) as the two 1979 supplements
• Early Recognized Treaties with American Indian Nations, University of Nebraska-Lincoln – nine treaties not included in Kappler’s collection
• Native American Constitution and Law Digitization Project, University of Oklahoma Law Library and The National Indian Law Library
• Documents relating to Indian affairs, 1801-1869, University of Wisconsin
• Huntington Free Library Native American Collection, Cornell University Library- some 33,000 items
• 19th Century Prison Reform Collection, Cornell University Library – nearly 450 items
• Confederate Imprints, Duke University Libraries – nearly 2,400 rare imprints available through the Internet Archive, with many pamphlets and broadsides, and a substantial number of works touching upon law
• Confederate Imprints, Boston Athenaeum – some 4200 digitized items, not just books, but also maps, serials, broadsides and pamphlets, and also Marjorie Lyle Crandall’s Confederate Imprints: A Check List Based Principally on the Collection of the Boston Athenæum (Boston, MA, 1955)
• Avalon Project: Documents for Law, History and Diplomacy, Yale Law School Library – perhaps the best known digital library for legal history with (translated) documents from many periods and countries
• Cornell University Library Witchcraft Collection – with 23,000 items
• Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection, Cornell University Library – with a selection of links to other digital collections
• Yale Slavery and Abolition Portal, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition – with many links to similar digital collections; the Gilder Lehrman Center contributes also to The Bibliography of Slavery and World Slaving, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
• Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law, HeinOnline – a digital collection with statutes, cases, digitized pamphlets and periodicals and recent scholarly literature
• Digital Library on American Slavery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro – with slave deeds, petitions, advertisements and insurance registers
• Early Americas Digital Archive, University of Maryland – digitized Early Modern books
• The Robert E. Brooker III Collection of American Legal and Land Use Documents, 1716-1930, Boston College Law Library – some 2,300 documents
• Western Waters Digital Library, National Endowment for the Humanities and Greater Western Library Alliance – a wide range of sources on the history of water and water control concerning rivers like the Colorado and the Missouri
• Yale Law Library Special Collections – a part of the YLS Legal Scholarship Repository contains digitized books and manuscripts on several themes
• American History from Revolution to Reconstruction and beyond, Universiteit Groningen – a portal to American history with overviews, essays, biographies, presidential addresses and State of the Unions, and a compact digital library
• The John Adams Library, Boston Public Library – a digital collection and portal with some 1,200 volumes, also accessible at the Internet Archive
• The United States and its Territories, 1870-1925: The age of Imperialism, University of Michigan – some 4,000 digitized documents and books touching upon relations with Spain, Puerto Rico and the Philippines
• Documenting Ferguson, Washington University – a digital collection – created partially thanks to crowdsourcing – around the events concerning the police actions in August 2014 and the public reactions afterwards
• Witness to the Early American Experience, New York University – digitized documents and archival records
• Repository of Historical Gun Laws, Joseph Blocher and Darrell Miller, Duke University School of Law – a searchable database for English legislation from the medieval period up to 1776, colonial and American legislation until the mid-twentieth century
• Civil Rights Digital Library, University of Georgia – a digital platform with books, documentary records and audiovisual materials
• Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and National Endowment for the Humanities – with now also the Newspaper Navigator
• John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Lloyd Sealy Library, City University of New York / Internet Archive – some 520 items from 1850 onwards

Uruguay

• Colecciones digitales, Biblioteca Nacional de Uruguay – with for example the section Primeros impresos
• Biblioteca, Parlamento de Uruguay – with several digital collections
• Parlamento Uruguay Documents, Internet Archive – with nearly 20,000 documents since 1900
• Libros, Anaforas: Colecciones, Universidad de la República Uruguay – some 140 works, some of them concerning legislation and government; there is a Biblioteca Digital de Autores de Uruguay

Venezuela

• Biblioteca Ayacucho Digital, Gobierno Bolivariano de Venezuela and CLACSO – a small general digital library
• Textos historicos, Academia Nacional de la Historia de Venezuela – 120 digitized historical books and sources
• Repositorio digital, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas Bolivarium, Caracas
• Biblioteca Digital César Rengifo, Biblioteca Nacional de Venezuela

Asia

For some countries the Asian Legal Information Institute provides also historical information. Some digital libraries are concerned with several countries or a large region, in particular East Asia and South Asia:

• Digital collections, CrossAsia, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg – eleven digitized collections at this portal for Asian studies
• Digital South Asia Library, University of Chicago and CRL – also for maps and images, and for example the South Asian Union Catalogue, a historical bibliography of works printed since 1556, and a catalogue of 19th-century publications held at the Oriental and India Office Collections of the British Library
• Digital South Asia, Universität Tübingen – with the Epigraphia Canatica
• Literatur zu Süd-Asien, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg – works from the eighteenth to the twentieth century
• South Asia Open Archives, JSTOR and CRL – the SAOA contains currently some 44,000 publications in open access in thirteen languages, mainly materials from India, with newspapers and weekly reports on Indian newspapers
• South Asian Digital Collection, Library of Congress – with 900 items
• South East Asia Digital Library, Northern Illinois University – with also web directories
• SouthEast Asian Images & Texts, University of Wisconsin – for Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and the Philippines
• Hermann Gundert Portal, Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen – a digital collection with texts mainly from India in Sanskrit, Telugu, Tamil , Kannada and other languages; interface German and English
• Malay Concordance Project, Australian National University – a digital collection with 165 pre-modern texts from Malaysia and Indonesia
• Asean Digital Library, National Library Board, Singapore, and Association of South East Asian Nations – a portal for several digital libvrary collections in South East Asia
• South East-Asia in the Ming-Shi Lu, National University of Singapore – access to the 3,000 reference in the Chinese imperial chronicles
• Ostasiatica, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin-Preussischer Kulturbesitz – this digital library covers Indonesia, China, Japan and other countries; do visit their portal and web guide CrossAsia
• Ostasien, Digitale Sammlungen, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich – manuscripts and books from Korea, Japan and China (7th-19th century)
• e-Asia Digital Library, University of Oregon – in particular for China, Japan and Korea
• East Asia Library Digital Bookshelf, Princeton University Library – some 140 works, mainly from China
• The Asia Directories Database, Institute for European Global Studies, Universität Basel – yearly directories published in Hongkong between 1863 and 1941 with also legal information for coutnries in East Asia
• International Dunhuang Project, British Library – the BL leads an international consortium of major libraries for digitizing the manuscripts found at Dunhuang which pertain to the history of China, Tibet and other countries
• Digital Himalaya, Cambridge University and University of British Columbia, Vancouver – a project concerning Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet and other countries
• Tibetan Texts, Kern Institute and Leiden University Library – some 2,000 block prints and manuscripts, nearly 1,800 in open access
• Digital Resources, American Oriental Society – a concise overview of major digital project sconcerning the ancient and modern Near East and Asia
• Bibliothèque Numérique Asiatique / Asian Digital Library – Institut d’Asie Orientale, Lyon, and Université Aix-Marseille – digitized books, periodicals, theses, sound recordings and archival documents
• Golden Collection of Eurasia, Library Assembly of Eurasia and Russian National Library – a project with cultural highlights from countries around and within the former Soviet Union
• South Asian Newspapers, Eastview and CRL – 9 newspapers since 1850 from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan
• South East Asian Newspapers, Eastview and CRL – 129 newspapers from 1839 onwards, mainly from Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam
• Digital Silk Road Project, National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo – a digital cultural heritage website about Central and East Asia, with a section Rare Books (Toyo Bunko) focusing on exploration reports and travel books
• ADC Treaties, Institute for European Global Studies, Universität Basel
• Collections patrimoniales numérisées de la BULAC, Bibliothèque des langues et civilisations, Paris – with various manuscript and book collections, in particular in Japanese, Khmer and Ottoman
• P.G. Sindhi Library – an initiative for digitization of books written in Sindhi after the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan; see also the Sindhi Collection in the Internet Archive with some 1,200 items

Middle East

• Access to Mideast and Islamic Respources (AMIR) – a wonderful blog helping you trace digitized resources and digital projects
• Menalib, The Middle East Virtual Library, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Halle – interface German and English
• Menadoc, Sondersammlunggebiet Vorderer Orient, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Halle – interface German and English
• Bibliothek Goussen, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Bonn – some 1,200 digitized works in Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Georgian, Syrian mainly from the eighteenth and nineteenth century
• Translatio, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Bonn – digitized Arabic, Persian and Ottoman/Turkish periodicals
• Arabic and Middle Eastern Electronic Library (AMEEL), Yale University Library – apart from rare gazettes, for independent Syria and British Mandate Palestine, 1919-1948, also manuscripts, journals, manuscript catalogues and dictionaries
• Official Gazette, Palestine National Authority and Birzeit University -from 1994 onwards
• Bibliothèque numérique kurde, Institut kurde de Paris – interface Kurdish, French and English
• Arsîva Kurd – a portal with digitized Kurdish publications, inlcuding periodicals
• Oman Digital Library, Middle East Institute, Washington, DC- a general digital library concerning the Middle East
• Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME) – a project of CLIR, Stanford Libraries and the Qatar National Library for a platform with digital collections and exhibits from fourty holding institutions worldwide
• The Middle East Water Collection, Oregon Digital – a collection with 5,000 books concerning many themes around water, including legal issues
• al-Hakawati-Net – a general digital library with a section on Arab constitutions
• Thomas Fisher Arabic Collection, University of Toronto Libraries – some 500 works
• Ottoman Collection, Aga Khan Library, London – currently some 120 works
• Ottoman Text Archive Project, Washington University – a small collection
• Bibliothèques d’Orient, Patrimoines partagées – a project of the BnF, Paris and ten other institutions for a digital library for the Near and Middle East; interface French, English and Arabic
• Digital Library, Arabic Union Catalog and King Abdulaziz Public Library, Ryaad – with various collections; interface Arabic, English and French
• Newspapers and periodicals, National Library of Israel – with Jewish, Arabic and Palestine publications, in particular for the first half of the twentieth century; interface Hebrew, Arabic and English
• Middle Eastern and North African Newspapers (MENA), CRL and Eastview – with 84 newspapers from 1870 onwards from Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Israel (Palestine), Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi-Arabia and Syria
• Open Arabic Periodical Editions, Till Grallert – GitHub – a project for searchable and complete versions of important Arabic journals; see also A chronology of Arabic periodicals (1800-1929) at Jara’id
• Altaïr, le portail de la culture arabe, Institut du monde arabe, Paris – a general portal for Arab culture; interface French, English and Arabic
• Wikilala – a search portal for digitized books, newspapers, journals, manuscripts, archival documents and other resources from the ottoman empire and Tureky
• Muteferriqa, Miletos – a licensed search portal for Ottoman-Turkish texts; interface Turkish and English

Afghanistan

• Afghanistan Digital Library, New York University – focusing on the period 1870-1930
• Afghanistan Digital Library Collections, University of Arizona and Afghanistan Center at Kabul University – some 3,000 works, also available online in the Internet Archive
• Da Afghanistan Kalanay Collection, University of Arizona – a digital collection of this governmental almanac and yearbook published under various names between 1932 and 1990
• Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection, University of Nebraska, Lincoln – books in Dari, Pashto and English, and some digitized newspapers, too
• Afghanistan Legal Education Project, Stanford Law School – primarily focusing on contemporary law, with under Publications its own digital library
• World Digital Library: Afghanistan – with now some 200 books, some of them about law
• Tailban Sources Repository, Universitetet i Oslo – access after registration

Armenia

• Haygirk Armenian Book, National Library of Armenia, Yerevan – with early digitized books from and about Armenia
• Armenian Rare Books 1512-2012 – the first Armenian books were printed in Venice in 1512
• Digital Library of Classical Armenian Literature, American University of Armenia – interface Armenian and English
• Armenian: Books by language – Internet Archive – a selection with some 2,200 items
• Pan-Armenian Digital Library, Fundamental Scientific Library, Yerevan – interface in three languages, with English
• Armenian Books, IBB Atatürk Library (Atatürk Kitapligi), Istanbul
• Armenian Rarities Collection, Library of Congress – 58 items

Cambodja

• Bibliotheca Khmerica, Bibliothèque nationale de Cambodge, Phnom Penh
• Khmer Language Books, National Library of Cambodia and Digital Library for International Research (DLIR) – 171 items published between 1950 and 1973

China

• Numerica Sinica, École Nationale Supérieure de Lyon – a portal to digital resources on China and Taiwan
• Bibliothèque numérique, Institut d’Asie Orientale, Lyons – a digital library with not only books and journals, but also archival records, images and sound recordings
• Modern China Studies, East Asia Library, University of Pittsburgh – a digital library focusing on the 20th century
• Chinese Memory, Digital Library, National Library of China, Beijing – apart from old books also specific collections
• The China-US Million Book Digital Library Project, Universal Library – Internet Archive – 78,000 titles
• Chinese Rare Book Digital Collection, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Library – some 500 titles
• World Digital Library: China – nearly 300 digitized books, and much more
• Chinese Text Project – with for the Pre-Qin and Han period a section Legalism
• Bibliotheca Sinica 2.0, Universität Wien – this blog helps you tracking – in particular by using the tag cloud, for example law – digitized Chinese books and books about China
• Ming-Qing Chinese Legal Documents, Kyoto University Law School – see also this link
• Legalizing Space in China – a project for the translation of Ming and Qing legal documents
• Late Qing and Republican-Era Chinese Newspapers, Eastview and CRL
• True Crimes: Late Imperial Chinese Crime Reports, Washington University, St. Louis, MO – a digital collection of reports from the eighteenth century accompanying a study by Robert E. Hegel
• Chinese Rare Books at Yale, Yale University Library – some 430 works
• Chinese Law Registers, Columbia University Libraries, New York City – Internet Archive – 241 registers from the Shuo tie, Da Qing lü and Xin zeng Cheng an suo jian ji
• The Digital Gazetteer of the Song Dynasty, University of California, Merced – a project with an interactive map for studying jurisdictions during the Song dynasty (960-1276)
• A Digital Library of Chinese Rare Books – some 1,000 books from the holdings of the Library of Congress, Princeton University, Harvard University, and the Fu Ssu-Nien Library of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan
• Chinese Rare Books, University of British Columbia, Vancouver – 580 digitized works
• Chinese Rare Book Digital Collection, Asian Division, Library of Congress – some 2,000 titles
• Chinese Rare Books, Australian National University, Canberra – some 400 works
• Hok Hoi Collection, Hong Kong Public Libraries – a collection with a core of rare books for the Chinese classics
• NLC Digital Resources of Ancient Chinese Books, National Library of China and Hong Kong Public Library
• Serica, Bodleian Libraries, Oxford – a selection of digitized Early Modern Chinese books
• Shanben Collection, Institute of Oriental Culture, Tokyo University
• PRC Autonomous Regions Local Histories – a digitization project for (historical) literature and periodicals, in particular also for Mongolia

• Digital collections, Rare Books and Special Collections, National Central Library, Taipei City – a portal of a consortium of seven libraries
• Taiwan History Digital Library (THDL), National Taiwan University
• Digital collections, Special Collections, National Taiwan University – with a wide variety of subjects
• National Central Library Gazette Online – 60 official gazettes for Taiwan from 1912 onwards
• Taiwan E-books, National Central Library – with a large section Politics, Law & Military, and also governmental publications, a few hundred publications date from before 1910; interface Chinese and English
• Taiwan Memory, National Central Library – a digital portal for cultural heritage with books, periodicals, images and much more
• Taiwan Documents Project, Los Angeles
• Digital Library of Local Council Journals

Harvard University Library offers in its research guide for Chinese studies an overview of its rich digitized collections with Chinese books and other materials, some 9,600 items, also accessible through Harvard Digital Collections. The Books in China database (University of Wisconsin-Madison and Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin) offers information on some 32,000 works.

Dubai

• Dubai Digital Library – free access after registration, interface Arabic

East Timor

• Boletim Oficial de Timor (1838-1975), Arquivo Historicio Ultramarino, Lisbon
• AraDA East Timor Special Collection, Charles Darwin University – nearly 200 books

Georgia

• Digital Library, National Parliamentary Library of Georgia, Tbilisi – interface Georgian and English
• DSpace, National Parliamentary Library of Georgia – interface Georgian and English
• Mamardashvili Digital Library – a general digital library; interface Georgian and English
• Georgian Digital Text Collective, University of Washington

Hong Kong

• Hong Kong Legal Information Institute – not only modern legislation and jurisprudence, but also Privy Council Judgments (1861-1997), historical laws (1890-1964), first instance and appeal judgments since 1946
• Digital Repository, University of Hong Kong Libraries – a portal to several collections, including governmental publications
• Historical Laws of Hong Kong Online, University of Hong Kong Libraries
• Historical Government Reports 1842-1941, University of Hong Kong Libraries
• Hong Kong University Library Digital Initiatives – a portal to several digital collection, including rare books, legislation and war crime trials
• Hong Kong Collection, Hong Kong Public Libraries – a general collection among its digital collections, with for example old newspapers since 1853
• Digital Special Collections, Run Run Shaw Lbrary, City University of Hong Kong
• Hong Kong Memory – a portal for digitized cultural heritage, mainly for the arts, geography, audiovisual collections and oral history

India

• Legal Information of India Institute – apart from modern laws also Indian Acts starting from 1836, the Indian Treaty Series from 1947 onwards and Supreme Court Decisions since 1950
• South Asian Legal History Resources, Mitra Sharafi, University of Wisconsin – this blog is not a digital library, but offers besides much else certainly a collection of useful links; also available here
• Anglo-Indian Legal History, Mitch Fraas, University of Pennsylvania – a project with Privy Council Appeal cases from the eighteenth century, and some additional documents
• The Gazette of India – with various series, some of them dating back to 1922
• Gazettes of India, Bharat Ek Khoj – Internet Archive – access to several Indian gazettes, the earliest copy is from 1808
• Parliamentary Digital Library, Lok Sabha, Parliament of India – with historical documents from 1858 to 1952
• Laws of India, PRS India Legislative Research – in particular state laws, sometimes also from the nineteenth century; PRS India offers a number of databases for modern legislation
• Official Publications of India: Government documents related to pre- and post-independence South Asia, The University of Chicago Library – a bibliographical database for the holdings of Chicago and the British Library
• India Code: Digital Repository of all Central and State Acts – with legislation from 1836 onwards
• Indian Treaties Database, Ministry of External Affairs – with treaties since 1950
• India Kanoon – a database to search for cases in Indian law
• Law Commission of India, Ministry of Law and Justice – since 1950 numerous reforms have discussed and implemented
• India Princely States Legal History Archive (IPSOLHA) – a digital library and archive for legal materials, inlcuding also manuals and gazetteers
• Census Digital Library, Ministry of Home Affairs
• Digital Colonial Documents, La Trobe University, Melbourne – 19th-century English reports and documents
• Bombay High Court Virtual Museum, Mumbai – not only digitized books and archival records, but also images, verdicts and law reports
• Digital library, Bombay High Court Judges’ Library, Mumbai
• DSpace at West Bengal State Central Library – a search for the subject Law brings you to at least a few hundred digitized publications
• Public Library of India, Internet Archive – a section with various materials containing more than half a million items
• Granth Sanjeevani, The Asiatic Society of Mumbai – a growing digital library with a variety of resources, including English colonial reports; full access for subscribers, but freely searchable
• Digital Library, National Library of India, Kolkata / Indian Culture – the portal offers in particular a number of gazettes and gazetteers
• Digital Library of India, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore – this digital library is a mirror site of the Universal Digital Library which is particular strong in works from India and China
• Digital Library of India, ERNET – one can search for specific subjects in this general digital library
• Digital Library of India, Hyderabad – the subject division in this general digital library enhances searching for juridical works from around 1850 onwards
• National Digital Library of India, Ministry of Human Resource Development – an educational library with a large section on law, with also historical materials; free registration; there is a second link
• Panjab Digital Library, Chandigarh – aiming for example at preserving the Sikhs’ culture and heritage; registration necessary
• Dhananjayrao Gadgil Library, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Maharashtra – with numerous books about law
• Grantha- und Telugudrucke, Universität Cologne – rare 19th and 20th-century books from South-India
• Ideas of India – an international project for a portal with an index for the contents of some 330 periodicals published in India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
• Digital Library, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI), Pune – some 8,400 items
• Digital Archive, Lahore University of Management Sciences – books, pamphlets and newspapers, in particular around the 1947 partition
• Digital Library, West Bengal Secretariate, Kolkata – a digital library and archive, with sections on law and legislation, (judicial) administration and prisons, and the Calcutta Gazette (1832-2013)
• State Public Library Digital Archive, Kerala – with rare books and gazettes for Travancore, Cochin and Kerala
• Digital documents, State Public Library and Research Centre, Kozhikode – with the Kerala Gazette
• Tamilinayam Digital Library – with books in Tamil, English and other languages
• Rare Book Society of India – a portal with links to digitized manuscripts, maps and printed books, and images of paintings, sculptures and other art works
• Bhopal: Law, accidents and disasters in India, University of Wisconsin Law Library – documentation and court documents about the disaster in 1984 and its sftermath
• Indian Newspaper Reports, Internet Archive – weekly selections by the British colonial gove3rnment from vernacular newspapers from 1868 until 1916

Indonesia

• Koleksi Digital (Digital Library), Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia (National Library of Indonesia) – with rare books and journals (Terbikan Berkala), among these also official gazettes; interface Bahasa Indonesia and English
• Aceh Books, Royal Dutch Institute for South East Asian and Caribbean Studies, Leiden – a digital library created after the earthquake of 2004, including books on law; search interface in Bahasa Indonesia, English and Dutch
• Cornell Modern Indonesia Collection, Cornell University Library – a collection of digitized modern studies
• Papua Web: Arsip Dokumen – Document Archive – including an edition on adat (indigenous customary law)
• World Digital Library: Indonesia – a collection with a number of books, among them are five British reports from 1920 and a treatise on Islamic law
• The Balinese Digital Library – Internet Archive – with nearly 2,900 books, manuscripts and movies mainly from Denpasar

For the colonial period one can find numerous digitized publications, including journals (tijdschriften), newspapers (kranten) and official gazettes, at the Delpher platform of the Dutch Royal Library, The Hague.

Iran

• Asnad: Digital Persian Archive, Centrum für Nah- und Mittelost-Studien, Philipps-Universität, Marburg – historical documents up to the 20th century
• Nashriyah: digital Iranian history, University of Manchester – a library with in particular periodicals and newspapers from the second half of the twentieth century
• Persian Language Rare Materials, Library of Congress – 315 lithographs and early printed books
• Kagaz-i Akhbar [Newspapers – Persian Publications Database] – with journals and newspapers from 1850 to 1979, including legal publications; interface Farsi

Israel

• Digital Library, National Library of Israel, Jerusalem
• Digital Collections, Younes and Soraya Nazarian Library, University of Haifa – a digital library with several sections, including historic maps and aerial photos, rare books and a archive on Druzes
• Israeli Legal History Bibliography, Tel Aviv University – note also the overview of sources online

Japan

• Digital collections, National Diet Library, Tokyo – with various collections, for example for digitized version of the Kanpō, the official gazette since 1883 up to the 1950s
• Birth of the Constitution of Japan, National Diet Library – a website in Japanese and English on the constitution of 1946
• Rare Books and Old Materials, National Diet Library
• Next Digital Library, National Diet Library – a new portal for searching text anmd images in some 350,000 documents
• Digital Library for the Meiji Era, National Diet Library
• Laws and regulation from the early Meiji Period (1867-1886), National Diet Library
• Minutes of the Imperial Diet, 1890-1947, National Diet Library
• Japanese Institutional Repositories Online, National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo – a portal to several Japanese digital repositories
• Japan Search – a portal for searching digitized collections of archives, libraries and museums in Japan; in particular collections of prefectural libraries are easily found here; a number of bibliographic databases is present as well, too
• Kotenseki: Database of Pre-Modern Japanese Works, National Institute of Japanese Literature – a portal to digitized early Japanese works hold by Japanese libraries; interface Japanese and English
• Rare materials, Kyushu University Library, Fukuoka – a digital library with some legal works
• Rare Materials Digital Archive, Kyoto University – nicely divided into sections, including one with old legal books; interface Japanese and English
• Rare Books, International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Nichibun University, Kyoto – digitized books on Japan printed before 1850
• Rare Materials Collection, Academic Repository, Doshisha University, Kyoto – with seven digiial collections; interface Japanese and English
• Rare Books, International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto – 66 digitized books, mainly European travel accounts
• Ryukoku University Library Digital Archive, Kyoto – a few thousand digitized printed works
• Digital collections, Nagoya University Library – several collections with old books and archival records, and also a virtual exhibit on criminal law during the Edo period; three collections are also present at JSTOR
• Laures Rare Book Project and Virtual Library, Sophia University, Tokyo – a digital library with mainly books on early European travels and missionary activities in Japan; a second collection is the Kirishitan Bunko
• Kotenseki Sogo database of Japanese and Chinese Classics, Waseda University Library, Tokyo – with also a collection with books on Japanese “Dutch Studies” (Yogaku-Rangaku collection)
• Lauderdale Collection, Tokyo Keizai University – a collection with 3000 works from the sixteenth century onwards; the small Hiroshi collection (200 titles) contains numerous political and philosophical works
• Digital Collections, Keio University Libraries, Tokyo – nearly twenty collections, also for images and virtual exhibitions
• Digital archive, Library, Faculty of Law, Tokyo University – with books and documents
• Rare Books, Digital Collections, Tsukuba University – among these rare books are the Max Besson Collection with early Japonica and a collection on English and Scottish legal history
• Rare legal dissertations in Latin, University Repository, Kanagawa University, Yokohama – 84 digitized early modern dissertations mainly from the German Holy Empire
• Comte de Mirabeau Collection, YNU-Repository, State University, Yokohama – 185 items with works written by and about Mirabeau; search interface Japanese
• Japanese Censorship Collection, Library of Congress – some 1,300 works, in particular communist books from the twentieth century
• Japanese Historical Text Initiative, University of California at Berkeley
• Japanese Text Initiative, University of Virginia and University of Pittsburgh
• Japanese works, Cambridge Digital Library
• Japanese collection, e-Patrimoine, DIAL.num, Université Catholique de Louvain – some 60 works
• Knowledge of the World in Early Modern Japan, Cornell University Library – a collection with some 4,200 digitized works from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century

Digital Humanities Resources for Early Modern Japanese Literature is a website created by Joseph Bills with very useful information about databases, datasets and tools.

Kuwait

• Digital Memory of Kuwait, National Library of Kuwait – interface Arabic and English

Laos

• Digital Library of Lao Manuscripts, National Library of Laos, Universität Passau and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin-Preussischer Kulturbesitz – with also manuscripts concerning law

Lebanon

• Digital Collections, American University of Beirut

Macau

• Base de Dados de Legislação de Macau (LEGISMAC) – with legislation and other legislative acts from 1855 onwards; interface Portuguese and Chinese – see also thje section Legislaçao anterior al RAEM at the portal Impresa Oficial
• Boletim Oficial (1850-1999), Arquivo de Macau – the Portuguese gazette
• Memórias de Macau – a portal for the cultural heritage of Macau, with archival records, books and museal objects; interface Portuguese and Chinese
• Fontes Macau-China, sécs. XVI-XIX, Observatório da China – a digital library with Early Modern books; interface Portuguese, Chinese and English
• Biblioteca Digital da Fundação Jorge Álvares, Lissabon – a small digital library with books about Macau and China
• UM Digital Library Portal, Wu Yee Sun Library, Universidad de Macau – with Chinese works, Western books on China and rare Western books

Malaysia

• Sejarah Malajuh Library, Sabrizain – a general digital library for Malaysia and other countries in East Asia

Mongolia

• Selected Mongolian Legal Documents, 1917-1940, American Center for Mongolian Studies, Ulanbataar
• Tod Nonim Gerel Collection, DLIR – rare documents and manuscripts
• Legalizing Space in China – an international project for the translation of Ming and Qing legal documents, and also a section on Mongolian law

Myanmar

• Myanmar/Burma, Asian Legal Information Institute – constitutions, law codes and law reports
• Online Burma/Myanmar Library, David Arnott – with substantial space for legal resources
• Myanmar, World Digital Library

Nepal

• Nepal Law Commission – with historical documents in the section Law Archives
• Regmi Research Series Collection, Cornell University
• Nepali textbooks, Cornell University
• Documents on the history of religion and law in premodern Nepal, Akademie der Wissenschaften, Heidelberg

North Korea

• North Korean Serials, Library of Congress – some 4,300 items from the twentieth century

Oman

• Electronic Library, MARA, Ministry of Endowment and Religious Affairs, Oman – with a number of individual collections, among them manuscripts and books from Zanzibar; interface English, French and Arabic

Pakistan

• Punjab Digital Library – a general digital library with some legal works

Philippines

• NLP Digital Collections, National Library of the Philippines, Manilla
• Philippine e-Lib – a portal created by five institutions, among them the National Library of the Philippines; partially only a (meta-) catalogue full access after registration
• Legis, House of Representatives – a database with legislation since 1982
• The LawPhil Project, Arellano Law Foundation – with acts since 1900, constitutions from 1899 onwards, and jurisprudence since 1901
• Official Gazette – with issues from 1935 onwards
• Supreme Court E-Library – with acts, sentences, legislation, constitutions from 1934 onwards, and treaties
• Digital GAD Library, Philippine Commission on Women
• Filipinas Heritage Library, Ayala Museum, Makati City – a general digital library with also books on law and justice
• Chan Robles Virtual Law Library – Philippine and American law resources at the portal of a law firm
• Philippines Collection, John Carter Brown Library – Internet Archive – with 38 titles in Spanish a small but important digital collection
• Digital Library, Miguel de Benavides Library and Archives, University of Santo Tomas, Manila – a digital library and archive, with old juridical books, the Boletin Oficial de Filipinas (1852-1860), the Gaceta de Manila (1861-1888) and the Gaceta Oficial (1902-1921) (official gazettes), Filipiniana materials (books, periodicals and maps) and other collections
• Digital Filipiniana, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Qatar

• Qatar Digital Library, Qatar National Library – a general digital library about Arab history and culture

Russia

• The history of Russian civil law – a portal to the legal history of Russia; in Russian
• National Electronic Library – a portal with numerous digital collections, for example on criminal punishment in history; interface Russian
• Digital Library, Russian State Library, Moscow
• Elektronnaia Biblioteka GPIB, National Library of Russia, Saint Petersburg
• Bibliophika, State Public Historical Library – a relatively small digital library with books, maps and portraits, with a small section for legal works
• Digital Library, National Library of Russia – interface in five languages
• Digital collections, Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library, Saint Petersburg – the section Legal system in Russia covers also Russian legal history; interface Russian and English
• Fundamental Digital Library Russian Literaure and Folklore – interface Russian and English
• Elektronnaia Biblioteka Nauchnoe Nasledie Rossii (Digital Library for the Scientific Heritage of Russia), Russian Academy of Sciences – this library has a sizeable thematic section concerning state and law
• 1000 Schlüsseldokumenten zur russischen und sowjetischen Geschichte (1917-1991), Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich
• Runivers – a general digital library with some digitized nineteenth-century editions of collections with legal and historical sources, for example treaties and legislation
• Russian Books, Internet Archive – some 17,000 works
• Russian Imprints, Duke University and Internet Archive – some 800 works form the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
• Electronekrasovka, Nekrasov Library, Moscow – a general digital library; interface Russian and English
• Классика Российского Права [Classics of Russian Law] – a digital library with works of lawyers and a digitized 16-volume set of the Russian Code of Civil Law in the nineteenth century
• The Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire, National Library of Russia – covering the period 1649 to 1913; interface Russian
• Legal works of the Russian S.F.S.R., Harvard Law School Library
• Imperial Russian Newspapers, Eastview and CRL – with newspapers from 1767 to 1918; interface English and Russian

Singapore

• Books SG, National Library of Singapore – a digital library with Malaysian manuscripts and a number of (recent) legal works
• NewspapersSG, National Library of Singapore
• Singapore Statutes Online – with some older statutes, in particular three Imperial Acts
• Legal Heritage, Singapore Academy of Law – not a digital library, but a guide to Singapore’s legal history
• Historical sources of Singapore Law, Lee Su-Lin, National University of Singapore – a guide to (digitized) materials for researching Singapore’s legal history; note also the guide to Singapore Primary Sources by Nur Diyana
• Tamil Digital Heritage Collection-Singapore Tamil Literature Digital Collection (1965-2015), National Library Board

South Korea

• Digital Library, National Library of South Korea, Seoul – with also for example official gazettes (1894-1945)
• Korean Law and History – an international project with among other things a digital library
• Digital Library, Korean University Library – a number of digital collections; interface Korean
• Jangseogak Archives – a very substantial digital library with a wiki to help your searches; interface Korean
• Digital Library, Supreme Court Library of Korea – interface Korean
• Korean Literary Collection, University of Washington – 135 works from the period 1945-1950
• KORCIS: Korean Old and Rare Collection Information System, National Library of Korea and Harvard Yenching Library – some 470 digitized works

Sri Lanka

• National Digital Library, National Library of Sri Lanka, Colombo – with in particular issues of the Ceylon Government Gazette (1889-1902) and following gazettes
• LawNet Sri Lanka, Ministry of Justice – largely concerned with current law, but with case law and legislation from the second half of the twentieth century
• Tamil Collection, Robarts Library, U iversioty of Toronto / Internet Archive – nearly 700 books
• Collections, Digital Tamil Studies, University of Toronto – books, archival collections and a web acrhive

Syria

• eBethArke: The Syriac Digital Library, Rutgers University Libraries – see also the Beth Mardutho project and collections in the Internet Archive and in the Theological Commons, Princeton Theological Seminary
• Syriac Studies Reference Library, Brigham Young University – a small but valuable collection (104 items)
• Digital Syriac Corpus – a website created by an international consortium for texts in classic Syriac

Thailand

• Digital Library, National Library of Thailand, Bangkok
• Digital Collections, National Library of Thailand
• Legislative Institutional Repository of Thailand, Parliamentary Library, Bangkok
• Sanya Dharmasakti Library Collection, Thammasat University, Bangkok – a collection concerning law and justice
• Truth for Reconciliation of Thailand Digital Database, Thamassat University

Turkey

• Dijital Kütüphane Sistemi (Digital Library System), Millî Kütüphane (National Library of Turkey), Ankara – with manuscripts, printed books, periodicals and ohter resources; interface Turkish, English and Arabic
• T.C. Resmî Gazete – the Turkish national gazette, starting in 1921
• Takvim-i Vekayi, Ankara University – this Ottoman official gazette appeared since 1831 – see also the digitized issues in the Milli KüTüphane
• Laws since 1920, Parliament of Turkey – a database for searching Turkish legislation; Ottoman laws between 1908 and 1920 can be searched in another database
• TBMM Kütüphanesi Açık Erişim Sistemi (Open Access Repository of the Parliamentary Library) – three digital collections with recent and older publications and images
• Digital collections, Atatürk Kitapligi, Istanbul – a digital library with 40,000 books in Ottoman Turkish, Arabic and Persian; interface Turkish and English
• Farabi Digital Library, IRCICA – a general digital library, with in particular Ottoman periodicals, the digitized Ottoman gazette Takvim-i Vekayi (access after registration) and Ottoman yearbooks (salname), and a number of early yearbooks of the Turkish republic; interface Turkish and English
• Islam Arastirmalari Merkezi, Üsküdar – with in particular the Osmanlı Salnâmeleri Veri Tabanı, Ottoman yearbooks with provincial statutes and ordinances, the Osmani Risaleler Veri Tabini, 2,400 pamphlets with treatises, and the Osmanlıca Makaleler Veri Tabanı, nearly 32,000 digitized Ottoman articles
• Kitaplar Veritabani (Books Database), Hukuk Fakültesi (Faculty of Law), Ankara University – this digital collection is part of the digital portal of Ankara University, with also sections for newspapers (gazeteler) and books (kitaplar)
• Ottoman-Turkish literature, Duke University Libraries and Internet Archive – 216 books
• Nadir Eserler / Manuscript and Printed Books, Marmara Universitesi – some 1,300 items
• Periodicals of the Hakki Tarik Us Collection, Beyazit University, Istanbul, and Tokyo University of Foreign Studies – digitized works from the Ottoman period
• Gazeteden Tarihe Bakış Projesi, İstanbul Üniversitesi Kütüphane ve Dokümantasyon Daire Başkanlığı – a project for digitizing Turkish newspapers published between 1922 and 1942; interface Turkish
• Gaste Arsivi – a portal for Turkish and also foreign newspapers
• Osmanlica Mahalli Gazeteler – a portal for local and regional Ottoman newspapers
• Presse ottomane francophone, Gallica, BnF – nineteenth and twentieth-century newspapers in French
• Islamci Dergiler Projesi, ILEM – a search portal for twentieth-century Islamic journals
• Monographs, SALT Research, Istanbul – some 1,000 works from the Ottoman period, and also some later works; there is also a section with digitized French periodicals; interface Turkish and English
• Digital collections, Koc Üniversitesi, Istanbul – with several collections, and also archival records; interface Turkish and English
• Sayisal Koleksyion, Istanbul Teknik Üniversiti (ITU) – with rare books, materials concerning the natural sciences, geological and other maps, and photos of infrastructure built in trhe nineteenth century
• Ankara Digital Kent Arsivi (Ankara Digital City Archive) – a digital library on Ankara’s history created in cooperation with Atilim Universitesi
• Cengiz Babacan Kütüphanesi – a private digital library with books and journalson various subjects, including Ottoman history
• Izmir Kent Arsivi ve Müzesi (Izmir City Archive and Museum) – with digitized newspapers, journals, parliamentary records, images and judicial registers (ser’iye sicilleri)
• TÜSTAV: Türkiye Sosyal Tarih Arastirma Vakfi (Foundation for Turkish Social History) – an institution with digitized archival collections, books (kütüphane), journals and other resources

Vietnam

• Fonds Indochine, National Library of Vietnam, Hanoi – French publications from the seventeenth century onwards; interface English, French and Vietnamese
• Han Nom Collection, National Library of Vietnam – interface Vietnamese
• Vietnam Nôm Manuscripts Field Digitization Project, Temple University and The General Library of Thừa Thiên Huế – some 125 manuscripts in the Nôm script
• The Han Nom Special Collection, National Library of Vietnam, Hanoi, and the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation – a project for the conservation and digitization of some 4,000 fragile manuscripts interface Vietnamese and English
• Maurice Durand Han Nom Handwritten and Woodblock Manuscripts, Yale University Library – some 120 items

Australia and New Zealand; Oceania

Australia

• National Library of Australia, Digital Collections
• Trove, National Library of Australia – a portal to digitized collections from many institutions, with for example a section for newspapers and gazettes
• Historic Gazettes, Federal Register of Legislation, Australian Government – official gazettes from 1901 to 2012
• Historic Hansard, Tim Sherratt – for the period 1901-1980
• Australian Literary and Historical Texts, University of Sydney
• Australian Federation Full Text Database, University of Sydney – digitized debates from the 1890s; part of this university’s Australian Digital Collections
• First Fleet and Early Settlement, University of Sydney – a digital library about the early colonial period
• Founding Documents: Documenting a Democracy, National Archives of Australia – 110 documents with commentaries
• Australian Legal Information Institute – with many databases on present and historical law, in particular the Colonial Legal History Library
• Agreements, Treaties and Negotiated Settlements Project, University of Melbourne – a database for relevant documents
• Colonial Case Law, Macquarie Law School, Sydney – a portal to several collections with historical cases, with a very useful link collection, also for New Zealand
• Australiana Series, Digital Collections, La Trobe University, Melbourne
• Legal Opinions: Selected Opinions of Attorneys-General of the Commonwealth of Australia with Opinions of Solicitors-General and the Attorney-General’s Department, 1901–50, Australian Government and National Archives of Australia
• Jade – a database with access to cases, verdicts, law reports and legislation since 1903
• Police Gazette of Western Australia (1876-1900), State Library of Western Australia, Perth – an important resource for research into police actions, crime and suspects
• Digitised Collections, University of Melbourne – with for example the subcollection Australian Colonial Law Monographs
• Territory Stories, Library & Archives Northern Territories, Darwin – a general digital portal for cultural heritage
• Digital Law Library, Federal Court of Australia – with judgments, speeches, annual reports, and videos, and also the Native Title Infobase
• Queensland Law Collection, Queensland University of Technology / JSTOR – nearly 1,300 items, both printed publications, in particular statutes, and also archival records

New Zealand

• Digital NZ – Á-Tihi Aotearoa, National Library of New Zealand – a portal to digitized sources at several institutions
• Parliamentary Papers, Papers Past, National Library of New Zealand – also available at Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives (interface English and Maori)
• Historical Hansard, Parliament of New Zealand / Pāremata Aotearoa – starting in 1854
• New Zealand Legal Information Institute – with some useful legal history resources
• Early New Zealand Statutes, University of Auckland – covering the period 1841 to 1940
• The New Zealand Digital Library, University of Waikato – with collections both concerning New Zealand and other continents
• British Parliamentary Papers. Colonies: New Zealand, O Neherā, University of Waikato
• O Neherā, University of Waikato Library – a portal for digitized collections
• New Zealand Electronic Text Centre, Victoria University of Wellington – among the projects is for example He Pātaka Kupu Ture – The Legal Māori Archive
• Māori Land Legislation Database, University of Auckland – the database was decommisioned in September 2020
• Early New Zealand Books, University of Auckland Library
• New Zealand’s Lost Cases, Victoria University of Wellington
• Law Commision / Te Aka Matua o te Ture – with digitized reports, for example on Imperial legislation in force in New Zealand (1987), and project information

Oceania

• Pacific Rim Library – a digital library of a consortium of 25 libraries; search interface in twenty languages
• Oceania Digital Library – a portal of the University of Auckland Library, the University of California at San Diego Libraries and the University of Hawai’i Library for the cultural heritage of Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia
• Pacific islands Legal Information Institute – with for many islands historical information
• Indian Ocean Digital Collection, New York University – a collection for among others islands such as Madagascar and Mauritius
• Ana’ite, La bibliothèque numérique scientifique polynésienne, Université de la Polynésie française, Faa’a, Tahiti – interface French, English and Tahitian
• Médiathèque historique de la Polynésie – a portal with digitized resources from collections all over the world
• Pacific Rim Nations Treaties Database, Institute for European Global Studies, Universität Basel

Other digital libraries and link collections

A number of digital libraries is concerned with constitutions in several European countries or even worldwide:

• Verfassungen der Welt – a portal to historical constitutions from Germany, Austria and Schweiz, and constitutions in German translation; there is also an English counterpart at International Constitutional Law (Universität Bern)
• Archivio delle Costituzioni Storiche, Dipertimento di Studi Giuridiche, Università di Torino – historical constitutions in English, French and Italian translations
• Biblioteca de Historia Constitucional Francisco Martínez Merina, Universidad de Oviedo – works on constitutional law, with also Spanish translations
• Constitutions du monde, Digithèque des matériaux juridiques et politiques, Université de Perpignan – mainly modern constitutions
• Constitution Finder, University of Richmond School of Law – formerly a site with not just today’s constitutions, but also historical versions, drafts and amendments – taken over by the Constitute Project
• Constitute Project – an offspring of the Comparative Constitutions Project, University of Texas at Austin; interface English, Spanish and Arabic
• Constitutions – a Russian project with a digital library and sometimes many translations of constitutions; interface Russian and English
• Constituciones Hispanoamericanas, Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes
• Resources, ConstitutionsNet, IDEA – a database for constitutions from a Swedish project for democracy

For treaties one can point to a number of good resources:

• Europäische Friedensverträge der Vormoderne, Institut für Europäische Geschichte, Mainz – peace treaties from Early Modern Europe
• Oxford Historical Treaties, Oxford University Press – a licensed resource with luckily some useful overviews and also the basic search function in open access
• The Multilaterals Project, Fletcher School, Tufts University – Archive-IT – mostly after 1945, but with some older treaties, with links to other projects; archived in 2018
• Flare Index to Treaties, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London – 2,000 treaties from 1353 to 1815
• United Nations Treaty Collection – with the League of Nations Treaty Series and the United Nations Treaty Series Online; you can consult separately the League of Nations Treaties (1921-1931)
• The World Treaty Index – a database for bilateral and multilateral treaties from the 20th and 21st centuries – see also the former WTI database (Washington University) for 1945-1999
• International Treaties Collection, World Legal Information Institute – always useful
• Peace Agreements Digital Collection, Jeannette Rankin Library Program, United States Peace Institute, Washington, DC – a number of peace agreements since 1989

You can find a number of treaties – often translated into English – in Yale’s Avalon Project.

Some digital libraries are the fruit of international cooperation or cover several countries:

• Bibliothèque Virtuelle de la Méditerranée – a relatively small digital library with some legal works; interface in French, English, Italian and Arabic
• Text Creation Partnership, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor – a portal for researching the texts within the projects Early English Books Online (EEBO), Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) and Evans Early American Imprints
• Réseau francophone numérique – a digital library of twenty-four national and other libraries worldwide
• Bibliothèque numérique, Institute du Monde Arabe, Paris – in this digital library with some 1,200 works you can find legal literature in the section Sciences sociales
• The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative, University of California at Los Angeles and Max-Planck-Institut for the History of Science, Berlin
• ETANA – Electronic Text and Ancient Near Eastern Archives – archeological findings and (juridical) texts, translations from the Akkadic, and the ABZU Bibliography
• Audiovisual Library of International Law, Historic Archives, United Nations
• Piracy Trials, Library of Congress, Law Library – digitized pre-1900 printed accounts of piracy trials and studies about piracy
• Rare Books, Georgetown Law Library – with old legal dictionaries, works on legal palaeography, and works concerning Scottish law
• Arabic Collections Online, New York University Abu Dhabi – this university presents together with other American universities a general digital library with some 17,000 books
• Werke der Kolonialbibliothek, Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main – some 2,400 digitized books concerning colonial history; interface German and English
• Patrimoines Partagés, BnF, Paris – a digital portal about shared heritage, with already sections for the Near East, China, Vietnam, Brazil and Poland; interface French, English and Spanish
• United Nations Digital Library – a digital library with documents, speeches and publications; interface with six languages
• UNESCO Digital Library – interface in six languages
• UNESDOC: Unesco Digital Library – interface in six languages
• League of Nations, Digital Gallery, National Library of Scotland
• SOAS Digital Collections, School of Oriental and African Studies, London – with for example collections about politics and government and law, and also digitized archival collections
• British Documents on the End of Empire (BDEEP), Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London – digitized versions of the volumes in this series, including the guides for sources on colonial history held at the National Archives
• Werke der Kolonialbibliothek, Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main – some 2,400 digitized books concerning colonial history
• Digitale Sammlung Deutscher Kolonialismus, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Bremen – a project for the digitization of some 500 works concerning Germany’s colonial past
• Sammlungsgut aus kolonialen Kontexten, Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek – a subdomain for digitized colonial collections and works; interface German and English
• Presse locale ancienne, BnF – newspapers from the nineteenth century until 1944, partially also from the French colonial empire
• Revues coloniales européennes – four colonial journals, two of them can also be found at Revues coloniales de droit, Centre d’Histoire Judiciaire, Université de Lille
• Colonial Collection, Royal Tropical Institute – this digital collection contains some 1300 books and many scientific journals, many of them touch upon law and justice; since 2013 the collection is managed at Leiden
• Biblioteca Digital Camões: Historia – this section of the digital library of the Centro Virtual Camões contains some works concerning law, legislation and the Portuguese colonial period
• Arquivo Digital, O Governo dos Outros: Imaginários Políticos no Império Português, Universidade de Lisboa – a selection of mainly legislative sources for Portugal and its colonial empire (PDF’s)

Here a number of other useful digital libraries:

• The Medieval Canon Law Virtual Library, Colby College and Columbia University
• Canon Law, LLMC Digital – een selectie van vooral vroegmoderne bronnen en werken; toegang via gelicentieerde instellingen
• Les classiques des sciences sociales, Université de Québec à Chicoutimi – not just texts by great thinkers in the social sciences, but also useful references to more information
• Archive for the History of Economic Thought, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario – albeit a text-only collection, its range remains very wide
• Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), Bournemouth University and University of Cambridge – see also the digitized texts in the Archivio Marini, Università degli Studi di Pisa
• Digital Library of the Commons, Indiana University – shared rights on resources and their history
• Savigny-Bibliothek, Yokohama, Toin University – a part of Savigny’s library is now in Japan, and some books in it have been digitized
• Gallica, bibliothèque numérique – Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
• Digitale Sammlungen, Münchener Digitalisierungszentrum – in Munich an astonishing number of old books and manuscripts has been digitized; searchable by subject and collection; among the collections is for example Digi20, a selection of German scientific literature between 1950 and 2000
• Zentrales Verzeichnis Digitalisierter Drucke – a portal to digitized books in Germany, with a survey of digitized collections
• Digitalisierte Drucke, Hochschulbibliothekszentrum des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, Cologne – another portal to digitized books in Germany
• Newspaper digitization projects, International Coalition on Newspapers and CRL – a searchable database and a list of projects
• ZEFYS: Historische Zeitungen, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – with digitized German newspapers, three DDR newspapers, and a database for searching old newspapers worldwide
• The Atlas – Mapping the Histories and Metadata of Digitised Newspaper Collections around the World
• The Philological Museum, Dana F. Sutton – the well-known bibliography of digitized Neo-Latin texts
• Digital Book Index – however biased to texts in English nonetheless very useful, with books on many subjects all over the world, including also law
• Universal Digital Library, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh – just for law already some 26,000 books; in particular strong for texts from India and China
• The Internet Archive – here, too, you can find an ever increasing number of digitized books, often from renown libraries; the user interface can be tuned nicely to your wishes
• Collections, JSTOR – a part of this scholarly platform offers a gateway to already some 2,000 digital collections, more than 1,700 of them in open access
• World Digital Library, Library of Congress – despite its relatively small size especially for small countries certainly important; apart from books there are also digitized journals, maps. manuscripts and audiovisual resources
• Hathi Trust Digital Library – a platform of several large American and European university libraries
• The Online Books Page, University of Pennsylvania – useful lists on many subjects with links to digitized books
• Endangered Archives Project (EAP), British Library – this library supports worldwide projects for describing, conserving and digitizing rare and fragile archives and library collections, be they manuscripts, printed books, journals or newspapers
• Global Journals Portal / Portail Mondial des Revues, Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris – a gareway to numerous (digitized) journals wordlwide; interface English and French
• Getty Research Portal – searching for the subject Law brings you a few hundred digitized early printed books
• The Statutes Project: Putting Historic British Law Online, John Levin – a portal to digitized versions of parliamentary laws printed before 1914, including former British colonies (Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica; India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar; New Zealand); Levin has also started to make a repository with OCR-ed statutes
• Cornell University Library: Law, Internet Archive – nearly one thousand digitized works, mainly on Anglo-American law
• Islamic Lithographs Collection, McGill University, Montreal – 650 books from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia
• Islamic Lithographs Collection, University of Chicago – until now some fifty books, many of them concern Islamic law
• Biblioteca Islamica, AECID, Madrid – a digital library with books and manuscripts, including legal works
• Al-Furqan Digital Library – a digital library for Arabic books
• Islamic Heritage Project, Harvard Digital Collections – both manusrcipts and printed works, including books on Islamic law
• War Manifestos Database, Yale Law Library – war manifestos issued by sovereigns between 1492 and 1945
• Jesuitica, Boston College Library – Internet Archive – some 1,250 works by and about Jesuits

A number of existing collection of links will guide you to many more digital libraries:

• Documents per a la Historia / Documents for History (1750-2010), Universitat Autònoma Barcelona – Internet Archive – a guide to digital libraries, archives, repositories and other digital collections, alas suspended in 2016; interface in six languages; you can now use the database Recursos de historia económica, social y política
• Bibliostoria,Biblioteca di Scienze della Storia e della Documentazione Storica, Università degli Studi di Milano – a searchable database with descriptions of digitized historical resources
• Wikisource DE: Digitale Sammlungen – an overview of digital collections in German
• DMOZ Open Directory Project: Digital Libraries – after twenty years DMOZ stopped its service in 2017, here an archived version
• Digitalisierungsprojekte, Jurawiki – this commented links list focuses on Germany and Spain; no additions since 2008
• Clio Guide. Ein Handbuch zu digitalen Ressourcen für die Geschichtswissenschaften – this guide is certainly be useful in its second edition (2018)
• Radical online collections and archives, New Historical Express – a web directory with a worldwide range, bringing much about books, journals and newspapers

Bibliographies for legal history

Bibliographies for legal history come in various forms. Most often they refer to scolarly literature, but in some cases there are bibliographies tracing publications containing legislation and other primary sources. For older materials both genres can appear in a mixed form. Below I will mention a few examples of both types. When useful I mentioned them already for a particular country. This section is clearly under construction

Scholarly literature

• Introduction bibliographique à l’histoire du droit et à l’ethnologie juridique, J. Gilissen (ed.) (9 vol., Brussels 1963-1988) – an attempt at a world bibliography for legal history, with contributions by many scholars
  
• Bibliography of the History of International Law, Randall Lesaffer, (ed.), i-HILT, Tilburg University – a bibliography of current scholarly publications
• Legal history: A selected bibliography, Liberty Fund – a bibliography compiled by Charles Reid in 1998; note the links to other bibliographies
• The Bibliography of Slavery and World Slaving, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
• Répertoire bibliographique sur l’histoire du droit et de la justice, Digithemis – a database for the legal history of Belgium
• Bibliography on British and Irish legal history, Jacqueline Woollam, Aberystwyth University – publications betwen 1977 and 2006
• Article and Book Bibliography, Christopher Clover, Boston College – this bibliography focus on the English year books as a support to David Seipp’s online version
• Bibliographie d’Histoire du Droit, Université Lorraine (Nancy-Metz), Université Paris-II and Université Bordeaux – an online database where you can search literature on French legal history, with also a thesaurus; interface French and English
• Bibliographie d’histoire de la Justice française (1789-2011), Jean-Claude Farcy, Criminocorpus – a database for publications concerning criminal law and justice in France
• Israeli Legal History Bibliography, Tel Aviv University
• Bibliografia Historia del Derecho, Universidad Santiago de Compostela – six lists, not updated since around 2000, but certainly still useful
• Bibliography, Women’s Legal History Project, Stanford University

Sources

• Beale, J.H., Bibliography of early English law books (Cambridge, MA.,1926; reprint 1966) – supplement by R.B. Anderson (Cambridge, MA, 1943; reprint 1966).
• Bibliography of Early American Law, Morris L. Cohen (ed.) (6 vol., Buffalo, NY, 1998; supplement 2003)

Early printed works

For old legal books it is never too late to check the holdings of the Max-Planck-Institut für Rechtsgeschichte und Rechtstheorie in Frankfurt am Main and this institute’s catalogues of Early Modern editions created by Douglas Osler. You can consult online PDF’s of his Catalogue of books printed before 1801 in the legal historical section of the Biblioteca di Scienze Sociali dell’Università degli Studi di Firenze (2 vol., Florence 2005-2014; vol. 1, From the beginning of printing to 1600, vol. 2, 1600-1700). National bibliographies, bibliographies of legal books – e.g. the Bibliography of Early American Law by Morris L. Cohen (6 vol., Buffalo, NY, 1998; supplement 2003) – and special bibliographies for old editions can be most helpful, a number of them available online:

• Universal Short Title Catalogue (USTC), University of St. Andrews – an online catalog for finding Early Modern books, originally created for sixteenth-century French books, but growing in its coverage of European printed works upto 1650, including also newspapers; an extension to 1700 is almost finished
• Short Title Catalogue Netherlands (STCN) – a bibliographical database for Early Modern printed works; the introduction and guides are not to be missed; interface English
• Apparaat Kalma (Dick Eisma), Tresoar, Leeuwarden – a catalogue of Frisian imprints until 1800, alas already for some years not up and running
• Short Title Catalogus Vlaanderen (STCV), Flemish Heritage Libraries – for Flanders, with also documentation on the methods used
• KPS – Knihopis Database, National Library of the Czech Republic – a bibliography for printed works in Czech and Slovakian between 1501 and 1800
• VD16 – a bibliography for sixteenth-century German books, now with links to digitized copies at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich and the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Halle
• VD17 – German books from the seventeenth century
• VD18 – the sequel for the eighteenth century; VD17 and VD18 both link often to digitized copies
• English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC), British Library – for Early Modern books; there is a temporary unoffical version provided by Print & Probability
• Nineteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue (NTSC), Chadwyck – a licensed resource, for works printed beteween 1800 and 1918
• Scottish Books 1505-1700 (Aldis updated), National Library of Scotland
• BP16: Bibliographie des éditions parisiennes du 16e siècle, Bibliothèque nationale de France – Parisian editions from the sixteenth century
• Lyon15-16. Bibliographie des éditions lyonnaises 1473-1600 – editions published in Lyon, now also with databases for printers and printers’ marks
• EDITEF: L’édition italienne dans l’espace francophone à la première modernité, Université de Tours – books in Italian printed in Francophone regions between 1450 and 1630; note the fine selection of relevant links, for example for provenance research, and the blog
• Régi Magyar Könyvtár (RMK) [Old Hungarian Library] – a digital version of the bibliography by Károly Szabó for the period 1473-1771, with digital versions of 600 works; interface Hungarian and English – see also the version at Madarska Nacionalna Bibliografija with introductions in multiple languages and other retrospective bibliographies
• EDIT16, Censimento nazionale delle edizioni italiane del XVI secolo – Italian editions of the sixteenth century
• Libri Antichi in Toscana (LAIT) 1501-1885 – for old books in Tuscany; the server does not respond
• ESTeR – Editori e stampatori di Trento e Rovereto, Biblioteca Comunale di Trento – a bibliography of books and journals printed in these towns between 1475 and 1800; the copies in this library have been digitized as Edizione trentine dei secoli XV-XVIII
• Norske bøker 1519–1850, Nasjonalbiblioteket, Oslo
• Electroniczna Baza Bibliografii Estreichera (EBBE), Jagiellonski University, Cracow – a bibliographical database for Early Modern Polish editions
• Porbase: Base Nacional de Dados Bibliográficos, Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal
• Iberian Books (1472-1650), University College Dublin – an international bibliographical project, with also books from Latin-America; note the splendid visualisations
• Carte veche, Institutul National al Patrimoniului – with the Catalogul colectiv al cărţii vechi româneşti and some other resources for Early Modern books from Rumania
• Catálogo Colectivo de Patrimonio Bibliográfico Español (CCPB), Spain
• IBIS. Base de datos del patrimonio bibliográfico de Patrimonio Nacional – a bibliographical database for the Real Biblioteca and associated royal libraries
• Catàleg Col·lectiu del Patrimoni Bibliogràfic de Catalunya – for books printed in Catalonia
• Äldre svensktrycka: Svensk bibliografi 1600-1829 och Svenskt offentligt tryck t.o.m. 1833, Libris, Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm – a retrospective bibliography for Swedish books between 1600 and 1828, and for official publications up to 1833; interface Swedish and English
• GLN 15-16 – editions printed in the 15th and 16th century in Geneva, Lausanne and Neuchâtel
• Biblos 18 – Les presses lausannoises au Siècle des Lumières – editions from Lausanne published in the eighteenth century

Outside Europe you can benefit from these online bibliographical resources:

• Patrimonio bibliográfico mexicano: Catálogo colectivo de fondos antiguos, Biblioteca Nacional de Mexico and UNAM – for Early Modern books in eleven libraries
• Fondos bibliográficos antiguos, ADABI, Mexico – a database for early printed books held in 23 Mexican libraries
• Guadalupe Rodríguez Domínguez (ed.), Repertorio de impresos novohispanos (1563-1766) (Veracruz 2012; PDF, 4,3 MB) – a useful succinct finding list of books printed in the Spanish colonial empire in Latin America
• Sibila: Sistema Bibliografico de la Literatura Novohispana, Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas, UNAM – for literature from the virreinal period (1521-1621)
• Catálogo Colectivo de Impresos Latinoamericanos hasta 1851 (CCILA), University of California at Riverside – an international project for an union catalog of early Latin American editions
• Union Catalog of Early Japanese Books, National Institute of Japanese Literature, Tokyo – an union catalog for holdings of Japanese institutions – a similar second union catalog is devoted to holdings in European collections
• South Asian Union Catalogue, University of Chicago – an union catalogue functioning as a historical bibliography of works printed since 1556

Some other online resources in open access can be helpful, too. The Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL) offers a number of online bibliographic databases, including the Heritage of the Printed Book (HPB) database for searching copies of Early Modern editions in European libraries. The bilingual portal Bibliopolis. Geschiedenis van het gedrukte boek in Nederland [Bibliopolis. History of the printed book in the Netherlands] offers much information on its subject. A new guide to resources is offered by Klaus Gantert, Handschriften, Inkunabeln, Alte Drucke – Informationsressourcen zu historischen Bibliotheksbeständen (Berlin-Boston 2019). The section Web Resources for the Rare Materials Cataloger of the RBMS is very practical for research. The guide to historical book collections by Bernhard Fabian, Handbuch der historischen Buchbestände in Deutschland, Österreich und Europa (Hildesheim 2003) is also accessible online.

For incunabula, books printed before 1501, the following websites provide ample information and help:

• Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke (GW), Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – the central bibliography for incunabula, with links to digitized copies and useful overviews for editions of (parts of) the Corpus Iuris Civilis, statutes (including customary law), the Decretum Gratiani, the Decretales Gregorii IX, the Liber Extra and conciliar texts, and also for the Bible
• Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (ISTC), British Library and CERL – a more succinct but uptodate overview of incunabula worldwide, with here, too, links to digitized copies
• BSB-INK, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich – the BSB has the largest incunabula collection of the world, and now also a image search interface for the study of woodcuts; the overview of printed incunabula catalogues is most useful
• INKA, Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen – the incunabula meta-catalogue for South German libraries, with links to digitized copies
• Digitale Sammlung Inkunabeln und Blockbücher, Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek, Cologne
• Bodleian Incunabula Catalogue (Bod-Inc Online) Bodleian Library, Oxford- now supplemented by TEXT-Inc for incunabula in other collections at Oxford
• Vatican Library: Incunabula – a special online catalogue for the 8,600 incunabula in this rich library; interface Italian and English
• Index Possessorum Incunabulorum, Paul Needham, Princeton University, and CERL – data on 32,000 owners and owning institutions mentioned in copies of incunabula editions
• Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI), CERL – another interesting database
• The Atlas of Early Printing, University of Iowa – interactive maps show graphically the spread of printing from 1460 onwards
• Glasgow Incunabula Project – the website of this project is a good example with its section on various subjects and bibliographical information

Blockbooks, books printed in the fifteenth century without moving types, have been in particular digitized in the following collections:

• Blockbücher aus bayerischen Sammlungen, Bayerische Landesbibliothek Online – Bavarian libraries have many blockbooks in their holdings; you can find most of them also in the Digitale Sammlungen of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich; there is a useful overview of digitized blockbooks worldwide
• Blockbücher, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart – an introduction with digitized works
• Blockbücher, Herzog-August-Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel
• Blockbooks, Bodleian Library, Oxford
• Block-books, Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress – ten blockbooks
• Livrets xylographiques, Gallica, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

European historical bibliographies online

With the temporary disappearance in 2021 of a useful portal presenting links to online historical bibliographies for twelve European countries it seemed useful to create a succinctly commented list, currently for seventeen countries.

Eastern Europe

– Bibliotheks- und Bibliographie-Portal, Herder-Institut für historische Ostmitteleuropaforschung, Marburg – https://hds.hebis.de/herder/index.php – publications since 1994
– The European Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies (EBSEES) – https://ebsees.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/ – functioning between 1991 and 2007, no longer updated; interface English

Austria

– Österreichische Historische Bibliographie (ÖHB), Universität Klagenfurt – http://oehb.aau.at/ – from 1945 onwards

Belgium

– Bibliografie van de Geschiedenis van België / Bibliographie de l’Histoire de Belgique (BGB-BHB) – http://www.rbph-btfg.be/nl_biblio.html – covers 1952-2008; interface Dutch, French and English
– BGB-BHB, Archives de l’État en Belgique – https://biblio.arch.be/webopac/Vubis.csp?Profile=BHBBGB&OpacLanguage=dut – publications since 2009; interface Dutch, French, German and English

Czech Republic

– Bibliografie dějin Českých zemí (BDCZ), Czech Academy of Sciences – https://biblio.hiu.cas.cz/ – interface Czech, English and German – with also digitized bibliographical yearbooks

Denmark

– Dansk Historisk Bibliografi, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen – https://aleph.kb.dk/F/?func=file&file_name=welcome&local_base=dhb01

France

– Bibliographie annuelle de l’Histoire de France (BHF), CNRS and Bibliothèque nationale de France – https://biblio-bhf.fr/ – search interface in English; ended in Autumn 2022

Germany

– Jahresberichte für Deutsche Geschichte (JBG), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften – http://jdgdb.bbaw.de/cgi-bin/jdg/cgi-bin/jdg – publications 1949-2015; interface German and English
– Jahresberichte für Deutsche Geschichte (JDG), BBAW, Berlin – vol. 1-14 (1925-1938) – http://pom.bbaw.de/JDG/
– Historische Bibliographie Online, Oldenburg Wissenschaftsverlag and Arbeitsgemeinschaft historischer Forschungseinrichtungen (AHF) – https://historische-bibliographie.degruyter.com/ – publications since 1990, no longer updated since 2015
– Deutsche Historische Bibliographie (DHB), Historicum – https://www.historicum.net/dhb/ – with links to other (regional) bibliographies, and other bibliographic resources – simple search in the top menu bar leads to the beta version of an interface in German and English
– Virtuelle Deutsche Landesbibliographie (VDL), Bibliothek, Karlsruhe Institute for Technology – http://kvk.bibliothek.kit.edu/vdl/ – includes also articles in journals
– Bibliographischer Informationsdienst, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich – https://www.ifz-muenchen.de/bibliothek/literatursuche/bibliografischer-informationsdienst – for 20th century history, access after registration, with a PDF-archive

Hungary

– Humanities Bibliographical Database (Humanus) – http://www.oszk.hu/humanus/index.html – with a section for history; interface Hungarian, English and German
– EHM: Elektronikus Periodika Archivum (EPA) – Humanus – Matarka (for Hungarian journals since 1800) – http://ehm.ek.szte.hu/ehm?p=0 – a portal with access to Humanus and three other resources, in particular for journals

Iceland

– Íslandssaga í greinum [Icelandic history in articles], Gunnar Karlsson and Gudmundur Jónson, National University Reykjavik – https://soguslodir.hi.is/ritaskra/ – a database with 13,500 articles, updated until 2005, for some journals until 2015

Ireland

– Irish History Online, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin – https://www.ria.ie/irish-history-online – with links to external resources for Irish history

Italy

– Bibliografia Storica Nazionale (dal 2000) (BSN), Giunta Centrale per gli Studi Storici – https://www.gcss.it/easyweb/w7044/index.php?scelta=campi&&biblio=GSS&lang= – publications since 2000; interface Italian, English, German, French and Spanish
– BSN Catalogo Retrospettivo – https://www.gcss.it/easyweb/w7044/index.php?scelta=campi&&biblio=E7043&lang= – interface Italian, English, German, French and Spanish

Lithuania

– Lietuvos Istorijos Bibliografia – https://aleph.library.lt/F?func=option-update-lng&P_CON_LNG=LIT – interface Lithuanian and English

Netherlands

– Digitale Bibliografie Nederlandse Geschiedenis (DBNG), Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague and Huygens Institute, Amsterdam – https://www.dbng.nl – interface Dutch and English – no updates after 2016, end of service announced for June 30, 2021
– Historie in Titels (HinT) – http://picarta.nl/DB=3.30/LNG=NE/ – licensed resource, not anymore updated since 2005, originally created at the Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA) – interface Dutch, English and German

Norway

– Historisk bibliografi (Norhist), Nasjonalbiblioteket, Oslo – https://www.nb.no/baser/norhist/ – for the period 1980-1997

Poland

– Bibliografia historii polskiej, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej – https://www.bibliografia.ipn.gov.pl/ – access seems to be currently unsafe or disabled; https://bibliografia.ipn.gov.pl/ works

Spain

– Indice Histórico Español (IHE), Revistes Cientifiques de la Universitat de Barcelona – https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/IHE/index – a bibliographical journal
– Modernitas: Bibliografia de Historia Moderna, Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales (CSIC) – http://www.moderna1.ih.csic.es/modernitas/principal.htm
– Indices, CSIC – https://indices.csic.es/ – a general scientific bibliography with attention to the humanities; interface Spanish and English

Sweden

– Svensk Historisk Bibliografi – digital 1771-2010 (SHBd), Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm – https://shb.kb.se/F/?func=file&file_name=find-b&local_base=shb – also available as an app

Switzerland

– Bibliographie der Schweizergeschichte (BSG), Schweizerische Nationalbibliothek, Bern – https://www.nb.admin.ch/snl/de/home/recherche/bibliografien/bsg.html – interface German, French, Italian and English

United Kingdom

– Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) – https://www.history.ac.uk/publications/bibliography-british-and-irish-history – licensed resource hosted by Brepols