Digital Collections
Overview
The Hoover Institution Library & Archives digital collections contains over 1 million digital objects including posters, photographs, texts, sound recordings, and moving images, with new items frequently added. Items that are in the public domain, or for which we have permission from the copyright holder, may be viewed on our Digital Collections Portal. Items with limited access due to donor restrictions, copyright status, or privacy considerations are described online and viewable in our reading room.
Recently Digitized
Kamishibai collection
Kamishibai, literally “paper plays,” are a form of Japanese performing arts. A single kamishibai set includes around twenty illustrated cards with scripts on the back, to be performed by a narrator who cycles through the illustrations in a small stagelike display often mounted on a bicycle or placed atop a table.
Japanese woodblock print collection
The Japanese woodblock printing technique known as nishiki-e (錦絵), literally “brocade pictures,” is defined by its full, corner-to-corner use of multiple colors.
Charles Beach Boothe papers
Correspondence, memoranda, and clippings relating to the involvement of C. B. Boothe, Homer Lea, and other Americans, with Sun Yat-sen and other Chinese, in schemes to overthrow the Chinese Imperial Government, 1908-1911, and to Laurence Boothe, son of C. B. Boothe, 1905-1976.
Paul N. Woolf photograph collection
American businessman Paul Woolf was stationed in Yokohama, Japan in 1906 and captured rare images of daily Japanese and expatriate life in Yokohama, Tokyo, and Nikko. He also observed a military review celebrating the Japanese victory of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905).
Search Our Digital Collections
Search and explore our digital collections which include selections from our poster collection, the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty broadcast records, Firing Line broadcasts, the Kamishibai (paper plays) collection, Japanese woodblock print collection, and more.
We are currently in a multi-year process of migrating content from Digital Collections to Digital Collections 2, which is currently in beta release. While this migration is underway, users may need to search both sites. To learn more about our new site, visit Hoover Digital Collections 2: A user's guide, powered by ArcGIS StoryMaps. This guide includes information on how to search and browse the site and how we create full-text transcriptions using OCR.
In addition to our Digital Collections portals, you can explore a number of our specialized digitization projects and HISTORIES (Hoover Institution Stories, our digital stories featuring our collections).
Digital Collections
Search and explore items that have been digitized prior to 2021.
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Digital Collections 2
Search and explore items that have been digitized since January 2021 (site currently in beta release).
Search NowDigital Collections In Context
Our growing library of Hoover Institution Stories, or HISTORIES, allows you to dive deeper into the historical context of our collections. HISTORIES are digital vignettes exploring aspects of war, revolution, and peace in the 20th and 21st centuries, richly illustrated with digitized collection material. Drawing on the expertise of Hoover fellows, staff, and researchers, we have published HISTORIES on a wide range of subjects, from pre-WWII Japanese propaganda to Civil Rights leaders’ appearances on the television show Firing Line.
HILA on Calisphere
Our digitized collections are also accessible on Calisphere which hosts digital collections contributed by all University of California campuses and other libraries, archives, and museums located in California.
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HILA on Internet Archive
View a selection of our digital collections and website archiving projects on the Internet Archive, a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form.
Search NowSpecial Digitization Projects
In addition to making content available via our own digital collections portals, the digital collections listed below were developed in partnership with private sector companies and cultural institutions, such as East View and Adam Matthew. We have also partnered with Stanford University Libraries to deliver digitized Hoover’s library materials via the Stanford Digital Repository. View our complete list of digital collections below.
Special Digitization Projects
Actas del Consejo de Ministros
Afghan Serials Collection
American Archive of Public Broadcasting
Ba'th Party Records
Chronicles of Terror
Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection
Medical Services and Warfare Portal
The First World War Portal
Szukaj w Archiwach
Actas del Consejo de Ministros
In partnership with the National University of San Marcos, and their inter-institutional collaboration agreement with the Presidential Office of Peru, this site provides access to the digital repository of the Minutes of the Council of Ministers. Its records document the debates and decisions of the Executive Branch of successive Peruvian governments from December 1939 to July 1990.
Afghan Serials Collection
This digital repository of partisan serials from the Wahdat Library is the most comprehensive private collection of rare newspapers and journals from Afghanistan available online through partnership with East View. It is comprised of the careful selection of newspapers and journals published in Persian, Arabic, Urdu, and English, spanning much of the twentieth century and published throughout Afghanistan and by the Afghan diaspora in adjacent countries.
American Archive of Public Broadcasting
The Library of Congress and WGBH in Boston embarked in 2013 on a project to preserve for posterity the most significant public television and radio programs of the past 60 years: The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB). The American people have made a huge investment in public radio and television over many decades, calculated at more than $10 billion. The American Archive will ensure that this rich source for American political, social, and cultural history and creativity will be saved and made available once again to future generations. The Hoover Institution Library & Archives has contributed 6,203 records to this endeavor.
Ba'th Party Records
The Hiẓb al-Ba'th al-'Arabī al-Ishtirākī Records (Ba'th Party Records) contain more than ten million digitized page images and fifteen hundred video files collected by the Muʼassasat al-dhākirah al-ʼIrāqīyah (Iraq Memory Foundation) from the Ba'th Regional Command headquarters and other sources are housed in the Hoover Institution Archives.
Chronicles of Terror
This testimony database from the Witold Pilecki Institute of Solidarity and Valor provides access to the Second World War accounts of Polish citizens, who suffered immense hardship at the hands of the German and Soviet totalitarian regimes. The digital repository features, among others, depositions given by witnesses to crimes committed by Nazi Germany during the occupation of Poland in the years 1939–1945. It includes digital copies of documents from the archives of the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection
The Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection is currently the world’s largest online archive of open-access, full image Japanese American and other overseas Japanese newspapers in Asia and South America. Image content in this collection is accompanied by OCR-generated text where possible, thus rendering the text searchable. The nature of the newspapers varies significantly from community-focused to political or military propaganda depending on the political conditions and target readership. This project is organized by the Japanese Diaspora Initiative at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives in collaboration with East View. Please note that some content is currently restricted to Stanford University users due to copyright agreement with the publishers.
Medical Services and Warfare Portal
In collaboration with digital content provider Adam Matthew and renowned archival repositories across the globe, this portal is a digital resource for the study of health and medical services during wartime. Gathering material from multiple conflicts and institutions to build a picture of the experience and development of medical practice as influenced by the wars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The collection draws heavily from Hoover's rich holdings on WWI, particularly holdings related to the Red Cross. Materials also include hospital reports and registers, correspondence, memoirs and diaries, printed books and periodicals, photographs, maps, charts, and hospital plans.
First World War Portal
This portal, created by Adam Matthew Digital, includes different presentations of the First World War via four thematic models: Personal Experiences, Propaganda and Recruitment, Visual Perspectives and Narratives, and A Global Conflict. Each uses a vast array of primary source materials drawn from several archives and collections around the world, including Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Szukaj w Archiwach (Search the Archives)
The Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (National Digital Archives of Poland) is a vast repository that holds digitized materials from 109 archival institutions, both in Poland and abroad. Included from the Hoover Institution Library & Archives are digitized microfilm reels encompassing 18 archival collections related to Poland that total 822,258 scans. The repository is in Polish with English, Russian, and German language options.
Global Press Archive
Al-Ahram Digital Archive
Late Qing & Republican-Era Chinese Newspapers
Middle Eastern and North African Newspapers
Global Press Archive Program
Al-Ahram Digital Archive
This is a part of the East View Global Press Archive, which is the result of a landmark initiative of the Hoover Institution Library & Archives and Stanford University Libraries to digitally preserve and make more accessible thousands of original print newspaper publications. Founded in 1875, Al-Ahram is one of the most prominent Arabic newspapers in the Middle East and an authoritative register of Egyptian life and politics for more than 140 years.
Late Qing & Republican-Era Chinese Newspapers
This collection provides an invaluable perspective on the first half of the twentieth century in China. The press of more than twenty cities are represented, spanning the Chinese mainland. The collection provides researchers a richly comprehensive perspective on Chinese life, culture, and politics throughout the collapse of the Qing Dynasty, the years of provisional government and civil war, and the birth of the People’s Republic. This is a part of the East View Global Press Archive, which is the result of a landmark initiative of the Hoover Institution Library & Archives and Stanford University Libraries to digitally preserve and make more accessible thousands of original print newspaper publications. Open Access to this collection is made possible through the generous support of the Center for Research Libraries and its member institutions.
Middle Eastern and North African Newspapers
This collection includes publications from across this dynamic region, providing unique insights into the history of individual countries, as well as broad viewpoints on key historic events from the late nineteenth century through the present. Content is predominantly in Arabic, but also includes key titles in English and French. The collection comprises mostly out-of-copyright, orphaned content. This is a part of the East View Global Press Archive, which is the result of a landmark initiative of the Hoover Institution Library & Archives and Stanford University Libraries to digitally preserve and make more accessible thousands of original print newspaper publications. Open Access to this collection is made possible through the generous support of the Center for Research Libraries and its member institutions.
Global Press Archive Program
The East View Global Press Archive® (GPA) is a groundbreaking program to create the most comprehensive collection of digital news sources from around the world. GPA is the result of a landmark initiative of Stanford Libraries and the Hoover Institution Library & Archives to digitally preserve and make more accessible thousands of original print newspaper publications collected by the Hoover Institution and now housed by Stanford Libraries.
Stanford Digital Repository
East Asian Vault
Francis E. Stafford Photographs
Survey of Race Relations
East Asian Vault
This collaborative digitization project with East View consists of 3,034 rare, primarily Chinese language texts from the Hoover Institution Library & Archives collections that were published between 1643-1992. It is accessible in partnership with Stanford University Libraries via the Stanford Digital Repository.
Francis E. Stafford Photographs, 1909–1933
This collection of five photographic albums is Stafford’s historic pictorial record of the turbulent period between 1910 and 1933, as China transitioned from being a feudal monarchy to becoming a republic. Depicted are battle scenes, military and political figures, as well as everyday people, life, and culture in China. Also in the collection are rare glimpses of printing operations and employees of the Commercial Press. The collection, which consists of nearly 1,100 images, also includes the largest number of surviving original photographic prints of the Chinese Revolution of 1911. In collaboration with Stanford University Libraries, the digitized albums are available via the Stanford Digital Repository.
Survey of Race Relations Records
In the early 1920s, a group of scholars set out to make a complete investigation of economic, religious, educational, civic, biological, and social conditions among the Chinese, Japanese, and other non-white residents of the Pacific Coast of the United States and Canada. Extension of the study into northern Mexico and Hawaii was contemplated as well. The original records, including a report, correspondence, interview transcripts, questionnaires, and printed matter, are available via the Stanford Digital Repository in cooperation with Stanford University Libraries.
Featured Digital Collections
Poster Collection
Over 33,000 digitized posters from more than eighty countries and growing.
Firing Line Broadcasts
More than 350 full programs and 1,500 transcripts of all programs freely available online
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Records
Over 5,000 radio broadcasts to Eastern Europe and the Soviet bloc.
Okhrana Records
Mug shots of 1,700 "revolutionaries" from the Russian Imperial Secret Police in Paris
Collected Works of Milton Friedman
Includes over 200 sound recordings by the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences
United Nations Conference On International Organization Proceedings
Audio highlights from the founding conference of the United Nations in 1945
Learn More About Digital Collections Activities
Haidar Hadi, Rayan Ghazal, Erik Lunde, Jean McElwee Cannon
Mission to Baghdad
Just as it might have done a hundred years ago, the Hoover Archives has rescued, protected, and restored a historical treasure. The beneficiaries include scholars, of course, but above all the people of Iraq.
