History

Alexander Street is a hub for scholarly resources in streaming video, audio, and text formats, fostering research, teaching, and learning across various disciplines. Key offerings include:

• History: Explore extensive historical documents and multimedia resources.
• Literature & Language: Investigate a wide range of literary works and linguistic studies.
• Music & Performing Arts: This is their largest collection and includes a large mix of music genres and performers (Classical Music, Opera, and Jazz).
• Social Sciences: Explore aspects of human society from various sociological and anthropological perspectives.

This platform also offers advanced search functionality and full video transcripts. Access this resource using our special link.

Trace your family's history.

• 4 billion names in worldwide historical records.
• Family tree services.
• Genealogy learning materials.

Access restricted within library buildings only.

For help getting started, see our AncestryLibrary help videos.

Read nearly two centuries of digitized California newspapers. A rich primary source for those interested in the history of the Golden State.

• 1846 to the Present
• Over 200,000 issues
• 7 million articles.

Authoritative eBooks on a variety of subjects including:

• Arts
• Business
• Education
• Health and medicine
• History
• Law
• Religion and philosophy
• Science and technology
• Social Sciences

Research database covering:

• Business
• Computers
• Current Events
• Economics
• Education
• Environmental Issues
• Health Care
• Hobbies
• Humanities
• Law
• Literature and Art
• Politics
• Science
• Social Science
• Sports
• Technology

Reveal your families history with this rich genealogy resource.

• Search historical census databases
• 28,000 local and family histories
• Revolutionary War database search
• Freedman's Bank search

Learn about Palo Alto history. This online collection contains Palo Alto newspapers going back to the 1870s.

Full-text digital scans are searchable by keyword, name, place, and publishing year.

• Palo Alto Live Oak (10/28/1896 – 1903)
• Palo Alto Press (1901-1902)
• Palo Altan (12/1/1905-12/28/1906, 1912-1914)
• Mayfield Enterprise (3/5/1870-5/3/1871)
• Citizen (3/5/1904-12/31/1905)
• The Daily Palo Alto (published by students of Leland Stanford Univ. 9/3/1902-12/17/1902)
• The Palo Alto Times (1893-11/23/1905)
• The Daily Palo Alto Times (1/9/1908-1918)

News from over 2,000 local, regional, and national publications.

• Newspapers, journals, newswires, broadcast transcripts, and videos.
• Thousands of obituaries
• From 53 States and Territories.
• Customize news alerts on specific topics.
• 1978-present.

Search Palo Alto obituaries from 1890 to present.

Learn about any subject with this online reference tool. 

• Subject overviews
• Historical timelines
• Quotations

Special Note: We do not subscribe to this full database, use the "by availability" search results filter to narrow your results.

Dive into the history of Palo Alto. PAHA's collections include:

• Historical images
• Local publications
• Obituaries
• Organizational and business archives
• Oral histories

California social studies facts for beginning researchers.

• Missions and Ranchos, Indigenous Peoples, governors and explorers.
• Explore California history by decade.
• Topics from California social studies curriculum.
• Grades 4-8.

An invaluable resource to explore American history as seen through the eyes of Stanford undergraduates.

• The collection contains 18,931 issues dating back to 1892.
• Issues are presented both as originally printed and in plain text.
• The collection is entirely searchable.

The Sutro Library holds the original collection of Adolph Sutro (1830–1898), California businessman and San Francisco mayor.

• The largest genealogy collections in the U.S.
• William Shakespeare's First, Second, Third and Fourth folios (1623–1685);
• Letters and papers of British explorer and naturalist Joseph Banks (1800s);
• The Mexican Collection: materials on Mexican culture, religion and politics (1540–1889)
• Belgian mapmaker Pieter van den Keere's World Map (1611).

Explore U.S. history from pre-colonial time to present.

• Articles on events, individuals, and periods of U.S. History.
• Translate or listen to articles.
• Citation tools make creating a bibliography easy.

Learn more about world history, politics, economics, and culture.

• Articles on history, political movements, and current events.
• Cross searchable with U.S. History In Context.
• Translate or listen to articles.
• Citation tools make creating a bibliography easy.