Refresh Your LibGuides with These New Digital Collections

Free resources offer new avenues of research into history, art, and music

Posted on February 11, 2026 in Blog Posts

Digitized archives are having a big moment on the internet. Thanks to the hard work of many contributors, more digital collections are appearing every day, and we wanted to highlight some that have piqued our interest over recent months. Specifically, we chose digital collections that are free to access and would make great additions to your library’s resources and LibGuides (or just absorbing ways to spend an hour learning about history).

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👨‍⚖️ Nuremberg Trials Project (Harvard)

The Nuremberg Trials were held in the aftermath of World War II to determine the guilt of Nazi Germany’s leaders for invading many European countries and committing the Holocaust. The Harvard Law School Library released a complete and searchable set of trial transcripts, evidence files, and other documents from Nuremberg. Documents are tagged with the names of those appearing in them, facilitating research into specific figures, and the images come with abundant descriptive text to make them contextually legible to even beginning scholars.

✊🏾 Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation Collection (Stanford)

A cofounder of the Black Panthers, Huey P. Newton is one of the most well-known activists from the Black Power movement of the 1960s. Stanford University Library has released a trove of newly digitized documents pertaining to Newton’s life, including personal correspondence, speeches, and internal documents from the Black Panthers. For students and scholars of African American political history and thought, this archive promises to open up new avenues of research into a well-studied figure. It also offers new insights into the local contributions of the Black Panthers, such as their clinics and school programs.

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🤘 Midwest Rave Culture Archive

My favorite part of a digital collection is the way it can unspool a niche topic and weave it into a fascinating tapestry of a place and time. The Midwest Rave Culture Archive, created by a group of independent archivists, contests the assumption that “nothing ever happens” in the Midwest by shedding light on its vibrant rave scene. This archive includes many bits of ephemera from Nineties’ rave culture, primarily posters and flyers. But by far, the coolest part of this collection is the digitized DJ sets from several different raves.

🎨 Virtual Museum of Stolen Cultural Objects (UNESCO)

The Louvre heist has rekindled public intrigue in art theft, but UNESCO reminds us that, regardless of their popular intrigue, such thefts are crimes against communities and humanity more broadly. Though somewhat slow to load, this deeply immersive collection of more than 250 objects from 46 countries allows viewers to see these missing pieces, learn more about them, and raise awareness of their theft. The website also provides viewers with information about the problem of illicit art trafficking and the efforts made to fight it.

🏜️ Digital Archive of Huhugam Archaeology (Arizona State)

Archeological digs are, despite their scale at times, very private affairs, closed off to outside viewers. Arizona State University released its collection of over 1,200 datasets, images, and reports from a series of archeological excavations, meant to shed light on the Huhugam (Hohokam), an Indigenous community living in the Southwest from 1500 BCE to 1450 CE. The collection is beautifully mapped, allowing viewers to select specific investigation types, materials discovered, time periods, and more. Students in archeology, history, architecture, and Indigenous studies will find much to marvel at in these pages.

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