Yale’s Digital Collections search engine is a key resource for innovative research and teaching. The site, which provides a single access point for digitized documents across all university collections, is especially significant for historians. Users can perform a simple keyword search across all collections, or narrow their search by collection or document type. Audio recordings, diaries, drawings, maps, photographs, and scrapbooks are among the primary source materials available on the site. The digital image or file is usually hosted on a separate site associated with its parent library or collection. Clicking the file will take you to its parent page and further descriptive information. Users also have the option to create custom tags and annotations for individual items, which will aid future research.
The digital collections available from university libraries are far from comprehensive, of course. It is unclear what criteria are used to determine which primary source materials are digitized and which are ignored, and some collections appear arbitrary or incomplete. So this website is not yet a substitute for more traditional (analog) collections and search strategies. As a supplement to more traditional methods of research and teaching, however, this search engine shows a great deal of promise.
