Choose a Search Tool

Use HOLLIS for Archival Discovery to search finding aids for archival materials. 

A finding aid is like a roadmap or guide to a specific archival or special collection. It details what's included in the collection, including if there are digital or digitized materials. In HOLLIS for Archival Discovery, you’ll find primary sources including letters, photographs, film and video, print items, digital materials, and physical objects (t-shirts, pins, and more). Materials that aren't digitized are available for viewing in our reading rooms. 

Not all archival and special collections at Harvard have a finding aid, so they aren’t searchable in HOLLIS for Archival Discovery. If HOLLIS for Archival Discovery does not have what you're looking for, try HOLLIS or Ask a Librarian.

Search for "Boston" in HOLLIS for Archival Discovery and your results will include items like:

• scrapbooks from Boston Theater
• Boston Chamber of Commerce records
• League of Women Voters of Boston records

For digitized collections, use CURIOSity. It offers curated views of a collection, with search and browse features specifically designed for the materials in the collection. 

Search for "Boston" in the Slavery, Abolition, Emancipation and Freedom collection and your results will include items like:

• pamphlets on the crusade against slavery
• the fiction novel Megda by Emma Dunham Kelley
• reports from the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society

DASH is Harvard's central, open-access repository for research by Harvard community members. DASH contains over 45,000 works of scholarship. You’ll find articles, conference proceedings, working papers, case studies, books and book chapters, theses, and dissertations.

Search for "Boston" in DASH and your results will include items like:

• articles on Boston Strong
• a history on a 1820s Boston medical student
• a thesis on affordability on Boston housing prices

Harvard Dataverse is Harvard's open online repository for sharing, preserving, citing, exploring, and analyzing research data. It offers advanced searching and text mining in over 2,000 dataverses, 75,000 datasets, and 350,000+ files, representing institutions, groups, and individuals at Harvard and beyond.

Search for "Boston" in Harvard Dataverse and your results will include items like:

• geographic files for Boston neighborhoods
• data on every bicycle crash in Boston from 2009-2012
• records of requests received by Boston's constituent services team