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Clear Lake Area Collection

Information on the Clear Lake Area Collection at the UHCL Archives and Special Collections; created by Erin Henry and Matthew M. Peek

Subject Guides

Here are other Texas and General history subject guides available from UHCL Neumann Library in our Research Guides collection:

 

Texana Subject Guide 

History Subject Guide

Databases

ArchiveGrid

  • Hosted through OCLC, ArchiveGrid is a collection of over five million archival material descriptions, including MARC records from the international WorldCat online library catalog, and finding aids harvested from the World Wide Web. It contains archival collections held by thousands of libraries, museums, historical societies, and archives, that have been cataloged as collections or individual items in traditional library catalogs. The majority of these historical materials are from the United States, though some from institutions in foreign countries are represented. It is not an exhaustive listing of available historical collections, but it represents a large number of such collections that is easy to locate through this platform. Collections and materials related to the Clear Lake Area of Houston, Texas, not held by the University of Houston-Clear Lake Archives and Special Collections can be located through other institutions by searching ArchiveGrid.

Chronicling America (Library of Congress)

  • Chronicling America is an open access, open source newspaper database and companion website. It is produced by the United States National Digital Newspaper Program, a partnership between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The NDNP was founded in 2005. It is a website providing access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages, and is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). NDNP, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages.
  • Chronicling America contains library catalog records and descriptive information for American newspaper titles from around the United States. It contains a collection numerous (but not complete or exhaustive) digitized newspaper issues by states, from the years 1789-1963. This includes Texas newspapers which feature news concerning southeast coastal Texas, including the areas now known as the Bay Area and Clear Lake Area of Houston, Texas.

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)

  • The DPLA is a U.S. project aimed at providing free public access to digital holdings in order to create a large-scale public digital library. It is a  platform that brings together many collections of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, through a single, searchable database. Cultural heritage institutions like archives contribute individual digitized historical items, whole collections of digitized historical materials, and descriptions of historical items and collections in their holdings, making them more discoverable and usable by the public. It is not an exhaustive resource for primary historical resources, but contains a very large number of materials that can be difficult to locate from doing traditional online searchers due to the sheer volume of historical materials available online from numerous cultural heritage institutions. DPLA has a lot of digitized original Texas history materials available. 

Newspaper Source Plus 

  • Selected full text articles from regional U.S. and international newspapers; also includes television and radio news transcripts

The Portal to Texas History 

  • The Portal to Texas History is operated by the University of North Texas University Libraries. This gateway to Texas history materials contains unique collections submitted to the Portal from Texas libraries, museums, archives, historical and genealogical societies, and private family collections. The Portal features digital reproductions of photographs, maps, letters, documents, books, artifacts, newspapers, and more. In addition, the Portal's Texas History for Teachers pages provides unit and lesson plans, student activities, video lectures, and primary sources, freely available for Texas History Educators, based on the content from the Portal to Texas History.

Texas Digital Sanborn Maps 

  • The Texas Digital Sanborn Maps collection is composed of the Texas sets of the famous Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. Sanborn maps are detailed maps of U.S. cities and towns in the 19th and 20th centuries. Originally published by The Sanborn Map Company (Sanborn), the maps were created to allow fire insurance companies to assess their total liability in urbanized areas of the United States. These maps provide detailed property and land-use records of Texas towns and cities from 1867 to 1970. Details on buildings include outline, size and shape, construction materials, height, use, windows and doors, street and sidewalk widths, boundaries and house numbers. They also list residents and businesses; show the racial divisions in Texas cities through layout of buildings and organizations; and help historians plot social and cultural trends within communities. This collection is only accessible to University of Houston-Clear Lake faculty, students, and staff, through the UHCL Neumann Library's subscription to the database.

Texas Reference Center 

  • Selected full text articles from magazines and reference books about or published in Texas includes articles from more than 80 journals and books about Texas and Texans. Topics include history, ethnic and cultural diversity, gender studies, literature, public health, business, home, garden, sports and leisure. This collection is only accessible to University of Houston-Clear Lake faculty, students, and staff, through the UHCL Neumann Library's subscription to the database.

Helpful Clear Lake Area History Links

Local Clear Lake Area and Bay Area organizations and libraries with historical information or information about the region along coast Houston, Texas:

Bayou Building 2402, 2700 Bay Area Blvd, Houston, TX 77058-1002