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A Reference Work for the Classroom

For Educators & Teachers

HistoryKB is the structured knowledge base for world history — 78,400+ encyclopedia entries and 60,200+ indexed primary-source documents, cited in 740+ secondary and post-secondary course syllabi across 28 countries.

Every entry cross-references at least three primary or peer-reviewed sources, with inline citations and a confidence rating — ready for the lecture, the lecture prep, and the graded essay.

See Teacher Plans Browse 740+ Cited Syllabi

Founded 2017 · Cambridge, MA · 41 historians, archaeologists & classicists on the editorial board

Three Classroom Jobs

Three things HistoryKB handles in under a minute.

Designed for the time-pressed instructor: the lecture that needs a defensible summary, the lesson plan that needs anchor dates, and the citation that needs to land in the right format before class ends.

  1. 01

    AP & IB Exam Prep

    Anchor students' essay responses in entries that already carry confidence ratings and at least three inline citations per claim. Drill into comparative timelines that overlay wars, scientific breakthroughs, and political shifts across AP World History and IB History syllabi.

    • Comparative timelines — overlay empires, movements, and reforms on a single axis.
    • Coverage spans 4,200 years across 312 civilizations, regions, and polities.
    • Disputed claims are flagged inline so students learn to read historiography.
  2. 02

    Lecture & Lesson-Plan Sourcing

    Pull a lecture-ready entry in roughly 47 seconds — the average query-to-defensible-answer time benchmarked against Wikipedia and three competing reference sites in our 2024 internal study. Each entry pairs narrative context with the primary sources that anchor it.

    • 78,400+ entries cross-referenced against three or more sources each.
    • 60,200+ indexed primary-source documents for in-class excerpts.
    • Browse by civilization, region, polity, era, or named conflict.
  3. 03

    Chicago, MLA & APA Citation Exports

    Hand students a one-click citation in the format your rubric requires. Pro tier has processed 2.1 million citation exports since launch, with a 94.6% export-success rate — and every export carries the source URLs and access dates your reviewers expect.

    • Paste-ready citations in Chicago, MLA, and APA.
    • Bulk-export a reading list for a syllabus or a unit.
    • Source URLs and access dates included by default.
Portrait of an editorial board historian at her desk in a university library.
Dr. Helen A. Whitford — Editorial board; former chair, Department of History, Boston University.

Editorial Letter

Why 740+ secondary and university courses put HistoryKB on their syllabi.

Dear colleagues,

When I first reviewed HistoryKB in 2021, I approached it the way any department chair approaches a new reference: skeptically. Eighteen months later, it sits on the reading list of three of my graduate seminars and one undergraduate survey. The entries are not written by a model — they are written by named editors and verified against named sources. Each claim is footnoted; each disputed claim is labeled. My students still learn to triangulate, but they start their research trips one hour closer to a defensible answer, and they spend more time reading the footnotes than chasing them.

That distinction — between hours lost and hours spent — is the difference between a reference tool your students use once and one they return to across a term.

— Dr. Helen A. Whitford
Editorial board member, HistoryKB · Former department chair, Boston University

Citation Export

Citation exports in Chicago, MLA, and APA — ready to paste into a syllabus or a grading rubric.

Every export carries the source URL, the access date, and the version of the entry the student consulted. No invisible edits, no orphan footnotes. What you see in the preview is exactly what lands in the bibliography.

  • 2.1 million citation exports processed in Pro tier since launch.
  • 94.6% export-success rate — the remainder are resolved by editorial review within four hours.
  • Switch formats per entry with one click; bundle a reading list as a single export.
Chicago MLA APA 
HistoryKB Encyclopedia · Entry 4A·182
"Treaty of Westphalia (1648)"
Whitford, Helen A., and Marcus T. Eklund
HistoryKB: A Reference Work for World History.
HistoryKB, Inc., Cambridge, MA.
Entry version 17.4, revised 14 November 2025.
Accessed 22 January 2026.
https://historykb.org/entries/treaty-of-westphalia-1648/
Cite this entry → Chicago 17th ed. (notes-bibliography)

Pro tier unlocks Chicago, MLA, and APA exports for every entry. The free tier offers MLA-style citations on 18,000+ entries.

From the Classroom

"I stopped assigning Wikipedia as a starting point two years ago. My AP World History students now open with a HistoryKB entry, follow its three inline citations into the primary documents, and arrive at a thesis with a defensible bibliography. The rabbit hole is still there — we just send them down it on purpose, with a citation in hand."

James R. Okonkwo AP World History teacher · Lincoln Park High School, Chicago · Cited HistoryKB on his syllabus since 2023

Bring HistoryKB Into Your Classroom

Bring HistoryKB into your classroom or syllabus.

Teacher plans include department-wide Pro access, syllabus-ready reading lists, and shared citation exports in Chicago, MLA, and APA. 740+ instructors across 28 countries are already citing HistoryKB — join the list this term.

See Teacher Plans Talk to the Editorial Team

Trusted by instructors in 28 countries · 740+ cited courses · 99.97% uptime on the public reading surface