What are Primary Sources?
Primary Sources are original sources: they were created by someone who participated in or observed an event. They include diaries, letters, newspapers, government documents, photographs, and other manuscripts.
General Collections: North America
- America's Historical Imprints This link opens in a new window
This collection of monographs, pamphlets, broadsides, government documents, and ephemera includes 16 cross-searchable components.
- History Vault This link opens in a new window
History Vault is a collection of primary source material pertaining to the civil rights movement and to U.S. foreign policy during the Vietnam War era. This rich collection of federal records, letters, papers, photographs, scrapbooks, financial records, and diaries is organized in five subject categories: 1) Black Freedom Struggle; 2) NAACP Papers; 3) Slavery and the Law; 4) Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantations Records; and 5) Vietnam War and American Foreign Policy, 1960-1975.
- Sabin Americana, 1500-1926 This link opens in a new windowBased on Joseph Sabin's landmark bibliography, this collection contains works about the Americas published throughout the world from 1500 to the early 1900's.
- Early Encounters in North America This link opens in a new windowEarly Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment documents the relationships among Native American, African and European peoples in North America from 1534 to 1850. Using diaries, memoirs, letters, travel accounts and other primary sources, this collection focuses on personal accounts and provides unique perspectives from many people, including traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials, both men and women.
- American Indian Histories and Cultures This link opens in a new windowMaterial from the Newberry Library’s Edward E. Ayer Collection contains early contacts between Europeans and American Indians and the subsequent political, social and cultural effects of those encounters on American Indian life. It covers the period from early western frontier right through to the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century.
- Accessible Archives Complete This link opens in a new windowPrimary source material from 18th and 19th Century periodicals. Included in the collection is Godey's Lady's Book, The Civil War: A Soldier's Perspective, African American newspapers, American county histories and various other newspapers, gazettes and collections.
- Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports, 1941-1996 This link opens in a new windowFBIS is comprised of the collections from the Archives of the Central Intelligence Agency including government publications, magazines, newspapers and transcribed television and radio broadcasts. Collected between 1941-1996 and translated into English by the Central Intelligence Agency, these intelligence reports are an indispensable source for insight into decades of turbulent world history.
- Digital Public Library of America"The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America's libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world."
- The Vietnam ArchiveThe Vietnam archive at Texas Tech University. The largest archive on the war in the world.
- Documenting the American SouthA collection of primary sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century. The Academic Affairs Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill sponsors DAS, and the texts come primarily from its Southern holdings.
General Collections: Latin America
- Digital Library of the CaribbeanThis collection includes images and maps, newspapers, government documents, manuscripts, and more. Some text documents are in Spanish, some in English.
- Early Americas Digital Archive"a collection of electronic texts and links to texts originally written in or about the Americas from 1492 to approximately 1820."
- LANIC Virtual Libraries in Latin Americadiscover online primary sources for various Latin American countries.
- Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive This link opens in a new window
Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive includes collections on the transatlantic slave trade, the global movement for the abolition of slavery, the legal, personal, and economic aspects of the slavery system, and the dynamics of emancipation in the U.S. as well as in Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions. It consists of books, serials, manuscript collections, supreme court records and briefs, reference articles, and encyclopedias. The database is in four parts: Part I: Debates over Slavery and Abolition; Part II: Slave Trade in the Atlantic World; Part III: The Institution of Slavery and Part IV: The Age of Emancipation.
- El InformadorAn important Mexican newspaper with coverage from 1917-2008.
General Collections: Europe
- Early English Books Online (EEBO) (ProQuest) This link opens in a new windowEarly English Books Online contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700.
- Early European Books This link opens in a new windowEarly European Books is a multidisciplinary collection of materials published in Europe or in European languages, c. 1455-1700.
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) This link opens in a new window
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) is a digitized library representing most of the significant English- and foreign-language texts published in Great Britain and the colonies during the eighteenth century. Subject access to this collection is provided by the British Library’s online English Short Title Catalogue.
- Nineteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new windowAt present, the database comprises eight discrete subject collections: 1) British Politics and Society; 2) European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection; 3) Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange; 4) British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture; 5) Europe and Africa; 6) Photography; 7) Science, Technology, and Medicine; 8) Women; 9) Religion, Spirituality, Reform & Society; 10) Mapping the World: Maps & Travel Literature; 11) Children’s Literature & Childhood; and 12) Science, Technology, and Medicine, Part II.
- Internet Medieval History SourcebookAn easy to use site that contains a large collection of primary sources.
- State Papers Online This link opens in a new window
State Papers Online is a collection of historical materials on early modern Britain & Europe across a wide range of government concerns. It includes correspondence, reports, memoranda, and parliamentary drafts from ambassadors, civil servants, and provincial administrators from 1509-1782. It includes the following:
Part I: The Tudors, 1509-1603: State Papers Domestic
Part II: The Tudors, 1509-1603: State Papers Foreign, Scotland, Borders, Ireland and Registers of the Privy Council
Part III: The Stuarts and Commonwealth, James I - Anne I, 1603-1714: State Papers Domestic
Part IV: The Stuarts, 1603-1714: State Papers Foreign
Eighteenth Century, 1714-1782, Part 2: State Papers Foreign, Low Countries and Germany
Eighteenth Century, 1714-1782, Part 3: State Papers Foreign, Western Europe
- Europeana"Multi-lingual online collection of millions of digitized items from European museums, libraries, archives and multi-media collections."
Genealogical Research
- Ancestry Library Edition This link opens in a new windowAncestry Library Edition is a genealogy research tool created for the library market and provides access to a wide range of unique resources for genealogical and historical research.
- Fold3 This link opens in a new windowThis genealogical database contains personal records, photographs and historic documents. It also includes collections of census materials, military records from the American Revolution, Civil War, World War II and Vietnam, African American and Native American archives, naturalization records and more.