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.
The collection includes:
Manoel de Oliveira Lima's personal library contains pamphlets on colonialism, independence, slavery, Catholic Church, indigenous peoples, immigration, ecology, agriculture, economic development, medicine, public health, international relations, and Portuguese literature.
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.
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
Part IV: The Age of Emancipation.
These general collections include images and photographs, but most of the manuscripts are in Spanish.
HeinOnline Foreign Relations of the United States presents the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity. The series, which began in 1861 under President Abraham Lincoln, contains books and documents from various Presidential libraries as well as different governmental agencies.
The Confidential Print series, issued by the British Government between 1820 and 1970, is a crucial source for political, social, and economic research in Central and South America and the Caribbean, covering topics like slavery, immigration, wars, and populist rulers.
Newspapers.com Library Edition offers full page newspaper images with searchable full-text of newspapers. The collection includes digital reproductions providing access to both full runs and portions of runs of newspapers.
Offers archives of a diverse range of predominantly non-Western newspaper titles, fully digitized and searchable for discoverability.
An increasing number of primary sources are available for free on the web. Here are some search strategies for finding them:
Strategy 1: To focus on primary sources, go to a search engine like Google, and combine your topic with terms designating primary sources such as memoirs, diaries, accounts, narratives, documents, autobiographies, online archives, correspondence, speeches. You can link synonyms together with a capitalized OR. Here are some examples:
"Pancho Villa" "primary sources"
"Mexican Revolution" accounts
Mexico "online archives"
Strategy 2: Another great way to find sources on the web is to think of a library, archives, or university that specializes in your topic, and pay them a "virtual visit" (check their web site for online collections).