LibGuides: Primary Sources: Home

What are Primary Sources?

These websites answer questions like:

*What is a primary source?
*How can I tell if it is a primary source?

Finding Primary Resources for History Research
Created by California State University, Long Beach
Primary Resources at Yale
Many of the resources are open-access, but some are for Yale student-use only.
Using Primary Resources
Information guide created by The Library of Congress.

Free Digital Archives on the Web

250+ Killer Digital Libraries and Archives
A web page hosted by the Open Education Database, general in scope, mostly US archival holdings.
American Memory: Library of Congress
Open-access to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.
American Memory: Library of Congress
Open-access to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.
Center for Oral History (UH)
COH preserves the recollections of Hawai‘i’s people through oral interviews and disseminates oral history transcripts to researchers, students, and the general community.
Civil Rights Digital Library
Includes documents, photos, and video about the US civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
Digital Archive for International Research
The DLIR Archive was established as part of the Cooperative Digitization of International Research Materials (CDIRM) project. CDIRM utilized participating American overseas research centers’ (AORCs) connections to collaborate with foreign archives and special collections that hold unique and rare research materials.
Digital Public Library of America
American primary resources

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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. It strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science. DPLA aims to expand this crucial realm of openly available materials, and make those riches more easily discovered and more widely usable and used, through its three main elements:
DOCSTeach
Documents from the US National Archives
Internet Archive
Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.
Librarianship and Archives in Hawaiʻi and the Pacific
A survey of Libraries and Archives in the Pacific Island region. Some of the libraries and archives host digital collections.
Life Photo Archive
Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.
OAISTER
OAISTER is union catalog of millions of records that represent open access resources. OAIster includes more than 50 million records that represent digital resources from more than 2,000 contributors.
openverse content
Photos and images in the public domain or made free by Creative Commons licensing.
Pacific Digital Resources
Hosted by the national Library of Australia, this is a guide to collections of digitized documentary materials relating to the history, culture and people of the Pacific region. This region includes Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia and New Zealand.
World Digital Library
The World Digital Library (WDL) is a project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with the support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world.

Primary Source Databases [A-L]

Amerasia Affair, China, and Postwar Anti-Communist Fervor [Gale]
American History & Political Science [Primary Source]
American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection [Ebsco]
History & Religion
American Civil War: Letters and Diaries [Alexander Street Press]
American History (Primary Source)
History Commons
American History, Newspapers (Primary Source)
American Indian Histories and Cultures [Adam Matthew] - DOES NOT work with Firefox; Use Chrome
American History (Primary Source)
American State Papers 1739-1838 [NewsBank]
American History (Primary Source)
Archive of Americana [Newsbank]
American History (Primary Source)
Archives Unbound [Gale]
Primary sources
Australasian Video Online [Alexander Street Press]
Australasian (Streaming Video)
British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries [Alexander Street Press]
History & Women's Studies (Primary Source)
British Library Newspapers [Gale]
Historical News
Chicago Tribune Archive (1849-1998) [ProQuest]
Newspaper
China, America, and the Pacific [Adam Matthew] - DOES NOT work with Firefox; Use Chrome
History (Primary Source)
Conditions and Politics in Occupied Western Europe, 1940-1945 [Gale]
History & Political Science (Primary Source)
Counseling and Psychotherapy Transcripts, Client Narratives, and Reference Works [Alexander Street Press]
Psychology, Social Work & Counseling
Crime, Punishment, and Pop Culture 1790-1920 [Gale]
Criminal Justice. Primary Source
Defining Gender, 1450-1910 [Adam Matthew] - DOES NOT work with Firefox; Use Chrome
Gender Studies (Primary Source)
Early American Imprints, Series I. Evans (1639-1800) [NewsBank]
American History (Primary Source)
Early American Imprints, Series II. Shaw- Shoemaker, 1801-1819 [NewsBank]
American History (Primary Source)
Early Encounters in North America [Alexander Street Press]
American History & Ethnography (Primary Source)
Early English Books Online (EEBO) [ProQuest]
Ebooks (Primary Source)
Early Experiences in Australasia: Primary Sources and Personal Narratives 1788 through 1901 [Alexander Street Press]
Australasian (Primary Source)
Eighteenth (18th) Century Collections Online [Gale]
History (Primary Source)
Eighteenth (18th) Century Journals [Adam Matthew] - DOES NOT work with Firefox; Use Chrome
History
FBIS - Foreign Broadcast Information Service Electronic Index
Political Science & International Relations
Final Accountability Rosters of Japanese-American Relocation Centers, 1944-1946 [Gale]
This collection provides demographic information on the "evacuees" resident at the various relocation camps.
Financial Times: Historical Archive 1888-2010 [Gale]
Business News
First World War - Propaganda and Recruitment [Adam Matthew] - DOES NOT work with Firefox; Use Chrome
History (Primary Source)
Fold3 (Historical Documents)
Genealogy
Foreign Office Files for China, 1919-1980 [Adam Matthew] - DOES NOT work with Firefox; Use Chrome
Political Science & International Relations
Gerritsen Collection of Aletta Jacobs [ProQuest]
Women's Studies
HARPWEEK (Harper's Weekly)
History
House and Senate Journals, Series I, 1789-1817 [NewsBank]
Political Science & American History
Illustrated Civil War Newspapers and Magazines [Alexander Street Press]
American History (Primary Source)
Illustrated London News Historical Archive, 1842-2003 [Gale]
Newspaper
International Women's Movement: The Pan Pacific/Southeast Asia Women's Association, 1950-1985 [Gale]
Australasian History & Women's Studies (Primary Source)
Japanese-American Relocation Camp Newspapers: Perspectives on Day-to-Day Life [Gale]
This collection of 25 individual titles, documents life in the Japanese internment camps during World War II.
Lincoln at the Bar: Extant Case Files from the U.S. District and Circuit Courts, Southern District of Illinois 1855-1861 [Gale]
Files of cases from the records of the U.S. District and Circuit Courts at Springfield with which Abraham Lincoln has been identified as legal counsel, and date from 1855 to 1861.
Nineteenth (19th) Century UK Periodicals [Gale]
History
Periodicals Index & Archive Online [ProQuest]
Covers many topics

Primary Source Databases [M-Z]

Making of the Modern World Digital Archive (Gale)
Business & Economic History (Primary Source)
Medieval Family Life [Adam Matthew] - DOES NOT work with Firefox; Use Chrome
History & Social Culture (Primary Source)
Medieval Travel Writing [Adam Matthew] - DOES NOT work with Firefox; Use Chrome
History & Travel (Primary Source)
Middle East Online: Arab-Israeli Relations, 1917-1970 [Gale]
History & Political Science (Primary Source)
The Middle East Online: Iraq, 1914-1974 [Gale]
History & Political Science (Primary Source)
Mountain People: Life and Culture in Appalachia [Gale]
American History & Political Science [Primary Source]
New York Times Archive (1851-2018) [ProQuest]
Newspaper
Nineteenth (19th) Century U.S. Newspapers [Gale]
Newspapers
Nixon Years [Adam Matthew] - DOES NOT work with Firefox; Use Chrome
American History (Primary Source)
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories [Alexander Street Press]
American History & Ethnography (Primary Source)
North American Indian Thought and Culture [Alexander Street Press]
American History & Ethnography (Primary Source)
North American Women's Letters and Diaries - Colonial to 1950 [Alexander Street Press]
American History & Women's Studies (Primary Source)
Oral History Online [Alexander Street Press]
History & Ethnography (Primary Source)
Perdita Manuscripts: Women Writers, 1500-1700 [Adam Matthew] - DOES NOT work with Firefox; Use Chrome
Women's Studies
Periodicals Index & Archive Online [ProQuest]
Covers many topics
Personal Justice Denied: Public Hearings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment, 1981 [Gale]
This publication consists of the testimony and documents from more than 750 witnesses, such as Japanese Americans and Aleuts who had lived through the events of WWII interment camps.
Post War Europe: Refugees, Exile and Resettlement, 1945-1950 [Gale]
History (Primary Source)
Primary Sources [Gale]
Gateway portal to digital historical documents from over 500 years of world history.
Primary Sources [Gale]
Primary Source & History
Sabin Americana, 1500-1926 [Gale]
American History (Primary Source)
Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period [Alexander Street Press]
Literature
Senate Executive Journals, Series I, 1789-1980 [NewsBank]
American History, Political Science & Foreign Policy
Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960 - 1974 [Alexander Street Press]
American History (Primary Source)
Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive. Part I: Debates over Slavery and Abolition [Gale]
History (Primary Source)
Testaments to the Holocaust [Gale]
History (Primary Source)
Times (London) Digital Archive [Gale]
Newspaper
Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History [Adam Matthew]
Tourism; History; Women's Studies (Primary Sources)
U.S. Congressional Serial Set, 1817-1980 [NewsBank]
US Government (Primary Source)
U.S. Congressional Serial Set Maps [NewsBank]
Maps
U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs [Gale]
U.S. Supreme Court Records
Victorian Popular Culture [Adam Matthew] - DOES NOT work with Firefox; Use Chrome
History (Primary Source)
Wall Street Journal Archives (1889-2011) [ProQuest]
Business News
Women and Social Movements in Modern Empires since 1820 [Alexander Street Press]
History & Women's Studies (Primary Source)
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 [Alexander Street Press]
Women's Studies (Primary Source)
World War II Archives [Fold3]
Genealogy