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History: Primary Resources

A guide to resources for research and study of history.

Primary vs. Secondary Sources

Primary

Primary sources are original documents, records or other materials created at the time of a particular event, or created at a later date by a person recalling involvement in a particular event or time period.  This includes photographs, manuscripts, personal letters, diaries and other materials. 

 

Secondary

Secondary sources are materials that compile and reference original sources to describe and analyze past events.  Textbooks are considered secondary sources, as are scholarly research articles and books written after an event, by someone not directly involved in the event.

Archives and Online Resources

American Journeys

Eyewitness accounts by explorers, native americans, missionaries, traders, settlers exploring North Americ, ca. AD 1000 to 1800 from the Wisconsin Historical Society.   

The Library of Congress

National Library of the United States and Congress. Prints, photographs, sound archives, and other e-resources) from all time periods and countries. Includes three popular collections:

            Digital archive to historical documents, maps, sound recordings, and images.

            Digital Newspaper Project: U.S. Newspapers--many small town--to 1922.

            The umbrella collection for the two above, this links to the Library of Congress's many historical collections.

JSTOR Primary Source Collections

            Collections of images and primary sources from libraries, museums, and archives around the world. Also contains secondary sources; filter on the left for primary sources specifically.

Massachusetts Historical Society Digital Archives

            Includes Presidential letters collections, collections focusing on marginalized groups, and many other collections.

The New York Times

            Access to NYT articles from 1851 to present. Sign up for a free subscription through Marian University Libraries here.

National Archives

            Includes America's founding documents, as well as collections on American topics, places, and people.

Black Freedom Struggle

            Includes more than 2,000 documents curated around six crucial phases of the U.S. Black freedom struggle.

Black Studies in Video

            Includes documentaries, powerful interviews, and previously unavailable archival footage surveying the black experience

Black Thought and Culture

            Contains primary and secondary sources created by Black Americans. 

HeinOnline Academic

            Focuses on legal and government documents. Contains primary and secondary sources.

Internet Archive

            Non-profit library that includes primary and secondary sources.

Hagley Museum and Library

            Hagley's collections document the interaction between business and the cultural, social, and political dimensions of our society.

Wilson Center Digital Archives

            History and Public Policy Program: includes primary and secondary resources.

Documenting the American South

            Texts, images, audiofiles on history, literature and culture, colonial period to include the beginnings of the twentieth century.  From the University of North Carolina Library. 

Internet History Sourcebooks Project

            Historical sources for Ancient History, Medieval Studies, and Modern History.

Making of America

            Digital library of 8,500 books and 50,000 journal articles in American social history, antebellum period through Reconstruction. From the University of Michigan.

National Archives--Archival Research Catalog

Features online primary source materials for educational program DocsTeach, and online exhibits.  Also guides to archival collections in regional depositories (Atlanta, Georgia, is NARA’s Southeast Regional Repository). For more information, see http://www.archives.gov/education/research/primary-sources.html

New York Public Library Research Collections

Archives, Digital collections and more from the NYPL:  Historical maps, illuminated manuscripts, prints and photographs.  Includes texts and images from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Smithsonian Institution Libraries

The Digital Library Collections contain exhibitions, digitized books (many on the history of science and technology), papers from the Bureau of American Ethnology BULLETIN.

Indiana Resources

Search vital, cultural, military, court, land, medical, civil war, and criminal history records.

            A digital archive containing more than one million items related to the culture and history of Indianapolis. 

Search vital, cultural, military, court, land, medical, civil war, and criminal history records.

Collections include photographic, institution, military, historical, naturalization, and court records.

more than 75,000 digital images that are available for research,

Links to digital collections from academic libraries, public libraries, historical societies, museums, and archives in the state of Indiana.