Primary Sources

Tips for evaluating the quality of content on the Web from the University at Albany Libraries.

Reviews of online primary source archives by academics, organized by region and time period. Also includes guides to analyzing primary soruces. From the Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University.

From the Virginia Center for Digital History, this site includes primary sources from the period 1859-1870 for 2 counties, one Northern and one Southern. The primary sources include letters and diaries, offical records, battle maps, newspapers, etc.

Selections from a multi-volume edition of his letters and speeches from Rice University.

From the National Portrait Gallery, this site is "dedicated to examining the Civil War through the Smithsonian Institution's extensive and manifold collections." The Collections section includes documents, images, and artifacts related to the War. There is also a chronology of the war and a Resources page with suggestions for further reading.

From Rutgers University Libraries, this is a portal site and includes many primary sources such as maps, political cartoons, diaries, letters, photographs, and speeches.

The Archive of this site contains primary sources such as videos, oral histories, photographs and documents related to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. The site is free, but registration is required to access the Archive.

Includes oral histories and personal narratives from those involved.

469 oral histories of World War II, Korean, Vietnam, and Cold wars.

"Presents images and database information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. Ad*Access concentrates on five main subject areas: Radio, Television, Transportation, Beauty and Hygiene, and World War II, providing a coherent view of a number of major campaigns and companies through images preserved in one particular advertising collection available at Duke University. The advertisements are from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History in Duke University's Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library."

This site, a project of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, provides primary source materials relating to the New Deal, including photos, political cartoons, speeches, and letters.

An online collection from the American Radicalism Collection at Michigan State University, containing documents and images from the Ku Klux Klan, Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panthers, the I.W.W., the American Indian movement, and the Sacco and Vanzetti case, among others.

Digitized materials from the Emma Goldman Papers Project at the University of California, Berkeley. Includes selections from Emma Goldman's writings, letters, telegrams, handbills, pamphlets, speeches, and photographs.

A collection of over 500 public domain images of American Political History from Dr. William J. Ball of the Department of Political Science at The College of New Jersey.

Links to presidential libraries, many of which have primary sources online.

From California State University San Marcos, this collection includes digitized copies of the narrative reports of the commissioner of Indian affairs for 1871, 1872, 1874, 1875, and 1876, and a map of western reservations published with the 1875 report.

This site provides fully searchable digitzed text of Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, compiled and edited by Charles J. Kappler, which is "an historically significant, seven volume compilation of U.S. treaties, laws and executive orders pertaining to Native American Indian tribes."

The National Archives preserve legally or historically important documents and materials created in the course of business conducted by the United States Federal government.

This site is from the University of Oklahoma College of Law. It includes U.S. historical documents from pre-Colonial times to the present.

Digitized documents from 4000 BCE to the present from Yale Law School. Includes treaties, charters, laws, etc. Arranged chronologically. Also arranged by subject under Document Collections.

This site provides digitized runs of three 18th century British journals (Gentleman's Magazine, The Annual Register, and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society), and three 19th century British journals (Notes and Queries, The Builder, and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine).

This is a free index to collections of personal narratives in English from around the world. Some resources indexed are only available through subscription databases, but many are free.

Primary source and archival materials relating to American culture and history from the Library of Congress.

Created by the American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning (Graduate Center, CUNY) and the Center for History and New Media (George Mason University), this site includes "primary documents in text, image, and audio about the experiences of ordinary Americans throughout U.S. history. All of the documents have been screened by professional historians and are accompanied by annotations that address their larger historical significance and context."

A collaborative project ofthe Wisconsin Historical Society and National History Day, this site contains eyewitness accounts of North American exploration.

Part of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, this site provides a selection of digitized images and texts, manuscript and archival finding aids.

The Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) of the Library of Congress provides access to about 1 million digital images in the collections of the Library of Congress. There is a caveat on the site that not all images in the catalog are in the public domain.