Ask a Librarian
How do I find primary sources in library databases and online collections?
Most of the resources collected here allow you to search by keyword or browse in ways that reflect sources' original format. Be sure to check out the Primary Sources research guide for more context and tips. On this page you'll find:
- Digitized collections of primary sources — These collections are usually organized around a common theme or topic
- Government Documents — Collections of government documents
- Historical Newspapers and Periodicals — Organized by geography, subject, or social identities of publishers and readers
- Tips for finding primary sources on the Internet
How do I find primary sources on the Internet?
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Do a search in Google (or the search engine of your choice)
- Combine keywords that describe your topic with keywords to retrieve primary sources or digital collections from archives and museums
For example
- "Vietnam veterans" oral histories
- "African American" women nurses "digital collection"
- 17th century recipes archives
- "Chinese immigration" letters
Common primary source keywords include:
- "primary sources"
- sources
- documents
- texts
- manuscripts
- "digital collections"
You can also try keywords for kinds of primary sources:
- "oral histories"
- "personal narratives"
- letters
- correspondence
- interviews
- diaries
Remember to evaluate the sites you find -- even a quick check to see if a site is produced by an archives, museum, governmental agency, or educational institution can help you determine whether this is a legitimate, trustworthy source for information. The best sites for primary sources will provide you with the information you need to cite your sources.
Other research guides
To see if a librarian has already identified digital primary sources related to your topic, do an Internet search for a term or phrase related to your research plus the phrase "research guide" or LibGuide.
- For example: Search for history of medicine "research guide".
Digitized Archival Collections
Amherst College Digital Collections
- Amherst College Digital Collections This link opens in a new windowOpen access repository for digitized archival collections from Amherst College Archives & Special Collections. Digitized images include photographs, manuscripts, books, and more.
Collections from other institutions
- Smithsonian InstitutionGallery of digitized collections held by the Smithsonian.
Collections organized by era
- Making of the Modern World (1450-1914) This link opens in a new windowPrimary source materials (including broadsides and pamphlets, serials, and monographs) tracing British and US economic history from 1450-1914.
- Electronic Enlightenment (18th century) This link opens in a new windowFull text of over 53,000 letters and documents from the best critical editions.
Collections organized around slavery and abolition
- American Slavery Collection (1820-1922) This link opens in a new windowDigital edition of the American Antiquarian Society's holdings of slavery and abolition materials, with more than 3,500 works.
- Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938Over 2,000 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former enslaved people, collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project. When using these sources, consult the contextualizing note "The Limitations of the Slave Narrative Collection" on the site.
- Freedom on the MoveDatabase of over 30,000 ads seeking fugitive enslaved people. Searchable by geography, personal descriptors, date, and enslaver. Transcribed data may be downloaded.
- Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery CollectionThis collection from Cornell University includes pamphlets and leaflets documenting the anti-slavery struggle at local, regional, and national levels.
- Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice (1490-2007) This link opens in a new windowThousands of pamphlets, books, paintings, maps and images documenting the varieties and legacy of slavery, the social justice perspective, and the continued existence of slavery today.
Collections organized around social identities & social histories
- Archives of Sexuality & Gender This link opens in a new windowArchives of Sexuality and Gender covers the sixteenth to twentieth centuries in historical primary-source publications relating to the history and study of sex, sexuality, gender, and gender studies research. Sources include newsletters, organizational papers, government documents, manuscripts, and pamphlets. Our access includes LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940 (Part 1 and 2) and Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century (Part 3).
- Black Studies Center (25,000 BC to present) This link opens in a new windowCross-searchable gateway to black studies including scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, reference books, and more.
- Crime, Punishment and Popular Culture (1790-1920) This link opens in a new windowTwo million pages of trial transcripts, police and forensic reports, detective novels, newspaper accounts, true crime literature, and related ephemera, focusing on nineteenth-century criminal history, law, literature, and justice.
- Digital Transgender ArchiveAn online hub for digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world. The DTA treats "transgender as a practice rather than an identity category in order to bring together a trans-historical and trans-cultural collection of materials related to trans-ing gender."
- Disability History MuseumSources associated with the cultural and social history of people with disabilities across the lifespan and diagnosis categories.
- Mass Observation Online This link opens in a new windowPrimary-source collection containing original manuscript and typescript papers created and collected by the Mass Observation organization, as well as printed publications, photographs, and interactive features.
- North American Indian Thought and Culture This link opens in a new windowAutobiographies, biographies, publications, oral histories, personal writings, photographs, drawings, and audio files of indigenous people from across North America.
- Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960-1974 This link opens in a new windowDiaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary from the 1960s.
- South Asian American Digital ArchiveArchive of South Asian American history includes photographs, oral histories, correspondence, ads and more.
- Umbra Search: African American HistoryCollection of over 400,000 digitized sources in African American history, from more than 1,000 libraries, museums and archives.
Collections organized by geographic region
- Digital CommonwealthPrimary source documents from the collections of museums, libraries, and archives across Massachusetts.
- dLOC: Digital Library of the CaribbeanMaps, oral histories, legal documents, books and other sources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean.
- Digital Public Library of AmericaCatalog of public domain and openly licensed images and other digitized materials from archives, libraries, museums, and other U.S. cultural heritage institutions.
- EuroDocsGuide to digitized European collections organized by country. Covers the Medieval era to the present. From Harold Lee Library, Brigham Young University.
- South Asia Archive This link opens in a new windowFully searchable digital archive of documents ranging from the mid-18th to the mid-20th century.
Collections organized around political histories and political activism
- Civil Rights Resource GuideDigital collections and a curated list of more specific websites from the Library of Congress.
- Documenting FergusonA community-sourced collection of "digital media captured and created by community members following the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014."
- Free Speech Movement Digital ArchiveThe Free Speech Movement (FSM) Digital Archives document the Free Speech Movement (University of California, Berkeley, September-December 1964), as well as its origins in political protest and civil rights movements.
- Freedom Summer Digital ArchiveMore than 25,000 pages from the Freedom Summer manuscripts, including "official records of organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); the personal papers of movement leaders and activists such as Amzie Moore, Mary King and Howard Zinn, letters and diaries of northern college students who went South to volunteer for the summer; newsletters produced in Freedom Schools; racist propaganda, newspaper clippings, pamphlets and brochures, magazine articles, telephone call logs, candid snapshots, internal memos, press releases and much more."
- A People's Archive of Police Violence in ClevelandA collaboration between Cleveland residents and professional archivists, this site collects, preserves, and shares the stories, memories, and accounts of police violence as experienced or observed by Cleveland citizens.
Historical Newspapers
These databases have collections of newspapers published generally pre-1990, often digitized from print or microfilm. They are searchable, but be aware that the results won't be as accurate as born-digital newspapers.
- Historical Newspapers (ProQuest) This link opens in a new windowCombined search of the historic Boston Globe, Chicago Defender, Chinese Newspapers Collection, Hartford Courant, Los Angeles Times, New York Amsterdam News, New York Times, South China Morning Post, Times of India, and Washington Post.
- America's Historical Newspapers (1690-1980) This link opens in a new windowSearchable archive of American newspapers including Early American Newspapers (1690-1922) and Hispanic American Newspapers (1808-1980).
- British Library Newspapers This link opens in a new windowSearchable archive of regional and local British newspapers published between the mid-eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.
- African American Newspapers (Readex) (1827-1998) This link opens in a new windowProvides access to approximately 270 U.S. newspapers from more than 35 states and chronicles a century and a half of the African American experience.
- African American Newspapers (Accessible Archives) (1827-1902) This link opens in a new windowStarting with Freedom's Journal in 1827, the database will eventually contain all major African-American newspapers published in the U.S. during the 19th century.
- Historical Chinese Newspapers (ProQuest) This link opens in a new windowEnglish-language newspapers published in China; spans 1832-1953, with most content from 1910-1940.
- Caribbean Newspapers (1718-1876) This link opens in a new windowFully searchable digitized collection of 18th- and 19th-century Caribbean newspapers, including 66 titles from 22 islands
- Latin American Newspapers (1805-1922) This link opens in a new windowMore than 35 fully searchable newspapers published in Central and South America between 1805-1922.
- Japan Times Digital Archive (1897-2014)Japan’s oldest English language newspaper and the country’s only independent English-language newspaper today.
- Ethnic NewsWatch (1959 to present) This link opens in a new windowNews and analysis from ethnic popular and scholarly publications.
- Alternative Press Index (1969 to present) This link opens in a new windowCovers alternative, radical, and left periodicals, newspapers, and magazines.
- Alt-PressWatch (1970 to present) This link opens in a new windowFull-text newspapers, magazines, and journals of the alternative and independent press.
- Independent VoicesNewspapers and journals produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, BIPOC advocates, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.
- Chronicling America (1860-1922)Search or browse hundreds of newspapers through the Library of Congress National Digital Newspaper Program. Includes descriptions of papers, and images are downloadable.
- Google News Archive (1800s to present)Digitized and searchable U.S. and Canadian newspapers. Not at all comprehensive, but potential for excellent and historic coverage depending on title.
- FBIS: Federal Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports (1974-1996) This link opens in a new windowNews in translation (by the CIA) from radio, television, and newspapers around the world.
Historical Periodicals
- Alternative Press Index (1969 to present) This link opens in a new windowCovers alternative, radical, and left periodicals, newspapers, and magazines.
- American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection (1684-1912) This link opens in a new windowComprehensive collection of early American periodicals, with coverage of advertising, health, women's issues, science, the history of slavery, religious issues, culture and the arts, and more.
- American Periodicals (1740-1940) This link opens in a new windowDigitized reproductions of more than 1,100 18th and 19th century newspapers and periodicals.
- British Periodicals This link opens in a new windowSearchable full text of hundreds of British periodicals from the late 17th century to the early 20th, with high-resolution facsimile page images.
- HAPI: Hispanic American Periodicals Index (1970 to present) This link opens in a new windowCovers analyses of current political, economic, and social issues to unique coverage of Latin American arts.
- Women's Magazine Archive This link opens in a new windowSearchable archive of leading women's interest magazines, dating from the 19th century through to the 21st.
- Zasshi Kiji Sakuin Shusei Detabesu (1868 to present) This link opens in a new windowIndex to periodical articles published in Japanese, including those in former Japanese colonies, and including local periodicals not present in many other indexes.
Government Documents
- American Presidency ProjectArchives containing 109,388 documents related to the study of the Presidency, including executive orders, speeches, press conferences, and more.
- Congressional Publications This link opens in a new windowIndex to U.S. congressional material, some full text.
- FBI Records: The VaultAccess FBI records made available under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
- CIA Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading RoomAccess reports from the CIA, made available under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
- Foreign Relations of the United StatesThe official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity.
- National Security Archive Briefing BooksThe National Security Archive's continually growing collection of Electronic Briefing Books (EBBs) provide timely online access to critical declassified records on issues including U.S. national security, foreign policy, diplomatic and military history, intelligence policy, and much more.
- Vietnam War and American Foreign Policy (ProQuest History Vault) (1960-1975) This link opens in a new windowCollection of primary sources covering everything from early U.S. involvement in the region up to the final resolution of the war at the Paris Peace Talks and the evacuation of U.S. troops in 1973
Gateways to open-access primary source collections
Use these to find freely-available collections of primary sources.
- Guide to Online Primary SourcesOrganized by topic. Some of the resources are limited to UCSD library users, but there are many links to open access source collections.
- World Digital LibrarySignificant primary sources from many countries and cultures.