LibGuides: HIST 202: Historical Research: Primary Document Collections to Consider

Depending on what you're looking for...

CMU Digital Archive
Includes historical CMU documents, photographs, and publications along with local history collections related to the Colorado River, energy and mining development on the Western Slope, and local migrant workers to name a few.
Mountain Scholar: Digital Collections of Colorado
Auraria Library Digital Collections
CU Anschutz Medical Campus Digital Collections
CU Boulder Digital Library
CU Boulder Wise Law Library Digital Archive
Colorado School of Mines Repository

National:

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA): Discover 33,634,327 images, texts, videos, and sounds from across the United States. Try browsing by topic! Topics include aviation, civil rights, immigration, and more! You might also wish to explore their exhibitions -- like those on the Race for the Moon; Patent Medicine; US Public Libraries; and American Theatre in the Great Depression -- for inspiration!
National Archives & Records Administration (NARA): Site features online exhibits, America's founding documents, ways to research by topic, and much, much more.
Library of Congress, Digital Collections: Collections include those for Aaron Copeland, Abraham Lincoln, Baseball Cards and Sheet Music, Clara Barton's papers, Elizabeth Cady Stanton papers, Conservation Movement materials, Japanese censorship, Quilts and Quiltmaking in America, and much more.
Chronicling America's Historic American Newspapers: tons of searchable content here from the 1700-1963! YUM!

International / Non-US:

Europeana: Europeana Collections provides access to over 50 million digitised items – books, music, artworks and more – with sophisticated search and filter tools to help you find what you’re looking for. Their dedicated thematic collections on art, fashion, music, photography and World War I contain galleries, blogs and exhibitions to inform and inspire. NOTE: Not all sources are in English.
British National Archives: Among many other things, you'll find a searchable image library and online collections related to topics like maps, domestic politics, civilian occupations, WWII, and the Merchant Navy.

Discovering American Women's History Online (MTSU)
This database provides access to digital collections of primary sources (photos, letters, diaries, artifacts, etc.) that document the history of women in the United States. These diverse collections range from Ancestral Pueblo pottery to interviews with women engineers from the 1970s.
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The database offers the following features: Detailed descriptions and links to more than 650 digital collections; Quick access to basic and advanced searches on every page; Options for browsing by subject (300+ entries), place, time period, and primary source type; Options for narrowing search results by subject, time period, place, and primary source type; RSS feeds (at right) alert users to new records in the database.
Women's History Collections through Library of Congress
Includes: Broadsides and Printed Ephemera ~ ca. 1600-2000 [An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera]; Manuscript Division ~ Selected Highlights [Words and Deeds in American History: Selected Documents Celebrating the Manuscript Division's First 100 Years]; Woman Suffrage ~ Books and Pamphlets ~ 1848-1921 [Votes for Women: Selections from the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, 1848-1921]; Woman Suffrage ~ Scrapbooks ~ 1897-1911
[Miller NAWSA Suffrage Scrapbooks, 1897-1911]; Women's History ~ U.S. ~ Multiformat
[American Women: A Gateway to Library of Congress Resources for the Study of Women's History and Culture in the United States]
Home Economics Archive (Cornell University)
HEARTH is a core electronic collection of books and journals in Home Economics and related disciplines. Titles published between 1850 and 1950 were selected and ranked by teams of scholars for their great historical importance. The first phase of this project focused on books published between 1850 and 1925 and a small number of journals. Future phases of the project will include books published between 1926 and 1950, as well as additional journals. The full text of these materials, as well as bibliographies and essays on the wide array of subjects relating to Home Economics, are all freely accessible on this site. This is the first time a collection of this scale and scope has been made available.
Women Working: 1800-1930 (Harvard)
Women Working, 1800–1930 is a digital exploration of women's impact on the economic life of the United States between 1800 and the Great Depression. Working conditions, workplace regulations, home life, costs of living, commerce, recreation, health and hygiene, and social issues are among the issues documented in this online research collection from Harvard University.
Women's Liberation Movement Print Culture (Bingham Center for Women's History & Culture; Duke U.)
The Women's Liberation Movement called for reforms on issues such as reproductive rights, domestic violence, and equal pay. Feminist print culture supported and sustained the Women¹s Movement and connect it to other movements for social justice. Photographs, flyers, planning documents, and responses to the 1968 and 1969 Miss America pageant protests, which launched Women's Liberation in the public consciousness, are included.
Women's Travel Diaries (Bingham Center for Women's History & Culture; Duke U.)
The diaries in this digital collection were written by British and American women who documented their travels to places around the globe, including India, the West Indies, countries in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, as well as around the United States. There are over 100 diaries of varying length, selected from a variety of archival collections at the Rubenstein Library.

World War I

Allied Posters of WWI (Temple University)
This collection of over 1,500 World War I posters in Temple University Libraries' Special Collections Research Center was donated by George F. Tyler in 1937. The posters provide a graphic portrayal of Allied propaganda used to educate the public and enlist support for the war effort. In addition, they serve as examples of the art, design, and printing techniques of the period.
National World War I Museum Online Collections Database
The National World War I Museum’s online collections database allows you to search digital records of our global collection that began in 1920. With such a long history, please note that the material available here is only a fraction of our diverse holdings and is in an ongoing process with new digital records added monthly. To date, the focus of the project has been on the Museum’s photograph collection and will continue with other image-related materials.
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Browse by keyword or using our advanced search functions. The "Click and Search" feature provides all available search terms in the database. Not sure what you are looking for? View alternating images using the "Random Images" feature.
World War I Collection (UW-Madison Digital Collections)
This digital collection provides a sampling of UW-Madison's World War I Special Collection. The complete collection is available in the Special Collections Department of Memorial Library. Most of these materials were acquired by the University during or in the immediate aftermath of the war and they represent a direct and often very passionate or partisan viewpoint of that conflict. These are primary sources, the raw materials of history, and they bring the first great worldwide conflict of the twentieth century to us in an immediate way, without the viewpoint provided by intervening years and events.
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UW-Madison's World War I collection focuses primarily, though not exclusively, on European aspects of the war. It is particularly strong in documenting rescue and relief efforts, and in propaganda materials, but all aspects of the war are included. We have made a special effort to include visual images in the digital collection, including illustrated periodicals as well as memorabilia. Included as well are two multivolume illustrated histories from combatants on opposite sides: Gabriel Hanotaux, Histoire illustrée de la guerre de 1914 and Grosser Bilderatlas des Weltkrieges.
World War I Posters (Library of Congress)
During World War I, the impact of the poster as a means of communication was greater than at any other time during history. The ability of posters to inspire, inform, and persuade combined with vibrant design trends in many of the participating countries to produce thousands of interesting visual works. The Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division makes available online approximately 1,900 posters created between 1914 and 1920. Most relate directly to the war, but some German posters date from the post-war period and illustrate events such as the rise of Bolshevism and Communism, the 1919 General Assembly election and various plebiscites. The majority of the posters were printed in the United States. Posters from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, and Russia are included as well. The posters range in style from anonymous broadsides (predominantly text) to graphically vibrant works by well-known designers. The Library acquired these posters through gift, purchase, and exchange or transfer from other government institutions, and continues to add to the collection.

World War II

Historic Government Publications from WWII (SMU)
The Historic Government Publications from World War II contains 343 Informational pamphlets, government reports, instructions, regulations, declarations, speeches, and propaganda materials distributed by the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) during the Second World War. The documents are held by SMU Central University Libraries' Government Information Resources department.
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The documents, which reflect the thinking of the time, range widely in topics. You can view information on many categories, such as women's issues, children's issues, pocket guides to other countries, and more. You can view series, like the Victory Bulletin and 10 issues of the State Summary of War Casualties.
World War II Posters Collection (Bucknell University)
The World War II Posters Collection was created by History 100 students in Professor David Del Testa's history class at Bucknell University using a collection of World War II posters held in Special Collections/University Archives. Students selected individual posters, worked in pairs to research their selection, and presented their findings through a digital image of the original poster and a research paper summarizing their findings. The World War II Posters Collection is a digital collection of their work, making their work more widely accessible. This collection is available to the Public.
World War II Posters Collection (U. of North Texas)
The UNT Libraries' World War Poster Collection consists of over 700 original World War I and World War II posters, 493 of which have been digitized.
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From World War I French victory figures to grim views of the Nazi regime, these posters demonstrate the power of words and images. The collection is particularly strong in World War I French and American posters, and World War II American "home front" posters. War bonds, rationing, enlistment, security, and morale are all topics treated by these artworks. The collection includes posters by such famous artists as Norman Rockwell, Theodore Geisel (better known as Dr. Seuss), and Boris Artzybasheff.

U.S. Department of State: Office of the Historian
Includes many historical documents, e.g. presidential papers, as well as a history of the Department of State.
Abraham Lincoln Papers Digital Collection (Library of Congress)
The complete Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress consists of approximately 20,000 documents. The collection is organized into three "General Correspondence" series which include incoming and outgoing correspondence and enclosures, drafts of speeches, and notes and printed material. Most of the 20,000 items are from the 1850s through Lincoln's presidential years, 1860-65. Treasures include Lincoln's draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, his March 4, 1865, draft of his second Inaugural Address, and his August 23, 1864, memorandum expressing his expectation of being defeated for re-election in the upcoming presidential contest. The Lincoln Papers are characterized by a large number of correspondents, including friends and associates from Lincoln's Springfield days, well-known political figures and reformers, and local people and organizations writing to their president. In its online presentation, the Abraham Lincoln Papers comprises approximately 61,000 images and 10,000 transcriptions.
The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy (Yale)
The Avalon Project will mount digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government. We do not intend to mount only static text but rather to add value to the text by linking to supporting documents expressly referred to in the body of the text. The Avalon Project will no doubt contain controversial documents. Their inclusion does not indicate endorsement of their contents nor sympathy with the ideology, doctrines, or means employed by their authors. They are included for the sake of completeness and balance and because in many cases they are by our definition a supporting document.
JFK Presidential Library & Museum: Digital Collections
A growing number of our collections (textual, audiovisual, and artifactual) has been digitized in full or in part and may be browsed on our website using the following links. Learn more about our digitization initiative.
Presidential Inaugurations Digital Collection (Library of Congress)
Presidential Inaugurations is a collection of approximately 400 items or 2,000 digital files relating to inaugurations from George Washington's in 1789 to Barack Obama's inauguration of 2009. This presentation includes diaries and letters of presidents and of those who witnessed inaugurations, handwritten drafts of inaugural addresses, broadsides, inaugural tickets and programs, prints, photographs, and sheet music. The selections are drawn from the Presidential Papers in the Manuscript Division and from the collections of the Prints and Photographs Division, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Music Division, and the General Collections of the Library of Congress. Additional material has been included from the photography collections of the Architect of the Capitol, the White House, and the United States Senate Office of the Sergeant at Arms. Some items, from records of early sessions of Congress to early films, that are already online in American Memory have been incorporated.
Theodore Roosevelt Center Digital Library
Unlike modern presidents, Theodore Roosevelt does not have a presidential library. Instead, his personal and presidential papers are scattered in libraries and other sites across the United States. The mission of the Theodore Roosevelt Center is to gather together and digitize copies of all Roosevelt-related items, to make his legacy more readily accessible to scholars and schoolchildren, enthusiasts and interested citizens. Items in the digital library include correspondence to and from Roosevelt, diary entries, notes, political cartoons, scrapbooks, newspaper columns and magazine articles by and about Roosevelt, speeches, and photographs. Users can also view film clips and listen to audio recordings.

Witchcraft

Digital Witchcraft Collection
Cornell University Library’s Witchcraft Collection is part of the Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. It contains more than 3,000 books, manuscripts, and related materials. More information about the content of the collection is available on the Collection Overview page.

An online selection of 104 English language books from the Witchcraft Collection is available to search, browse by title, or browse by author. These titles were digitally scanned from microfilm by Primary Source Media in 1998. The resulting full text scans were later made available to Cornell University Library to enable free public access.
Salem Witchcraft Trials, 1692 (U Missouri - Kansas City)
Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project (UVA)

Digitized Historical Menus

Miss Frank E. Buttolph American Menu Collection, 1851-1930
Thousands of menus beginning with the oldest items in the collection from 1851. The collection is strongest for the period between 1890 and 1910. Organization is primarily chronological by date or range of dates.

Moving Image Archives

British Pathe
British Pathé is considered to be the finest newsreel archive in the world and is a treasure trove of 85,000 films unrivalled in their historical and cultural significance.

Who We AreSpanning the years from 1896 to 1978, the collection includes footage from around the globe of major events, famous faces, fashion trends, travel, science and culture.
JEROME ROBBINS DANCE DIVISION MOVING IMAGE ARCHIVE (NYPL Digital Collections)
A virtual space for dance enthusiasts and researchers alike to browse, search, compare, and comment on dance videos and images - then share their discoveries with others!

Jewish History

AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION (NYPL Digital Collections)
The New York Public Library's Dorot Jewish Division's American Jewish Committee Oral History Collection is the outcome of the "grandparent" of Jewish oral history projects. The Division holds the only complete compilation of transcripts and recordings from this 25-year project that began in the 1960s. The collection contains interviews with 2,250 individuals -- comprising approximately 100,000 pages of transcripts and 6,000 hours of audiotapes. The American Jewish Committee interviewed individuals from all walks of life, thereby compiling a collection of oral histories documenting the Jewish experience in America. Out of this comprehensive collection of interviews, 350 of the transcripts have now been scanned and digitized; most of these are available both onsite at the Library and offsite, and the others onsite alone.
Nuremberg Trials Project (Harvard)
The Harvard Law School Library has approximately one million pages of documents relating to the trial of military and political leaders of Nazi Germany before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) and to the twelve trials of other accused war criminals before the United States Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT). The documents, which include trial transcripts, briefs, document books, evidence files, and other papers, have been studied by lawyers, scholars, and other researchers in the areas of history, ethics, genocide, and war crimes, and are of particular interest to officials and students of current international tribunals involving war crimes and crimes against humanity. To preserve the contents of these documents--which are now too fragile to be handled--and to provide expanded access to this material, the Library is undertaking a multi-stage digitization project. The Nuremberg Trials Project is an open-access initiative to create and present digitized images or full-text versions of the Library's Nuremberg documents, descriptions of each document, and general information about the trials.
Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
The Fortunoff Archive currently holds more than 4,400 testimonies comprising 12,000 recorded hours of videotape. (Not all available online/streaming.)

Maps

David Rumsey Historical Map Collection
The David Rumsey Map Collection Database has many viewers and the Blog has numerous categories. The physical map collection is housed in the David Rumsey Map Center at the Stanford University Library.

The historical map collection has over 90,000 maps and related images online. The collection includes rare 16th through 21st century maps of America, North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Pacific, Arctic, Antarctic, and the World.
British Library Map Collection
One of the largest collections of maps, plans and topographical views in the world, numbering some 4.5 million, with a chronological spread of over 2,000 years.

How to find primary sources online

The tools you use to find primary sources will be individual to your topic. You can ask questions like where, when, why, how to brainstorm digital collections that may exist for your topic. Keep these especially in mind:

Is your topic associated with a particular place (state, house, university, town, etc.)? Does that place have an archive or history museum?
- An example is the Sierra Club archives, which are held at the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley because the Sierra Club's roots are in San Francisco, California.
Is your topic a particular movement or ideology? Does that movement have a digital collection or museum? Is the movement associated with a place (state, university, town, etc.)? Does that place have an archive or history museum?
- Take Quakerism as an example. Haverford College in Pennsylvania has an extensive digital collection of documents that document Quaker life and theology.
Do a quick Google or other web search for a person's name plus "papers" or "collection" or "archives." This can sometimes lead you to the institution that holds the materials, but beware that the materials might not be digitized and readily available to you.
If it's an organization or institution that you're researching to find more about the context of your subject's life, search for the name of the organization plus "records."

You can also use your secondary sources to get an idea of where primary sources might exist. Take a look at the references in the bibliography and see where the author(s) found their primary sources.

Want to know more?

Advanced Primary Source Search Strategies
by Amber D'Ambrosio Last Updated Sep 25, 2024 93 views this year