Research Guides: Humanities: Primary Sources

Databases for Historical Primary Sources

America: History and Life (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Primary bibliographic database containing citations to articles regarding historical coverage of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Indexes journals and citations of book and media reviews. Some full text is available.
Fannie Lou Hamer: Papers of a Civil Rights Activist, Political Activist, and Woman (Gale) This link opens in a new window
Primary source documents related to voting rights activist and civil rights leader, Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977) spanning the time period from 1966-1978.

From the Archives Unbound collection

Open Access Primary Sources

Black Freedom Struggle This link opens in a new window
A collection of selected primary source documents related to critical people and events in African American history.
Civil Rights Movement Photographs (Queens College) This link opens in a new window
A collection of original photographs that document the involvement of Queens College students and other Northerners in the Civil Rights Movement of the early to mid-1960s. They include images of the Mississippi Freedom Summer, the Virginia Student Help Project, the Summer Community Organization and Political Education (SCOPE) Project, and the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR).
Browse additional Open Community Collections
Student Campaigns and Movements (University of Sussex) This link opens in a new window
This collection includes flyers, posters, information sheets, newsletters and ephemera created by students at the University of Sussex during the 1970s and 1980s to promote political causes and groups.
Browse additional Open Community Collections
Antebellum & Civil War Era Documents (Vanderbilt University) This link opens in a new window
This collection contains manuscripts, documents, and pamphlets from the 1700s to 1869. Most documents came from the Anti-Slavery Pamphlet Collection housed at Vanderbilt University.
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P. H. Polk Family Collection This link opens in a new window
Collection contains P.H. Polk's photographs of life on the Tuskegee University campus. Polk was Tuskegee's official photographer for four decades. Image subjects include portraits of faculty, students, and area residents; campus buildings over the decades; and homecoming parades, athletic events, and other candid images depicting life on campus and in the surrounding Macon County community.
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Historic Stockton Photographs This link opens in a new window
A collection of images documenting the history of Stockton, California, which was founded in 1849 in California's Central Valley. Images date from approximately the 1860s to the 1960s.
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History of Medicine Collections (Vanderbilt University) This link opens in a new window
A collection of rare books, manuscripts, photographs, artifacts and other materials covering the history of medicine since 1500. Browse additional Open Community Collections
History of Science at Hope College This link opens in a new window
A collection of images from book A Century of Science: Excellence at Hope College (2009), commemorating the creation of the college's departments of chemistry and physics as independent programs in 1909. Browse additional Open Community Collections
Chinese Public Health Campaign Slides 1950s-70s This link opens in a new window
Guy and Marguerite Cook Nisei Collection This link opens in a new window
This collection contains materials collected by Guy and Marguerite Cooke during their employment at Tule Lake. Includes faculty narratives describing the problems of teaching in a relocation center and student autobiographies chronicling their adjustment to relocation.
Also contains clippings and reports that document the segregation of "disloyal" Japanese-Americans at Tule Lake, the uprising of 1943, and the repatriation to Japan of "disloyals" following the War. Browse additional Open Community Collections
The Women’s Library Suffrage Banners This link opens in a new window
Selected digitized images of banners from the Women’s Library collection, housed at London School of Economics Library. Created between 1908 and 1920, these banners were used by suffrage campaigners on marches and at other events.
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German Jewish Family Archive This link opens in a new window
This collection of family papers from Ludwig Marx and the Unsell family document pre-war German-Jewish life, involvement in World War One, leaving Germany in 1939, writing to family members during World War Two, post war life and restitution claims.
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Pacific Historian (serial) This link opens in a new window
The Pacific Historian (1957-1987) promoted promote, through research and study, an interpretation of life in the Western United States, especially California. Articles emphasized ethnic culture in the West’s growth, and evaluated Western writers and their writings.
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Historic Costume Collection (Smith College) This link opens in a new window
A collection of photographs from Smith College's archive of clothing and accessories of women in the United States from 1800 to the present and from a range of social classes. The collection was founded in 1979 and contains thousands of objects, a portion of which have been photographed for this online collection.
Browse additional Open Community Collections

Historical Newspapers - Primary Sources

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers This link opens in a new window Excellent database of primary source material. Publication Dates Covered: 1836-1922 Open Access resource.Search U.S. newspapers (or just California Newspapers) published between 1836 and 1922.
Japanese-American Internment Camp Newspapers, 1942 to 1946 This link opens in a new window includes primary source advertisements of community events, logistical information about the camps and relocation, news from the community and editorials. Part of the Library of Congress' Digital Collections. These newspapers were produced by the Japanese-Americans interned at assembly centers and relocation centers around the U.S. during World War II. Includes articles written in English and Japanese, typed, handwritten and drawn.

Websites for Primary Sources

Online Archive of California (OAC)
Free public access to searchable collection guides (also known as finding aids) for primary resource collections in repositories maintained by more than 200 institutions throughout California, including many digitized collections.
CaliSphere
Calisphere provides free access to unique and historically important artifacts for research, teaching, and curious exploration. Discover over 750,000 photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more.
Los Angeles Public Library Images
The Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection emphasizes the history of Los Angeles, Southern California, and California. This Internet-accessible collection is one of the treasures of the Central Library.
Los Angles Public Library Visual Collections
The LA Public Library visual collections include both local history collections and other historical collections. Includes maps, images, drawings, posters, menus, and other types of ephemera.
Santa Monica Image Collection
The digital collections of the Santa Monica Public Library. The collections include the Santa Monica Image Archives, Pacific Palisades Historical Collection, Santa Monica Evening Outlook (1875-1937), Santa Monica Facts, Historical Maps of Santa Monica, and Santa Monica Newspaper Index.
County of Los Angeles Public Library Local History Web Sites
With funding from the Library Services and Technology Act administered by the California State Library, the County of Los Angeles Public Library has created local history Web sites for fifteen of its libraries. These local history Web sites provide answers to frequently asked community history questions twenty-four hours a day via the Internet. The Web sites provide information on Native Americans who lived in the area in prehistoric times, local missions and the early history of the community as well as other historical topics. They also contain images of historic community photographs and other documents, and links and citations to additional community history resources.

Civil Rights Digital Library
materials from libraries, archives, museums, public broadcasters, and others on a national scale. The CRDL features a collection of unedited news film from the WSB (Atlanta) and WALB (Albany, Ga.) television archives held by the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia Libraries.
Cornell University Library Making of America Collection
Access to over 100,000 articles from 19th Century journals.
Digital History
Digital Public Library of America
A vast project that works with many cultural heritage institutions to bring together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, 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. The portal provides innovative ways to search and scan through the united collection of millions of items, including by timeline, map, virtual bookshelf, format, subject, and partner.
Digitized Collected Papers of Albert Einstein
from the Digital Collection of Princeton University
Documenting the American South
Primary resources for the study of Southern history, literature and culture through the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
French Revolution Digital Archive
Digitized collection of key resources on the French Revolution. A partnerships of Stanford University and the Bibliotheque Nacionale de France and Archives Parlementaires.
Getty Research Portal
Digitized art history and rare books.
Hagley Digital Archives
text and images on the history of business, technology and society
Harry Ransom Center Digital Collections
Digitized archive of some of the collections in the Harry Ransom Center @ University of Texas, Austin
HathiTrust
a searchable database of online books and scholarly articles. Includes primary sources material
The Internet Archive
A nonprofit digital library of public domain material, including the Way Back Machine.
Internet History Sourcebooks Project
Jerome Robbins Dance Division Moving Image Archive
from the New York Public Library Collection -- some videos are restricted to NYPL onsite patrons, others are freely available on the web.
Jewish Museum of the American West
a virtual collection of "exhibits" focusing on the history of Jewish pioneers to the U.S. west of the Mississippi
Library of Congress American Memory Project
written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.
The National Archives
Search by topic, time period, or place. Useful research guides available to help you.
National Museum of the American Indian
search the extensive archeological, ethnographic, artistic and photographic collections of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC
New York Public Library Digital Collections
NYPL Digital Gallery provides free and open access to over 800,000 images digitized from the New York Public Library's collection.
Rosa Parks Papers
Family papers, correspondence, etc. available via the Library of Congress
Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive
via Hebrew University in Jerusalem

Latin American Network Information Center: Digital Initiatives
Through partnerships with organizations in Latin America and globally, LANIC's mission is to facilitate access to online information on, from, or about Latin America. To this end, LANIC hosts an extensive set of digital collections covering many different topics and content areas.
Digital Library of the Caribbean
Digitized versions of Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections.
World Digital Library
Search 16,561 items about 193 countries between 8000 BCE and 2000:
Culture24
a British-created resource for finding current news of cultural happenings across genres (arts, humanities, history, science, etc.)
Museum Crush
Digitized images of museum objects, art. documents, architecture, and more with journalistic stories to accompany them. From the Arts Council England
Medievalist.net
A website devoted to Medieval history; includes a plethora of articles and book reviews
York Archbishops' Registers
searchable documents written between 1225 and 1650. Available from the University of York and the Mellon Foundation

Project Gutenberg This link opens in a new window
Project Gutenberg offers over 57,000 free eBooks. Most of the items in this collection are the full texts of books in the public domain.

Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature
Audio sound recordings from the Library of Congress dating as far back as the 1800s.
Discovering Literature: Romantics and Victorians
Discover 1,200 collection items, 167 articles, 25 films, 30 teachers’ notes and more from the British Library.
Emily Dickenson Archive
Digitized manuscripts and a searchable lexicon of a words used in her work.
Mark Twain Project
from the California Digital Library, Twain's works with notes, annotations and images
William Blake Archive
The Complete illustrated and literary works of William Blake
ee cummings' Art
Keats Collection
Romantic Circles
A Collection of resources on Romantic Literature and Culture
Rossetti Archive
Romantic Poetry - British Library Collections
Divine Comedy - Sandow Birk
Modern illustration of Dante's Divine Comedy

Source Types

What are the differences between Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Sources?

Types of Sources	Definition	Characteristics	Examples
Primary	Original documents created or experienced concurrently with the event being researched.	First-hand observations, contemporary accounts of the event. Viewpoint of the time.	Interviews, news footage, data sets, original research, speeches, diaries, letters, creative works, photographs
Secondary	Works that analyze, assess, or interpret a historical event, an era, or a phenomenon. Generally uses primary sources.	Interpretation of information, usually written well after an event. Offers reviews or critiques.	Research studies, literary criticism, book reviews, biographies, textbooks
Tertiary	Sources that identify, locate, and synthesize primary AND secondary sources.	Reference works, collections of lists of primary and secondary sources, finding tools for sources.	Encyclopedias, bibliographies, dictionaries, manuals, textbooks, fact books

Chart created by Loyola Marymount University Library

Primary vs. Secondary

Think you know the difference between primary and secondary sources?

Take this quiz to find out!

Primary and Secondary Sources Quiz | Ithaca College Library
This quiz is designed to test (and improve!) your ability to identify primary and secondary sources. You will be presented with a number of scenarios and asked to classify sources as primary or secondary for the purposes of that situation.

Primary Sources at MSMU

MSMU Digital Collections
Includes digital versions of MSMU publications, photographs, yearbooks, catalogs, newspapers and newsletters, and more.
MSMU Institutional Archives
The MSMU Archives holds selected records from administrative, academic, social and cultural sources at the Chalon and Doheny campuses.
MSMU Special Collections
Includes rare books and early editions of the Bible, theology treatises, devotional works and Classical writings, as well as 18th, 19th, and 20th century art books and literature.

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Databases for Historical Primary Sources

Open Access Primary Sources

Historical Newspapers - Primary Sources

Websites for Primary Sources

Source Types

Primary vs. Secondary

Primary Sources at MSMU

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