USAFA Library Guides: History: Primary Sources

Best Bets for Primary Sources in History

Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
Gale Primary Sources allows you to search across multiple databases. There are a number of British and North American newspapers from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, including the Associated Press and (London) Times. Periodicals and books from the same time periods are also included.
HathiTrust This link opens in a new window
Digitized primary sources from the United States and around the globe. Includes items that have recently entered the public domain in the U.S. as well as Cornell University's Making America collection.
Readex AllSearch: Your Gateway to Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
Readex searches across nine collections: Aeronautics and Space Flight, America's Historical Imprints (African History and Culture as well as Evans), America's Historical Newspapers (African American Newspapers, series one and two), Foreign Broadcast Information Services Daily Reports, and Middle East and North Africa. Scanned images of books, pamphlets, newspapers, and government documents allow you to see items in their historical context.

Digital Primary Sources: Open Access

Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History & Diplomacy
Digital documents presented by the Yale Law School relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government.
EuroDocs: Online Sources for European History
A great online source to find primary documents for all time periods of European history. Browse by country or time period.
Internet History Sourcebooks Project
A broad collection of ancient, medieval and modern historical primary sources particularly useful for students and supports many university courses. Documents include Byzantine, Islamic, Jewish, Indian, East Asian, African history, as well as women's history & LGBT studies.
Library of Congress Digital Collections
The Library of Congress has a number of digital collections relating to the United States and other countries or governments. Military, governmental, and civilian sources.
State Department Office of the Historian
Access to historical documents including history series, Foreign Relations of the United States
All McDermott Databases

Still not finding what you are looking for? Check the full list of databases from McDermott Library or ask a librarian for help.

The Americas

History Commons This link opens in a new window
Accessible Archives houses scans of books, newspapers, and other periodicals. It is particularly useful for researching the Eastern and Mid-Atlantic states, the African-American experience, and World War I military camp newspapers. It also has some county histories for 11 states.
Digital National Security Archives (DNSA) This link opens in a new window
New content available Fall 2024 include: The Afghanistan War and the United States, 1998-2017, Targeting Iraq, Part II: War and Occupation, 2004-2011, U.S. Foreign Policy in the Carter Years, 1977-1981, U.S.-Russia Relations: From the Fall of the Soviet Union to the Rise of Putin, 1991-2000, and Donald Rumsfeld's Snowflakes: The Pentagon and U.S. Foreign Policy, Part 1 (2001-2003) and Part 2 (2004-2006).
A comprehensive collection of declassified primary documents central to U.S. foreign and military policy since 1945. Collections cover critical world events, countries, and U.S. policy decisions from post-World War II through the 21st century.
History Vault (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Primary sources from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries organized into four major areas: Women's Studies, American Indians and the American West, American Politics and Society, and International Relations and Military Conflicts. Browse these areas or use the search function to discover materials across the database.
Rotunda This link opens in a new window
Primary source materials from the American Founding Era, the Antebellum, Civil War and Reconstruction Era, and the Wilson papers from the American Century Collection. This includes papers from military leaders such as George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant.
For an overview of the each collection, please visit: https://www.upress.virginia.edu/rotundacollections/american-history-collection

Making of America
Cornell University established this collection of American social history from the antebellum period through Reconstruction.

International

Border and Migration Studies Online This link opens in a new window
A collection that explores and provides historical background on more than thirty key worldwide border areas - includes images, borders, maps.
Confidential Print: Middle East, 1839-1969 This link opens in a new window
The National Archives, UK, offers reports, dispatches, correspondence, descriptions of leading personalities, political summaries, and economic analyses focus on the Middle East from 1839-1969.
Confidential Print consists of various documents issued or received by the British Colonial Office or Foreign Office such as telegrams, treaties, reports, correspondence, and other materials from the British government.
Disability in the Modern World This link opens in a new window
Landmark online collection that fills the gap, with a comprehensive and international set of resources to enrich study in a wide range of disciplines from media studies to philosophy. Includes videos.
Early English Books Online (EEBO) This link opens in a new window
Contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700

News & Newspapers

African American Newspapers, 1827-1998 (NewsBank Readex)
Access newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience

Civil War Era This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive collection of full-text primary source materials of historical newspapers and pamphlets that focuses on the entire era, from Manifest Destiny through the end of the American Civil War (1840-1865).
Newspapers include:
Southern Titles: Richmond Dispatch (Virginia), Charleston Mercury (South Carolina), New Orleans Times Picayune (Louisiana)
Northern Titles: Boston Herald, New York Herald, Columbus State Journal (Ohio)
Border States/Mississippi Valley Titles: The Kentucky Daily Journal, Memphis Daily Appeal
Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
Search across multiple Gale primary resources through one interface covering hundreds of years of history from varied resources, such as historical newspapers.

New York Times: ProQuest Historical Newspapers
Provides full-text of the New York Times from 1851 to 2017. For most recent years, use U.S. Major Dailies with coverage from 1980 to present, or the New York Times Digital Edition.

Times Digital Archive, 1785-2014 This link opens in a new window
More than 200 years of coverage from one of Britain's leading daily national newspaper
U.S. Major Dailies This link opens in a new window
Access five US national and regional newspapers, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times & Chicago Tribune, 1980s-present.

More news & newspapers
See a more complete listing of all the news and newspapers available to you through USAFA.
National Geographic
Archive of the internationally focused magazine from 1888 to present.

Types of Primary Sources

Primary sources are materials that provide direct evidence or first-hand account about an event or topic. These sources can be created by the participants or witnesses of the event during the time period, or recorded later in the form of an autobiography, memoir or oral history.

Books: - autobiography, correspondence; - diaries, letters, manuscripts; - memoirs, pamphlets,; - papers, personal narratives,; - sources, speeches, statistics
Creative Works: - art works, architecture, films; - maps, music recordings; - paintings, photographs; - poems, sculptures, etc.
Government Documents: - law and legislation, treaties
Journal/Newspaper Articles: - witnessed reported events; - reports that quote witnesses
News Sources: - broadcast transcripts
Oral Histories and Culture: - audio/video recordings; - folklore, storytelling, interviews
Research Data: - datasets, original research; - statistics, surveys

Images

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
DPLA houses many primary source sets and exhibitions, including photographs and other visual materials. Search or browse by set.
LOC Prints & Photographs Online Catalog
The Library of Congress assembled a number of visuals from architecture to baseball cards, drawings, and the Wright Brothers Negatives.
Open Artstor
Contains more than 750,000 images in the arts, sciences, and literature. Images are licensed under Creative Commons, which means you can use them with proper citation.

JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Click the Images tab on the main search box to restrict your search to JSTOR's extensive library of images.

Smithsonian Open Access Media
The Smithsonian released millions of images. Do a targeted search or browse by collection or examples of remixes.
Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (dvids)
Online repository of images from all US military branches. Also contains some international images. Filters allow you by sort from date, branch, component, unit, CCMD, country and more.

Business and Economics

Business Source Ultimate This link opens in a new window
A scholarly business database covering business, marketing, management, MIS, POM, accounting, finance and economics
Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Access more than 15,000 news, legal and business sources from LexisNexis including industry and company data

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Perri Moreno

Subjects: English, Fine Arts, History, Languages & Cultures, Philosophy

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