Research Guides: Primary Sources: Web Resources

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Searching the Web for Primary Sources

For the past couple decades, libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions have put a lot of effort into making a wide variety of primary sources freely-available on the web. The issue is how to effectively discover them.

Suggestions for Improved Web Search:

Try multiple specific searches for different types of primary sources you believe would exist for your topic in addition to a general search for "primary sources".
- Ex. images, diaries, correspondence, letters, posters, film, transcripts, recordings, manuscripts, maps.
Other search terms that may help identify primary sources include "museums," "archives," and "collections."
Many primary source collections are hosted by colleges and universities. Add "site:.edu" to your search terms to only search .edu websites.
- Ex. site:.edu monasteries manuscripts
Once your find a useful site, you can use Google to do a search of just that website by adding "site:" before the website's URL to your search terms.
- Ex. site:mcny.org WPA

Many of these search techniques are more easily done through the Google advanced search:

Google Advanced Search
Expanded Google interface allowing you more control of how Google searches for your topic.

Online Primary Source Collections

Here is just a small sample of many primary source collections and libraries available on the web to help you get started.

General

HathiTrust This link opens in a new window
Millions of scanned books from college and university library collections. Full text search. Previews of books in copyright, public domain books (pre-1923) fully available
Internet Modern History Sourcebook This link opens in a new window
Online primary sources for modern history
Fordham's Internet Modern History Sourcebook provides links to thousands of primary sources online for the Reformation and later. Collections are organized by place, time period, and topic.

Project Gutenberg
The first producer of free electronic books. Find more than 28,000 online books in its catalog, with links to thousands of more in other sources. Most of these titles are older, copyright-free books.

United States

Digital Public Library of America This link opens in a new window
Central search portal for collections of online primary sources for American history
The Digital Public Library of America is a central portal that researches free, online digital collections of primary sources on American history. The DPLA connects to all types of sources, including scans of paper documents, photographs, artwork, videos, audio, and more. The DPLA also curates collections of primary sources by topic and organizes the collection graphically on a map and a timeline.

American Memory
Wide variety of digital primary sources of US history managed by the Library of Congress
Chronicling America
Full text collection of digitized newspapers from 1836 to 1922. Maintained by the Library of Congress

World

Internet Medieval Sourcebook This link opens in a new window
Online primary sources from the fall of Rome to the Reformation
Fordham's Internet Modern History Sourcebook provides links to thousands of primary sources online from the fall of Rome to the Reformation. Collections are organized by place, time period, and topic. Primarily European.
Internet Ancient History Sourcebook This link opens in a new window
Online primary sources on the Mediterranean region until the fall of Rome
Fordham's Internet Modern History Sourcebook provides links to thousands of primary sources online on Mediterranean civilizations before the fall of Rome. Collections are organized by place, time period, and topic.
British Library Digitized Manuscripts This link opens in a new window
Thousands of digitized British manuscripts and books ranging from early English history to the modern era
Europeana This link opens in a new window
Varied primary sources on Europe covering a wide variety of time periods and source types
Europeana is a joint collection of digitized primary sources on World War I. Primary sources include stories, letters, photographs, music, art, and many more sources. It is a joint partnership of a number of European national libraries, universities, and cultural institutions.

Ohio

Ohio Memory Project
Newspapers, letters, diaries, photographs, and more primary sources from Ohio's history