Portals to Primary Sources
Don't know where to start? Try one of the following database portals. They allow researchers to search across multiple databases produced by the same publisher.
- Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
- Archive Explorer (Publisher: Adam Matthew)
- Artemis (Publisher: Gale)
- Archive of Americana (Publisher: Readex)
Image attribution: Flicker, Cutty Sark "question mark"
Digitized newspapers
- America's Historical Newspapers Large online collection of historic American newspapers. Part of the Archive of Americana, a collection of various newspaper databases, by Readex.
- African American Newspapers Online collection of the most extensive African American newspaper archives in the United States—those of the Wisconsin Historical Society, Kansas State Historical Society and the Library of Congress. Also part of the Archive of Americana by Readex.
- Accessible Archives Digital collections of important 19th century African American and Civil War newspapers.
- Chronicling America Website providing access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages.
- Nineteenth Century US Newspapers Digital collection of 19th century newspapers from a broad range of urban and rural regions.
- Google News Archive Digitized newspapers crawled from miscellaneous web sources.
- Proquest Historical Online database of major 19th and 20th century US newspapers (NYT, AJC, etc.)
- Proquest Civil War Era Online collection of newspapers and pamphlets covering the American Civil War from 1840-1865.
Periodicals
- Proquest's American Periodicals Series (APS) Historically significant periodicals from the 18th and 19th century.
- EBSCO's American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodical Collection Extensive collection of historical periodicals dating from 1693 to 1865.
- America's Historical Imprints Digital collection of early American imprints, broadsides and ephemera. Based on the American Antiquarian Society's collections.
- Harper's Weekly, 1857-1912 Contains scanned images of all of the pages of Harper's Weekly together with a series of indexes.
- Nation Digital Archive Online collection from America's oldest weekly magazine.
- Godey's Lady's Book, 1830-1896 Popular women's magazine from the nineteenth century. Includes colorful fashion plates.
- Opinion Archives Digital collection of current issues and backfiles of a number of leading U.S. opinion publications including the New Yorker (1925-present), the Nation (1865-present), Commentary (1945-present), the American Spectator (1967-present), the National Review (1955-present), New Republic (1914-present), Commonweal (1924-present), the New York Review of Books (1965-present), and Harper's (1850-present).
Digital Manuscript Collections, Oral Histories, etc.
- History Vault: Collection of digitized microfilm. See especially: The Records of Southern Antebellum Plantations
- Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive Huge collection of primary sources related to slavery and abolition.
- American Civil War Letter and Diaries Online archive of more than 1,000 sources of diaries, letters and memooirs from the Civil War Era.
- Ancestry Library Edition Major source of census and other records of interest to historical, social and genealogical researchers.
- American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories, 1840-present Digital Archive of personal narratives of immigrants to the United States and Canada, including letters, diaries, pamphlets, autobiographies, and oral history interviews.
- Women and Social Movements in the United States Online primary source and secondary source materials related to women in social movement in the U.S.
- Everyday Life & Women in America, 1800-1920 Full text of momographs, periodicals, pamphlets and broadsides from Duke university's Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture, and the New York Public Library.
- Making of the Modern World Digitized library of economic and business literature on topics like the Industrial Revolution, the development of modern capitalism, and the emergence of modern economics.
- Jewish Life in America Original manuscript collections from the unique holdings of the American Jewish Historical Society in New York.
- Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007 Brings together documents and collections covering the period 1490-2007 from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world, including the United States.
- History Makers Database of video oral history of African American business, medical, and law leaders.
- Oral History Online An index to English-language oral histories from around the world, Oral History Online provides links or location information for oral histories available on the Web or held by repositories and archives around the world.