Freely Available Primary Source Collections
Remember to employ advanced search strategies to meet your specific needs when using online search engines.
Primary source projects are often organized by libraries, archives, museums, historical societies, or even international organizations (like UNESCO). The following are just some of the freely available primary source collections or projects accessible online:
Scholarly &/or Secondary Sources
The below databases are good places to start when looking for scholarly secondary sources on historical topics.
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window Excellent starting point. Multidisciplinary article database offers access to more than 16,000 journals, magazines, and newspapers, including over 15,000 peer-reviewed journals.
- Humanities International Complete This link opens in a new window Coverage of over 2,000 journals in history, film studies, religion, philosophy, and other fields within the humanities.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window A digital archive of over 1,100 important scholarly journals. Often coverage excludes the most recent releases for 2-to-5 years, based on JSTOR's agreement with the journal's publisher.
- Project Muse This link opens in a new window Full-text access to about 600 journals from academic publishers.
If you are interested in, specifically, scholarship on Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, check out:
- American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies (ABSEES) This link opens in a new window ABSEES contains over 55,000 records (1990-date) representing North American scholarship on East-Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, including citations for journal articles, books, book chapters, book reviews, dissertations, and government publications. ABSEES is updated monthly.
If your topic is interdisciplinary, one of the following databases may be helpful.
- Environment Complete This link opens in a new window "Deep coverage in applicable areas of agriculture, ecosystem ecology, energy, renewable energy sources, natural resources, marine and freshwater science, geography, pollution and waste management, environmental technology, environmental law, public policy, social impacts, urban planning, and more."
- Feminae; Medieval Women and Gender Index This link opens in a new window Indexes journal articles and more about women, sexuality, and gender in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, from 450-1500 AD.
- Index Islamicus This link opens in a new window International bibliography of publications in European languages on all aspects of Islam and the Muslim world. It covers their history, beliefs, societies, cultures, languages and literatures...indexing for over 3,400 titles with coverage dating back to 1906.
- MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window Subject index for books, articles and websites published on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics.
- Religion & Philosophy Collection This link opens in a new window Full-text coverage of nearly 300 journals, including 262 peer-reviewed publications, "covering topics such as world religions, major denominations, biblical studies, religious history, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of language, moral philosophy and the history of philosophy."
- SocINDEX with Full Text This link opens in a new window Comprehensive coverage of sociology and its sub-disciplines, with very good coverage of related areas of study...contains informative abstracts for core coverage journals dating as far back as 1895.
- Women's Studies International This link opens in a new window Nearly 600,000 entries from over 2,000 periodicals and other sources, dating back to the 1970's, on the "core disciplines in Women's Studies."