Washington and Lee University Research Guides: History: Region: North America

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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.

Digital Public Library of America, a platform that makes "millions of materials from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions across the country available to all in a one-stop discovery experience."
Library of Congress: Digital Collections: search all digital collections and/or use provided filters to browse by topic or format.
American Historical Association: Digitized Primary Sources List: curated list of primary source collections covering largely American topics
Black Past's African American History Primary Documents: Listing of primary sources ranging from the early 1700s to the 21st century

Collections by Date/Era

American Historical Periodicals This link opens in a new window Content from 1681 to the early 20th century
The Archives of Latin American and Caribbean History, 16th-20th Century This link opens in a new window Primary (and secondary) source documents about Latin America and the Caribbean. The scope ranges from the colonial period to the present...
Early American Newspapers, Series I This link opens in a new window The most comprehensive online source of early American newspapers that chronicles the evolution of American history, culture, daily life from 1690 to 1922.
EEBO (Early English Books Online) 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
HathiTrust
The repository provides "long-term preservation and access services for public domain and in-copyright content from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and more!
Making of the Modern World This link opens in a new window Includes...books from 1450-1914, & pre-1906 serials ... focuses on economics ... including political science, history, sociology, and special collections on banking, finance, transportation and manufacturing.
Sabin Americana This link opens in a new window Sabin Americana contains works about the Americas published worldwide from 1500 to the early 1900's.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive This link opens in a new window Archival collections sourced from more than 60 libraries...

Accessible Archives Complete This link opens in a new window A collection of American newspapers, magazines, and other primary source materials, mostly from the 19th century, but with some 18th century items.
American Fiction 1774-1920 This link opens in a new window American Fiction, 1774–1920, contains more than 17,800 titles and encompasses prose fiction written by Americans from colonial times to the early twentieth century.
American Historical Periodicals This link opens in a new window From long-running publications to ephemeral titles... Content from 1681 to the early 20th century
American Periodicals This link opens in a new window American magazines and journals with coverage from 1740-1940. Includes selected years of such popular titles as Vanity Fair, Ladies' Home Journal, The Dial, McClure's, & more.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) Part I and II This link opens in a new window The majority of the works were printed in England, Scotland, Ireland and the United States...a fully text-searchable corpus of books, pamphlets and broadsides in all subjects printed between 1701 and 1800.
ECCO I and II are searchable from the same database interface.
HathiTrust
The repository provides "long-term preservation and access services for public domain and in-copyright content from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and more!
Making of the Modern World This link opens in a new window Includes...books from 1450-1914, and pre-1906 serials. It focuses on economics interpreted in the widest sense, including political science, history, sociology, and special collections on banking, finance, transportation and manufacturing.
Rotunda This link opens in a new window Includes The Adams Papers, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of George Washington, People of the Founding Eras [A biographical guide], Presidential Recordings Digital Editions, and more.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive This link opens in a new window Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive is devoted to the study and understanding of the history of slavery in America and the rest of the world from the 17th century to the late 19th century. Archival collections were sourced from more than 60 libraries at institutions such as the Amistad Research Center, Bibliothèque nationale de France, the National Archives, Oberlin College, Oxford University, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and Yale University…

19th Century U.S. Newspapers Digital Archive This link opens in a new window This collection includes numerous newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S.; and it encompasses the entire 19th century.
Accessible Archives Complete This link opens in a new window A collection of American newspapers, magazines, and other primary source materials, mostly from the 19th century, but with some 18th century items.
African Diaspora, 1860-Present …African Diaspora, 1860-Present allows scholars to discover the migrations, communities, and ideologies of the African Diaspora through the voices of people of African descent. With a focus on communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France, the collection includes never-before digitized primary source documents, including personal papers, organizational papers, journals, newsletters, court documents, letters, and ephemera.
Amateur Newspapers from the American Antiquarian Society Tens of thousands of issues from over 3,300 papers, published in every state except Alaska and Hawaii, plus numerous titles from Canada. Largely from the 19th century.
American Fiction 1774-1920 This link opens in a new window American Fiction, 1774–1920, contains more than 17,800 titles and encompasses prose fiction written by Americans from colonial times to the early twentieth century.
American Periodicals This link opens in a new window American magazines and journals with coverage from 1740-1940. Includes selected years of such popular titles as Vanity Fair, Ladies' Home Journal, The Dial, McClure's, & more.
Digital Sanborn Maps, Virginia This link opens in a new window collection based upon the fire insurance maps of more than 12,000 American towns and cities, created by the Sanborn Map Company, beginning in the 19th century. Coverage: 1867-1970
Searching is a three-step process. You first select a state (Virginia is our only option), then a city (or other locality), and then a date (of an available map).

Viewing Maps Once one or more small maps are displayed, you can view any map in a larger format by placing the cursor on that small map and then clicking. You may then adjust the image of a larger map by using the "Click on map to:" options, allowing you to zoom in (get a closer look) or to re-center (focus on one area of the map), and then clicking on the map. You may move around on the map by clicking on the blue arrows at the edge of the display.

Printing Once you have displayed the image you want, you can print it by clicking on the "Print Current View" option at the top of the box, and then use your browser's print options.
HathiTrust
The repository provides "long-term preservation and access services for public domain and in-copyright content from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and more!
Nineteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window Includes a variety of material types: monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, and statistics.
Asia and the West : diplomacy and cultural exchange
British politics and society
British theatre, music, and literature : high and popular culture
Children's literature and childhood
Europe and Africa : commerce, Christianity, civilization, and conquest
European literature, 1790-1840 : the Corvey Collection
Mapping the world : maps and travel literature
Photography : the world through the lens
Religion, society, spirituality, and reform
Science, technology, and medicine : 1780-1925
Science, technology, and medicine : 1780-1925, part II
Women : transnational networks.
Rotunda This link opens in a new window Includes The Adams Papers, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of George WAshington, People of the Founding Eras [A biographical guide], Presidential Recordings Digital Editions, and more.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive This link opens in a new window Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive is devoted to the study and understanding of the history of slavery in America and the rest of the world from the 17th century to the late 19th century. Archival collections were sourced from more than 60 libraries at institutions such as the Amistad Research Center, Bibliothèque nationale de France, the National Archives, Oberlin College, Oxford University, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and Yale University…

African Diaspora, 1860-Present
…African Diaspora, 1860-Present allows scholars to discover the migrations, communities, and ideologies of the African Diaspora through the voices of people of African descent. With a focus on communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France, the collection includes never-before digitized primary source documents, including personal papers, organizational papers, journals, newsletters, court documents, letters, and ephemera.
American Fiction 1774-1920 This link opens in a new window American Fiction, 1774–1920, contains more than 17,800 titles and encompasses prose fiction written by Americans from colonial times to the early twentieth century.
American Periodicals This link opens in a new window American magazines and journals with coverage from 1740-1940. Includes selected years of such popular titles as Vanity Fair, Ladies' Home Journal, The Dial, McClure's, & more.
Archives of Sexuality & Gender: LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940 Part 1 & 2 This link opens in a new window The archive focuses on aspects of LGBTQ life in the second half of the 20th century and beyond.
Black Studies Center This link opens in a new window Black Studies Center is a fully cross-searchable gateway to Black Studies including scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, reference books, and much more.
Digital Sanborn Maps, Virginia This link opens in a new window Collection based upon the fire insurance maps of more than 12,000 American towns and cities, created by the Sanborn Map Company, beginning in the 19th century.
Searching is a three-step process. You first select a state (Virginia is our only option), then a city (or other locality), and then a date (of an available map).

Viewing Maps Once one or more small maps are displayed, you can view any map in a larger format by placing the cursor on that small map and then clicking. You may then adjust the image of a larger map by using the "Click on map to:" options, allowing you to zoom in (get a closer look) or to re-center (focus on one area of the map), and then clicking on the map. You may move around on the map by clicking on the blue arrows at the edge of the display.

Printing Once you have displayed the image you want, you can print it by clicking on the "Print Current View" option at the top of the box, and then use your browser's print options.
Factiva This link opens in a new window Includes text of newspapers, news wires & more. Use Factiva's Search feature to limit by region and/or country within North America.
Factiva searches for the exact phrase you enter. For example, 'speech recognition software' will find articles that contain those three terms adjacent to each other and in that order.

Combining Terms: Use AND, OR, NOT. For example, 'mci communications AND speech recognition software' will find articles containing both 'mci communications' and 'speech recognition software.'

Truncation: Add an asterisk (*) to the end of a word to search for all forms of that term. Example: congress*.

NOTE: When finished with Factiva, please click on the 'logout' selection in the top right corner of the screen to keep all available accounts open for other users.
HathiTrust
The repository provides "long-term preservation and access services for public domain and in-copyright content from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and more!
Liberty Magazine Historical Archive, 1924-1950 This link opens in a new window digitization of the entire run of Liberty Magazine, nearly 1,400 issues, and contains over 17,000 fiction and non-fiction articles and thousands of advertisements all in a searchable, full-color format.
NewsBank Access World News This link opens in a new window Robust content from the 20 & 21st centuries, although some content comes from as early as 1690. Articles from 9,000+ U.S. & international full-text information sources...
ProQuest History Vault: NAACP Papers Subscription covers the following collections:Board of Directors, Annual Conferences, Major Speeches, and National Staff FilesThe NAACP's Major Campaigns--Education, Voting, Housing, Employment, Armed ForcesThe NAACP's Major Campaigns--Scottsboro, Anti-Lynching, Criminal Justice, Peonage, Labor, and Segregation and Discrimination Complaints and Responses
RIPM Jazz The Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals (RIPM) Jazz collection provides access to a wide variety of Jazz-related journals, including Jazz cross-over with other genres, the culture surrounding Jazz music, and Jazz outside of the United States. Great primary source for those in a variety of disciplines, like history and music.
Rotunda This link opens in a new window Includes The Adams Papers, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of George WAshington, People of the Founding Eras [A biographical guide], Presidential Recordings Digital Editions, and more.
U.S. Declassified Documents Online This link opens in a new window Database of previously classified federal records spanning the twentieth and twenty first centuries.

Collections by Category

Ancestry Library Edition This link opens in a new window Billions of records in census data, vital records, directories, photos, and more from North America, the U.K., Europe, Australia, and more.
Archives Unbound Collections cover a broad range of topics from the Middle Ages forward-from Witchcraft to World War II to twentieth-century political history.
EEBO (Early English Books Online) 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
Gale Primary Sources Allows for cross-searching of Gale's extensive primary source collections, including (but not limited to) American Fiction, 1744-1920; Archives of Sexuality & Gender, Indigenous Peoples of North America, & Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.
HathiTrust
Huge collection of public domain texts

Films on Demand Archival Films & Newsreels Collection This link opens in a new window
Nearly 5,000 archival and historical films.
HathiTrust
Large repository; includes full text of MANY public domain materials.
HistoryMakers Digital Archive
Provides access to interviews, biographies, videos, archival photography, and more for over 3,300 African Americans known and unknown.

African Diaspora, 1860-Present …African Diaspora, 1860-Present allows scholars to discover the migrations, communities, and ideologies of the African Diaspora through the voices of people of African descent. With a focus on communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France, the collection includes never-before digitized primary source documents, including personal papers, organizational papers, journals, newsletters, court documents, letters, and ephemera.
Black Studies Center This link opens in a new window Black Studies Center is a fully cross-searchable gateway to Black Studies including scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, reference books, and much more.
HistoryMakers Digital Archive Provides access to interviews, biographies, videos, archival photography, and more for over 3,300 African Americans known and unknown.
Oxford African American Studies Center This link opens in a new window Contains over 7,500 articles from Oxford University Press publications, some of which are not yet available in printed form, as well as primary source materials, maps, images, and more.
Search Each page offers a simple keyword "Search" box in the upper-right corner.
To search for entries containing two or more words, connect the search words with AND. Example: tulsa AND riot
To search for entries containing a multi-word phrase, enclose the search words within quotation marks. Example: "jim crow"
To search for variations of a word, use an asterisk (*) as a "wild-card" character. Example: lynch* will find lynch, lynched, lynching, lynchings, etc.
Please note that search results are listed in order of relevance. A breakdown of resource types is displayed above each list.

Browse The "Browse" option, near the upper-left corner, enables you to view lists of all articles in various categories. Choosing this option allows you to see the "Filter List" (left column), which contains two basic divisions, which you can open by clicking on the little plus-signs (+):
"Eras," which contains chronological groupings, such as "Before 1400"
"Category," which contains topical groupings, such as "History -- Gender and Sexuality."
ProQuest History Vault: NAACP Papers Subscription covers the following collections: Board of Directors, Annual Conferences, Major Speeches, and National Staff FilesThe NAACP's Major Campaigns--Education, Voting, Housing, Employment, Armed ForcesThe NAACP's Major Campaigns--Scottsboro, Anti-Lynching, Criminal Justice, Peonage, Labor, and Segregation and Discrimination Complaints and Responses
RIPM Jazz The Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals (RIPM) Jazz collection provides access to a wide variety of Jazz-related journals, including Jazz cross-over with other genres, the culture surrounding Jazz music, and Jazz outside of the United States. Great primary source for those in a variety of disciplines, like history and music.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive This link opens in a new window Archival collections were sourced from more than 60 libraries at institutions such as the Amistad Research Center, Bibliothèque nationale de France, the National Archives, Oberlin College, Oxford University, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and Yale University…

Fold3 Library Edition This link opens in a new window convenient access to a growing collection of US military records, including the stories, photos, and personal documents...

HeinOnline Includes primary sources relating to US state and federal matters. Also includes international sources.

HeinOnline U.S. Congressional Serial Set This link opens in a new window Complete indexing of the more than 17,000 volumes of the Serial Set.
ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window database of Congressional publications, some dating back as far as the late 1700's. Includes the complete texts of hearings and most other documents.
Rotunda This link opens in a new window Includes The Adams Papers, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of George Washington, People of the Founding Eras [A biographical guide], Presidential Recordings Digital Editions, and more.
U.S. Declassified Documents Online This link opens in a new window Database of previously classified federal records spanning the twentieth and twenty first centuries.
Westlaw Campus Research This link opens in a new window Includes primary sources relating to US state and federal matters. Also includes international sources.

Indigenous Peoples: North America This link opens in a new window Includes manuscript collections, rare books and monographs, newspapers, periodicals, census records, legal documents, maps, drawings and sketches, oral histories, and photos. Also features video content from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Archives of Sexuality & Gender: LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940 Part 1 & 2 This link opens in a new window Strongest coverage of materials from United States, Canada, England, and Australia. Includes publications from many African, Central America, South American, Asian, & European, Countries.Primary source materials frown from hundreds of organizations including: major activist organizations & local, grassroots groups.
Women's Studies Archive This link opens in a new window Strong coverage of North America, but includes materials from a broad selection of countries in Africa, Central America, South America, Asia, and Europe. Focuses on the evolution of feminism throughout the 19th & 20th centuries. Provides materials on women's political activism, such as suffrage, birth control, pacifism, civil rights, and socialism, and on women's voices, from female-authored literature to women's periodicals.

Newspapers / Periodicals

19th Century U.S. Newspapers Digital Archive This link opens in a new window Includes numerous newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S.; and it encompasses the entire 19th century.
Accessible Archives Complete This link opens in a new window Collection of American newspapers, magazines, & other primary source materials, mostly from the 19th century, but with some 18th century items. Includes the Virginia Gazette, Pennsylvania Gazette, and a selection of African American newspapers.
Amateur Newspapers from the American Antiquarian Society Tens of thousands of issues from over 3,300 papers, published in every state except Alaska and Hawaii, plus numerous titles from Canada. Largely from the 19th century.
America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window Content from ~1,000 American newspapers from all the current 50 states & the District of Columbia printed between 1690 and 1900...
American Periodicals This link opens in a new window American magazines and journals with coverage from 1740-1940. Includes selected years of such popular titles as Vanity Fair, Ladies' Home Journal, The Dial, McClure's, & more.
Black Studies Center This link opens in a new window
Includes the Chicago Daily Defender, the Chicago Defender, and Final Call.
Early American Newspapers, Series I This link opens in a new window The most comprehensive online source of early American newspapers that chronicles the evolution of American history, culture, daily life from 1690 to 1922.
Factiva This link opens in a new window International business and news coverage from over 14,000 sources, including newspapers, news wires, magazines, trade journals, radio and television transcripts, etc.
Factiva searches for the exact phrase you enter. For example, 'speech recognition software' will find articles that contain those three terms adjacent to each other and in that order.

Combining Terms: Use AND, OR, NOT. For example, 'mci communications AND speech recognition software' will find articles containing both 'mci communications' and 'speech recognition software.'

Truncation: Add an asterisk (*) to the end of a word to search for all forms of that term. Example: congress*.

NOTE: When finished with Factiva, please click on the 'logout' selection in the top right corner of the screen to keep all available accounts open for other users.
Harper's Weekly 1857-1912 This link opens in a new window Browse or search issues of Harper's Weekly, America's leading 19th century illustrated newspaper.
Liberty Magazine Historical Archive, 1924-1950 This link opens in a new window Entire run of Liberty Magazine, nearly 1,400 issues, and contains over 17,000 fiction and non-fiction articles and thousands of advertisements...
NewsBank Access World News This link opens in a new window
Articles from 9,000+ U.S. and international full-text information sources, mostly newspapers and wire services. Browse articles by country.
Newspapers.com World Collection Includes selected papers from Australia, Canada, Ireland, Panama, United Kingdom, & the United States
Newspaper Source Plus This link opens in a new window Full-text, cover-to-cover coverage of over 1,200 U.S. and international newspapers, plus selective full-text coverage for an additional 335 U.S. newspapers and transcripts from broadcast news sources. In most cases, chronological coverage extends back only several years...
New York Times, The, Historical Newspaper This link opens in a new window The Historical New York Times with Index (1851-1993) includes searchable full text, full page, and article-level images.
Wall Street Journal Historical Archive This link opens in a new window Full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue (1889
Washington Post Historical Newspaper (1877-1996) This link opens in a new window Full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue in 1877.

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 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.
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.
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.
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."

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