Research Guides: History: Primary Sources

Digital Collections

Digital Public Library of America
A collection of digitized materials from libraries throughout the U.S.

HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new window
HathiTrust Digital Library is a digital preservation repository which provides long-term preservation and access services for content from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and in-house partner institution initiatives. The repository includes digitized and fully searchable online copies of public domain and in-copyright books and other publications.

Internet Archive
Digitized books, audio, video, and other primary source material. Also includes images of older websites.
World Digital Library
The WDL makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from all countries and cultures.

North American Collections This link opens in a new window
Provides full text databases of primary source material from the 18th and 19th century publications. Collections include the Civil War; African American newspapers from the 19th century; American county histories to 1900; and specific resources and newspapers such as Godey’s Lady’s Book and the Pennsylvania Gazette.
Social and Cultural History: Letters and Diaries Online This link opens in a new window
Dating from 1675 to the present, and includes nearly 4,000 collections of letters, diaries, oral histories, memoirs, and autobiographies.

Chronicling America
Chronicling America contains millions of newspaper pages from nearly every state and territory in the United States published through 1963.

Historical Jewish Press This link opens in a new window
Contains a digitized collection of full-text Jewish newspapers from around the world from the 18th century onward. Partners in this project to digitize Jewish newspapers are Tel Aviv University and the National Library of Israel.
Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
A collection of 40 historical newspapers, including domestic and international publications. Domestic publications include historical black and Jewish newspapers. Dates of coverage for individual newspapers vary, but the collection overall covers 1791-2016.
Newsbank Access World News This link opens in a new window
Over 5000 newspapers, newswires, blogs, broadcast transcripts, and other documents from all over the world.
Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Nexis Uni includes full text newspapers, company news and financial information, as well as federal, state, and international legal materials. Also contains some medical and reference sources.