Research Guides: History: Primary Sources

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Primary Sources

Primary sources, according to the Society of American Archivists (SAA), are materials that provide firsthand accounts of events or experiences later recalled by eyewitnesses. In this section, you will find primary source databases relating to ephemera, periodicals, and books.

Society of American Archivists (SAA)

Primary Sources: Books and Monographs

ARTFL Project
Contains nearly 2,000 texts, ranging from classic works of French literature to various kinds of non-fiction prose and technical writing from the C13th to C20th. Genres include novels, verses, essays, correspondences, and treatises.

Early English Books Online (EEBO) This link opens in a new window
Contains digital facsimiles of virtually every English work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and British North America from 1474 to 1700. Titles range from the first book printed in English by William Caxton through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare, and the tumult age of the English Civil War.

Early European Books Online (Collection 4)
Contains includes works from the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the Wellcome Library, and the Kongelige Bibliotek. As a new addition, Collection 4 also includes 1,700 volumes from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF).

Empire Online This link opens in a new window
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Materials on the study of Empire and its theories, practices, and consequences from the late C15th to early C21st. Manuscripts, printed and visual primary sources as well as scholarly essays, maps, and interactive chronology are included.
Gale Primary Sources (formerly Artemis Primary Sources) This link opens in a new window
Searches several resources including Eighteenth Century Collections Online, The Financial Times Historical Archive, The Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, The Making of the Modern World, The Times Digital Archive, and Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive.
LGBT Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
Includes key works and archival documentation of LGBT political and social movements from the C20th to the present. The collection contains 150,000 pages of rare archival content, including seminal texts, letters, periodicals, speeches, interviews, and ephemera.
Making of the Modern World: 1450-1914 This link opens in a new window
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Includes approximately 5,000 newly scanned titles and extends this series into the beginning of the C20th. Comprised mainly of monographs, reports, correspondence, speeches, and surveys, this collection enhances scholars' access to international coverage of social, economic, and business history.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
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A primary source and archival collection of the long nineteenth century.

Primary Sources: Ephemera and Periodicals

American Periodicals Series (APS) This link opens in a new window
Includes digitized images of popular American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the C20th with titles like Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine, Vanity Fair, Ladies' Home Journal, and groundbreaking journals like The Dial, Puck, and McClure's.
DigiZeitschriften This link opens in a new window
Archive of German journals in a variety of subject areas, including the arts, humanities, law, literature (including Germanic and Romance language & literature), and social sciences.
Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800 This link opens in a new window
Full-text and scanned pages of all known existing books, pamphlets, and broadsides printed in the United States (or British colonies) from 1639 to 1800.
Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819 This link opens in a new window
Full-text and scanned pages of all known existing American books, pamphlets, and broadsides published in the United States from 1800 to 1819.
HarpWeek This link opens in a new window
Fully indexed, digitized version of Harper's Weekly.
Leftist Newspapers and Periodicals This link opens in a new window
A collection of English-language publications spanning from 1845-2015 covering Communist, Socialist, and Marxist thought, theory, and practice.
North China Herald This link opens in a new window
The prime printed source in any language for the history of the foreign presence in China from 1850 to 1940.
Sabin Americana Digital Archive This link opens in a new window
Dating from 1500 to 1926, this database has original accounts of discovery and exploration, pioneering and westward expansion, the U.S. Civil War and other military actions, Native Americans, slavery and abolition, and religious history. Covers North, Central, and South America, as well as the Caribbean.
Women, War and Society, 1914-1918 This link opens in a new window
Has primary sources from the Imperial War Museum, London, which was originally published by the Air Ministry, League of Mercy and War Fund, Purple Cross Service, Russian Relief Fund, and many other organizations. The collection contains charity and international relief reports, pamphlets, photographs, and press cuttings.
World's Fairs: A Global History of Expositions This link opens in a new window
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Collating material from archives around the world, this resource offers a unique insight into the phenomenon of international expositions by presenting official records, monographs, personal accounts, and ephemera from more than 200 fairs.
World's Fairs and Expositions: Visions of Tomorrow This link opens in a new window
Gives researchers access to primary source documents covering landmark exhibits from 1840–1940, while exploring the technological progress — in everything from entertainment to politics — that shaped contemporary outlooks and national identities.