Primary Sources – Best Bets
- ABC-Clio eBook Collection
Collection of ebooks covering history and literary criticism, including a large collection of narratives by enslaved people. More info - African American Communities
Presents multiple aspects of the African American community, focusing predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina. More info - African American Historical Serials Collection
Documents the history of African American life and religious organizations from materials published between 1829 and 1922. More info - African American Newspapers
Provides primary sources for such diverse disciplines as cultural, literary, and social history, ethnic studies, and more (1827-1998). More info - African American Poetry 1750-1900
Nearly 3,000 poems written by African-American poets in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. More info - African Newspapers (1800-1922)
Provides more than 40 fully searchable African newspapers published in the 19th and 20th centuries. More info - America’s Historical Imprints
A comprehensive historical collection of primary source materials that covers American history, literature, culture and daily life. More info - America’s Historical Newspapers
Includes more than 1,000 U.S. historical newspapers published between 1690 and 1922, including titles from all 50 states. More info - American Broadsides and Ephemera
Primary source materials printed between 1760 and 1900 that range from contemporary accounts of the Civil War to theatre programs and menus. More info - American Fiction, 1774-1920
More than 17,800 titles written by Americans from the political beginnings of the United States through World War I. More info - American History in Video
More than 7,000 videos including commercial and governmental news, archival footage, public affairs footage, and important documentaries. More info - American History, 1493-1945
Sourced from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, this collection of primary source documents brings to life American history from the times of the earliest settlers until the end of World War II. More info - American Periodicals Series Online
Covers over 1,100 periodicals published between 1740 and 1940. More info - American State Papers
Contains over 6,000 numbered publications from 1789 to 1838, largely Congressional, but also containing Executive Department materials. More info - Archive of Americana
Now part of Readex AllSearch. Features over 1,375 newspaper titles from all 50 states, more than 100,000 books, broadsides and pamphlets, and much more. More info - ArchiveGrid
ArchiveGrid connects you with primary source material held in archives, special collections, and manuscript collections around the world. More info - Archives Unbound
Presents topically-focused digital collections of historical documents. More info - Arte Publico Hispanic Historical Collection: Series 1
Presents a collection of historical content pertaining to U.S. Hispanic history, literature, political commentary, and culture. Content written in Spanish (80%) and English (20%). More info - ATLA Historical Monographs Collection: Series 1
Consists of titles from the 13th century through the 1893 World Parliament of Religions, focused on religion and theology. More info - ATLA Historical Monographs Collection: Series 2
Offers material on the significant shifts in the religious identification of Americans and the growing interest and experimentation with non-Western religions from 1894 to 1922. More info - British History Online
Nearly 1,300 volumes of primary and secondary content relating to British and Irish history, and histories of empire and the British world. More info - British Library Digital Collections
Temporarily unavailable (see https://bl.libguides.com/currently-available). Collections range from digitized manuscripts (Beowulf and Leonardo da Vinci’s Notebook) and illuminated manuscripts, to an extensive collection of maps from around the world. More info - British Library Newspapers
Delivers a wide range of local and regional voices to reflect the social, political, and cultural events of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. More info - British Literary Manuscripts Online
Presents facsimile images of literary manuscripts, including letters and diaries, drafts of poems, plays, novels, and other literary works. More info - China: Trade, Politics & Culture, 1793-1980
This collection provides a wide variety of original source material detailing China’s interaction with the West. More info - Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle (NAACP Papers)
Internal memos, legal briefings, and direct action summaries from national, legal, and branch offices of the NAACP. More info - Colonial America
Colonial America consists of all 1,450 volumes of the CO 5 series of Colonial Office files held at The National Archives in London. More info - Congressional Publications (ProQuest)
Provides indexing of many Congressional publications from 1789 to the present, including Hearings, Committee Prints, Research Reports, Legislative Histories, and more. More info - Digital Library on American Slavery
Offers a searchable collection of public records concerning enslavement. More info - Digital Public Library of America
Brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. More info - DigitalNC
Digital versions of primary sources from cultural heritage institutions around North Carolina. More info - Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans 1639-1800
Consists of more than 37,000 books, pamphlets and broadsides depicting every aspect of life in 17th- and 18th-century America. More info - Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker 1801-1819
Full-text access to 36,000 American books, pamphlets and broadsides published in the early years of the 19th century. More info - Early English Books Online (EEBO)
Virtually every work printed before 1700 in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere. More info - East India Company
Unique collection of India Office Records from the British Library, London. More info - Economist Historical Archive
Complete searchable copy of every issue of The Economist from 1843 to 2015. More info - Eighteenth Century Collections Online
Eighteenth century books and broadsides, Bibles, tract books and sermons, printed ephemera, and more. More info - Empire Online
Contains primary source documents that span five centuries, charting the story of the rise and fall of empires. More info - English Historical Documents (EHD)
Comprehensive, annotated collection of over 5,000 documents on British history. More info - Fold3 – Historical Military Records
Provides access to military records, including the stories, photos, and personal documents of the men and women who served. More info - Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports 1941-1996
English-language full-text broadcasts and news transcripts—translated as needed—from around the world. More info - Gale African American Studies
An interdisciplinary academic collection devoted to the study of the history, culture, and politics of Black Americans covering the tumultuous period from 1900 to present day. More info - Gale Digital Scholar Lab
A research and learning platform that allows students and researchers to apply natural language processing tools to raw text data (OCR text) from all of Gale's primary source collections. More info - Gale NewsVault
Search across a range of historical newspaper and periodical collections spanning 400 years (1604-2006). More info - Gale Primary Sources
Gale Primary Sources searches 18th Century Collections Online (ECCO), 19th Century Collections Online (NCCO), the Making of the Modern World, and Sabin Americana (1500-1926). More info - Gender: Identity and Social Change
Includes primary sources for the study of gender history, women’s suffrage, the feminist movement and the men’s movement. More info - Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration & Cultural Exchange
Brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of global commodities in world history. More info - HarpWeek
Digitized editions of Harper's Weekly from 1857 to 1877, America's leading 19th century illustrated newspaper. More info - HeritageQuest
Find your ancestors, trace their paths across America, and learn what life was like in the areas where they settled. More info - Indigenous Histories and Cultures in North America
Presents a unique insight into interactions between American Indians and Europeans from their earliest contact. More info - Latin American Newspapers (1805-1922)
Provides access to more than 280 Latin American newspapers published between 1805 and 1922. More info - Los Angeles Times Historical
Contains the complete cover-to-cover paper for every issue, with full-page and article images in PDF format (1881-1999). More info - Making of the Modern World
A digital collection of primary sources covering the history of Western trade. More info - Market Research and American Business, 1935-1965
Insight into the American consumer boom of the mid-20th century through access to market research reports and supporting documents. More info - Migration to New Worlds
Explores the movement of peoples from Great Britain, Ireland, mainland Europe, and Asia to the New World and Australasia. More info - Mountain People: Life and Culture In Appalachia
This collection consists of the diaries, journals, and narratives of explorers, emigrants, military men, Native Americans, and travelers. More info - New York Times Historical (ProQuest)
Contains the complete paper cover-to-cover of every issue prior to 2016, with full-page and article images in PDF format. More info - Nineteenth Century Collections Online
Focuses on primary source collections including monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, statistics, and more. More info - Nineteenth Century Serials Edition
A free, online scholarly edition of six nineteenth-century periodicals and newspapers. More info - Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers
Digital facsimile images for hundreds of 19th century U.S. newspapers. More info - Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals
Covers the events, lives, values, and themes that shaped the 19th century world. More info - North American Women’s Letters and Diaries
Primary sources on the experiences of over 1,000 North American women as revealed in approximately 150,000 pages of diaries, letters, and manuscripts. More info - North Carolina Historic Newspaper Collection
Contains 3.5 million pages of digitized content from over 1,000 North Carolina county newspapers (1764-1999). More info - Oxford Text Archive
Develops, collects, catalogues, and preserves electronic literary and linguistic resources for use in higher education, in research, teaching, and learning. More info - Perdita Manuscripts: Women Writers, 1500-1700
Complete facsimile images of over 230 manuscripts written or compiled by women living in the British Isles during the 16th and 17th centuries. More info - Political Extremism and Radicalism in the 20th Century
This collection provides insight on fringe groups from both the right and left of the political spectrum through rare, hard to access primary sources. More info - ProQuest Historical Newspapers
Offers full text and full image articles for 13 large American daily newspapers and two daily British newspapers (1764-2005). More info - Readex AllSearch
A streamlined platform for efficiently searching across Readex's historical collections: books, pamphlets, newspapers, government documents, and more (1690-1999). More info - Religions of America
Traces the history and unique character of religious movements that originated in or were re-shaped by the U.S. during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. More info - Sabin Americana
Contains works about the Americas published throughout the world from 1500 to the early 1900s. More info - Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection
Represents the largest single collection of seventeenth and eighteenth century English news media available from the British Library. More info - Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive
Thematically organized, historical archive devoted to the scholarly study and understanding of slavery from a multinational perspective. More info - Slavery, Abolition, and Social Justice
Online primary source materials including manuscripts, pamphlets, books, paintings, maps, and other documents for the study of slavery, abolition, and social justice. More info - State Papers Online
Provides access to the papers of the British Secretary of State from 1509 to 1782, concerning administration of the country, foreign affairs, marriage alliances, treaties, and wars. More info - The Times Digital Archive
The Times Digital Archive (London) provides access to the entire newspaper including all illustrations and photos (1785-2011). More info - Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive
Provides full text access to every page of every issue of the TLS from 1902 to 2012, including 300,000 book reviews, film reviews, and more. More info - U.S. Congressional Serial Set
Contains House and Senate Documents and House and Senate Reports, usually from congressional committees dealing with proposed legislation and issues under investigation. More info - Wall Street Journal Historical
The financial newspaper of record offering in-depth coverage of national and international finance as well as coverage of hard news (1889-1994). More info - Washington Post Historical
Newspaper known for its national political coverage, international reporting, and investigative reporting (1877-1995). More info - Women in the National Archives
Includes original documents on the suffrage question in Britain, the Empire, and colonial territories, and a finding aid to women's studies resources in The National Archives at Kew. More info - Women’s Studies Archive: Women’s Issues and Identities
Presents primary source materials covering the social, political, and professional aspects of women's lives and offers a look at the roles, experiences, and achievements of women in society. More info