Primary Sources through UD
- American State Papers, 1739-1838 This link opens in a new windowLegislative and executive documents of Congress during the period 1789 to 1838. The collection includes documents that cover the period from 1789 and the beginning of the U.S. Congressional Serial Set in 1817.Originally published in thirty-eight physical volumes, the American State Papers are arranged into ten topical classes or series: Foreign Relations, Indian Affairs, Finances, Commerce and Navigation, Military Affairs, Naval Affairs, Post Office Department, Public Lands, Miscellaneous, and Claims.
- Artstor Digital Library (MOVED TO JSTOR 8/1/2024) This link opens in a new windowThe Artstor Digital Library is an image database featuring a range of images from some of the world’s leading museums, photo archives, scholars, and artists in one easily-navigated repository. The more than two million images from 280 collections support teaching and research in nearly every topic, including Anthropology, Archaeology, Architecture, Art History, Fashion & Costume, Literature, Religion, Theater, World History, and much more.
ArtStor can be a great resource to find physical primary sources from the time period you are studying, which can then be used as a primary source. - British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new windowBritish and Irish Women’s Letters and Diaries from 1500-1950 (BWLD) includes the immediate experiences of 430 authors and 60,000 pages of individual women’s rare, personal perspectives on world history. When complete, the collection will include more than 100,000 pages of primary materials spanning more than 300 years. Each source has been carefully chosen using leading bibliographies. The collection also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of the sources in the database.
- British Library Newspapers This link opens in a new windowDigital collection of national and regional newspapers in Victorian Britain. The papers in the collection were selected by an editorial board from the British Library. They provide a broad yet detailed view of British life in the 19th century: from business to sport, from politics to entertainment and the arts. This invaluable collection is made up of daily and weekly publications and reflects Britain’s growing role as a major power in the 19th century world.
- China: Trade, Politics and Culture This link opens in a new windowIncluded in the collection are manuscripts encompassing events from the earliest English embassy to the birth and early years of the People’s Republic; documents relating to the Chinese Maritime Customs service; letters relating to the first Opium War, survivors’ descriptions of the Boxer War, and glimpses of life in China from the collected diaries and personal photographs of the Bowra family; significant sources describing the lives and work of missionaries in China from 1869-1970, including extensive and fully searchable runs of The Chinese Recorder, Light and Life Magazine, and The Land of Sinim: the North China Mission Quarterly Paper. It also offers over 400 color paintings, maps, and drawings by English and Chinese artists, as well as many photographs, sketches, and ephemeral items depicting Chinese people, places, customs, and events.
- Early English Books Online This link opens in a new windowEEBO provides unique research opportunities in literature, history, linguistics, religion, art, music, the history of printing, and other disciplines. The collection ranges from single-sheet ballads to the eight folio volumes of St. John Chrysostom. Included are works by Malory, Spenser, Bacon, More, Erasmus, Boyle, Newton, Galileo; musical exercises by Henry Purcell and novels by Aphra Behn; prayer books, pamphlets, and proclamations; and almanacs, calendars, and other primary resources.
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new windowECCO contains digital images of every page of more than 180,000 books published during the 18th century. A variety of materials are included — from books and directories, Bibles, sheet music and sermons to advertisements—and works by many well-known and lesser-known authors, all providing a diverse collection of material for the researcher of the eighteenth century. The collection is based on the English Short Title Catalogue.
- Empire Online This link opens in a new window
Charts the rise and fall of empires around the world over a span of 5 centuries. Includes a mixture of printed, manuscript and visual primary source documents. Subjects include colonial history, society, trade and travel, politics and culture. Provides varying points of view, with selections from American, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese German and British perspectives. Also includes texts from the peoples of Africa, India and North America. (Coverage Late 15th to early 21st centuries)
- Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new windowBy going through this link for Gale Primary Sources, you are able to cross-list your search with all the collections UD subscribes to (20 different topics).
- HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new windowHathiTrust has content that resides in the public domain, but UD also pays for additional content to be made available that you can only access from our library website.
- Internet Archive This link opens in a new windowThe Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more. It was founded to build an Internet library, with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format.
- Making of the Modern World This link opens in a new windowThe Making of the Modern World digital collection presents books, serials, political pamphlets, broadsides, government publications, proclamations, and ephemera focusing on economics, political science, history, sociology, banking, finance, transportation and manufacturing. The collection is comprised of many rare titles and first editions in languages other than English including French, German, Portuguese, Scandinavian, Italian and Spanish. Content here begins in 1450 and ends in 1945.
- Readex AllSearch This link opens in a new windowReadex AllSearch is an integrated platform that combines all of the Library’s purchased Readex primary sources into a single cross-searchable interface. This broadens and enhances the ability to discover primary source documents from multiple collections. The single platform combines historical sources from the United States, Africa, Latin America and South Asia that include newspapers, books, pamphlets, broadsides, government documents plus more, and covers more than 400 hundred of years of history.
- Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection This link opens in a new windowA full-text, fully searchable digital archive of nearly 1,270 newspapers and news pamphlets from the United Kingdom. Collected by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817), this collection represents the largest single archive of 17th and 18th century news media available from the British Library.
- Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive This link opens in a new windowSlavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive is a thematically organized, four-part historical archive devoted to the scholarly study and understanding of slavery from a multinational perspective.
Outside Primary Sources
- Ancient Mesoamerica - UTSAA research guide created by the University of Texas at San Antonio with a large list of Mesoamerican digitized projects and websites.
- Global African History: Research Guides & WebsitesA list of open access collections and websites on African History.
- Imperial War MuseumThis museum has a wide variety of digitized primary sources, including pamphlets, photographs, sound archive, and more.
- India, History/Culture Research Guide- Columbia UniversityAn extremely comprehensive research guide with a large collection of open access collections. Please note that the listings with a key are restricted to Columbia students only.
- India, Raj, and EmpireDrawing upon the wonderfully rich and diverse manuscript collections of the National Library of Scotland this resource will be of great value to all those teaching or researching into the History of South Asia between the foundation of the East India Company in 1615 and the granting of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947.
- Internet East Asian Sourcebook - FordhamA list of both digitized items that provide specific information on East Asian history. Also includes a link to content on the internet.
- Library of Congress - Asian DivisionThe Library of Congress' Asian Division creates research guides, digitized collections, and a list of e-resources all related to this continent's large history.
- Slave VoyagesThis website explores the dispersal of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic world through interactive maps, records of slaving expeditions and more.
- South Asian American Digital ArchiveHas digitized items available to view within the archive.
- World Digital LibraryThe World Digital Library (WDL) makes available on the internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.