Research Guides: Material Culture: Primary Sources

Primary Sources

Black Thought and Culture: African Americans from Colonial Times to the Present This link opens in a new window
Monographs, essays, articles, speeches, and interviews written by leaders within the black community from the earliest times to the present.
Black Thought and Culture is made available through a grant from the Unidel Foundation.
China, America and the Pacific: Trade and Cultural Exchange This link opens in a new window
Explores the history of North American trade and cultural interactions with China. Coverage also includes Pacific trading centers such as Hawai‘i. (Coverage: early 18th – early 20th centuries)
China: Trade, Politics and Culture This link opens in a new window
Over 200 years of Chinese history, charting the monumental social and political upheaval that recreated China as a modern power. Documents encompass events from the earliest English embassy to the birth and early years of the People’s Republic. (Coverage: 1793 - 1980)
Also included are 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.
Colonial America This link opens in a new window
All volumes of the CO 5 series from The National Archives, UK. Consists of original correspondence between the British government and the governments of the American colonies. (Coverage: 1606-1822)
Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
An integrated platform that combines Gales digital archives into a single cross-searchable interface to enhance the ability to discover primary source documents from multiple collections. Over 50 collections are available to University of Delaware users on this platform. (Coverage: 1500 -)
Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration and Cultural Exchange This link opens in a new window
Through a wide range of primary sources, researchers can explore and chart the history of 15 key commodities and their impact on societies across the world. (Coverage: 18th-20th centuries )
15 Key Commodities: Chocolate – Coffee – Cotton – Fur – Oil – Opium – Porcelain – Silver and Gold – Spices – Sugar – Tea – Timber – Tobacco – Wheat – Wine and Spirits
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Provides access to many millions of journal articles, books, images, and primary sources in 75 disciplines.
Artstor images incorporated into JSTOR as of 8/1/2024.
Readex AllSearch This link opens in a new window
Perform a seamless search across all of the Readex digital collections available at the UD Library, or choose to combine only specific databases. By consolidating major digital collections and document types, Readex AllSearch enables users to make new and unexpected discoveries, whether on a desktop computer or any mobile device.
Note: After using Readex AllSearch to discover relevant documents across a range of collections, some users may find it effective to transition their research to the specific Readex collection(s) in which such documents are found. These more focused collections are designed for deeper research of particular content types.
Trade Catalogues and the American Home This link opens in a new window
Explores domestic life and material culture in America by detailing the products sold in the domestic sphere between the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries. (Coverage: 1850 -1950)
1 of 3 components in American Consumer Culture.

Art Magazine Collection Archives This link opens in a new window
Indexing and full text (including covers and advertisements) for Magazine Antiques (1922-2016), ARTnews (1902-2006) and Art in America (1913-2015). Provides a history of collecting over the course of the 20th century, as well as a comprehensive record of fine arts, art history, interior design, decorative arts, and architecture. (Coverage: 20th - early 21st centuries)
Early American Imprints Series I: Evans, 1639-1800 This link opens in a new window
Includes nearly every book, pamphlet, and broadside published in North America during the 17th and 18th centuries. The definitive resource for information about every aspect of life in 17th and 18th century America, from agriculture and auctions through foreign affairs, diplomacy, literature, music, religion, the Revolutionary War, temperance, witchcraft, and many other topics. (Coverage: 1639-1800)
Includes all American imprints from the 17th and 18th centuries identified in the American Bibliography by Charles Evans and in the Supplement to Evans’ American Bibliography by Roger Bristol.

Can be searched on Readex AllSearch, an integrated platform that combines Readex’s primary sources into a single cross-searchable interface.
Early English Books Online This link opens in a new window
Early work printed in the British Isles and North America, as well as works in English printed elsewhere. (Coverage: 1470-1700)
This collection can also be searched on Gale Primary Sources, an integrated platform that combines Gales digital archives into a single cross-searchable interface.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
Digital images of thousands of books, pamphlets and broadsides published during the 18th c. (Coverage: 1701-1800) For the earlier period, see Early English Books Online.
This collection can also be searched on Gale Primary Sources, an integrated platform that combines Gales digital archives into a single cross-searchable interface.
The acquisition of this database was made possible through the support of the Unidel Foundation.
HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new window
Partial Open Access. Partnering with academic and research institutions, HathiTrust (pronounced hah tee) provides access to millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world. Typically, books in the public domain (no longer under copyright) can be viewed in full by all users.
WHAT'S AVAILABLE
- Copyrighted items are available for full-text search in the HathiTrust Digital Library and can be helpful in the creation of a bibliography.
- Items in the public domain or available through Creative Commons licensing are marked “Full view” in the online catalog at https://www.hathitrust.org.
- Because the University of Delaware is a HathiTrust member, you may log in to HathiTrust using your UDelNet ID and download full PDFs of "Full View" items.
Making of America This link opens in a new window
A digital library of primary sources on American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. Originally a collaborative project between Cornell University and the University of Michigan, each institution focused on different aspects of this period based on what each already had in its collections. Each collection is accessed separately. The Cornell Collection is available at Hathi Trust and the Michigan Collection is available on the U-M Library Digital Collections site. (Coverage: 1840-1900)
Women's Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
Full backfiles of leading womens interest consumer magazines. Titles are scanned from cover to cover in high-resolution color. (Coverage: late 19th c.-2005)
HarpWeek This link opens in a new window
Full-text digital database of Harper's Weekly, the leading American illustrated magazine of its day, covering political, military, social, and cultural stories. (Coverage: 1857-1912)

Digital Bibliography of Delaware This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive bibliography of publications about Delaware.
Includes the entries from 2 previously published bibliographies (Bibliography of Delaware through 1960 and Bibliography of Delaware, 1960-1974), the annual bibliographies created and published by the Delaware Historical Society, and additional entries created by Robert Fleck, former proprietor of Oak Knoll Books.
Digital Sanborn Maps, 1867-1970 (Delaware) This link opens in a new window
Detailed historical maps of Delaware cities and towns. 140 maps sets are available for the state of Delaware. (Coverage: 1884-1958)
Sanborn maps, produced by the Sanborn Map Company, the primary American publisher of fire insurance maps for nearly 100 years, are valuable to anyone who wants to learn about the history, growth, and development of American cities, towns, and neighborhoods. They are large-scale plans containing information that was used to estimate the potential risk for urban structures. Information includes the outline of each building, the size, shape, and construction materials, heights, and function of structures, location of windows and doors. The maps also give street names, street and sidewalk widths, property boundaries, building use, and house and block numbers.
Textual information on construction details (for example, steel beams or reinforced walls) is often given on the plans, while shading indicates different building materials. Extensive information on building use is given, ranging from symbols for generic terms such as stable, garage, and warehouse to names of owners of factories and details on what was manufactured in them. In the case of large factories or commercial buildings, individual rooms and the uses to which they were put are recorded on the maps. Other features shown include pipelines, railroads, wells, dumps, and heavy machinery.
140 map sets are available for Delaware, ranging in date from 1884 to 1958. A key provided by the Sanborn Map Company provides information on the notation of map features.
The Library of Congress has made thousands of Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps available online for many buildings in U.S. cities and towns. These maps are in color.
Sanborn maps for Delaware are also available on microfilm (Microfilm no. 3333, 3 reels). Later coverage for some Delaware cities is available on an an additional reel (Microfilm no. 5690).
Sanborn maps for several nearby states are also available on microfilm: District of Columbia (Microfilm no. 3338 and no. 4614), Maryland (Microfilm no. 3368 and no. 4741), New Jersey (Microfilm no. 3519 and no. 4612), and Pennsylvania (Microfilm no. 3332 and no. 4613).
NOTE: The original maps are color coded. The maps in this database and on microfilm are black and white.
American County Histories to 1900 This link opens in a new window
Histories of cities and counties of the original thirteen states (with the exception of Virginia), plus Vermont and Maine. The collection includes more than 2,700 large volumes that have been manually rekeyed. It provides vivid portraits of people, places, and events—not just national figures, but local figures, demographics, social, economic, and cultural transformations.
Provides local and regional perspectives on many of the topics and issues of the day:
- Westward Movement
- Native Americans
- Indian Depredations
- Colonial Exploitation
- Wars
- Slavery and Abolition
- Suffrage
- Labor Unions and Disturbances
- The Underground Railroad
- Industrial Revolution
- Fur Trade
- Temperance
Pennsylvania: County and Regional Histories and Atlases This link opens in a new window

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
Digital sources, both primary and secondary, from libraries, archives, and museums.
Philadelphia Architects & Buildings
Sanborn Maps: All States (Library of Congress)

National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections This link opens in a new window
The National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC) program at the Library of Congress is a free of charge cooperative cataloging program, partnered by the Library and eligible repositories located throughout the U.S. and its territories. It provides and promotes bibliographic access to the nation's documentary heritage.
ArchiveGrid This link opens in a new window
Helps researchers looking for primary source materials held in archives, libraries, museums and historical societies. Millions of archival descriptions and finding aids from over 1,400 different institutions are represented.
Some collection descriptions include links to images, sound recordings, or other online materials. You can narrow your search results to those that have links to digital content.

Sampler Archive
HEARTH: Home Economics Archive - Research, Tradition, History
Books and journals in home economics and related disciplines published between 1850 and 1950.
Library of Congress Digital Collections
Freely available digitized materials from the Library of Congress, including the collections formerly called American Memory. Change the area that you are searching under to the Prints & Photographs Division.

Material Culture

Primary Sources

WHAT'S AVAILABLE