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Finding Primary Sources Online
Archives and other institutions that have digitized some of their collections and made them available online constitute trustworthy websites. Any online sources your project uses should come from reliable websites. If you can’t make a visit to an archives, then its website is a reliable place to start. The following lists contain resources that are statewide in scope or focus on national events. There are many more digital projects online where you may find additional primary sources for your project; ask an archivist if they know of other resources not listed here.
For ease of reading, we have organized these collections roughly by region. Note, however, that some regional collections may actually contain primary sources of national and even international significance.
Do you know of a resource that would make a good addition to this list? We are currently accepting suggestions for additional online primary source collections and exhibits. Considerations for inclusion will be the size and breadth of the resource; to keep the list manageable we have limited it to websites with coverage at the state level or higher, and/or that focus on major national and international themes or events.
World History
U.S. History (broad)
Institution
|
Collection Name/Description
|
URL
|
Library of Congress
|
America's Story |
http://www.americasstory.com/ |
|
American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital Library |
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html |
| |
Teachers' Page |
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/
|
| |
State Digital Resources: Memory Projects, Online Encyclopedias, Historical & Cultural Materials Collections |
http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/state memory/ |
| National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) |
Digital Classroom |
http://www.archives.gov/digital_classroom/index.html |
| |
100 Milestone Documents: Documents in the National Archives and Records Administration that chronicle the history of the United States from 1776 to 1965 |
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/
|
| |
DocsTeach, which provides thousands of documents and images from the National Archives as well as learning activities and lessons |
http://docsteach.org/ |
| National Park Service |
National Register of Historic Places, "Teaching with Historic Places" |
http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/twhp/ |
| Kids.Gov |
Portal of government sites for American History |
http://www.kids.gov/6_8/6_8_social_studies_us_history.shtml |
| Smithsonian Institution |
Smithsonian Institution website |
http://www.si.edu/ |
| |
Pages for educators |
http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/ |
| Making of America (University of Michigan and Cornell University) |
A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. |
http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/ |
| Duke University |
Medicine and Madison Avenue |
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/mma/ |
| University of California, San Francisco |
Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (LTDL): this digital library contains more than 13 million documents (70+ million pages) and 7,600 video and audio recordings created by major tobacco companies related to their advertising, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and scientific research activities. |
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/
|
| American Museum of Natural History |
Resources for learning |
http://www.amnh.org/education/resources/index.php |
| Museum of the Moving Image |
The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials, 1952-2008 |
http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/ |
| Duke University |
AdAccess: advertisements from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection |
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/adaccess/ |
| History Matters (City University of New York and George Mason University) |
A project of the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning at the City University of New York, Graduate Center, and the Center for History and New Media of George Mason University |
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/ |
| Yale University Law School |
Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy |
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ |
Northeast Regional History
Midwest Regional History
Southern Regional History
Western Regional History
Other Resources for Finding and Evaluating Online Primary Sources
- Using Primary Sources on the Web, written by the Instruction & Research Services Committee of the Reference and User Service Association History Section in the American Library Association
- EDSITEment — the Best of the Humanities on the Web: (National Endowment for the Humanities)
- Library of Congress list of additional primary source collections (beyond the Library of Congress)
Society of American Archivists Reference, Access and Outreach Section's National History Day Committee| Credits
The Society of American Archivists does not assume responsibility for the opinions and views published on this auxiliary site.
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