LibGuides: History: Primary Sources

Historical Primary Resource Databases

Containing digitized primary sources, these databases can contain a variety of resources, including correspondence, archival works, statistical analyses, surveys, ephemera, maps, and many more

Accessible Archives
Searchable collection of U.S. history resources, including the Pennsylvania Gazette, the Civil War coverage of three newspapers, Godey's Lady's Book, a group of African-American and abolitionist newspapers, and selections from several 19th century Delaware Valley newspapers
In 2011, Columbia moved to a "subscriber" status in Accessible Archives which waives the maintenance fee. We will see an annual regular subscription invoice
Archives Direct: Sources from the National Archives, UK This link opens in a new window
Archives Direct is a suite of collections sourced from The National Archives, the official archive of the United Kingdom. Containing diplomatic correspondence, letters, reports, surveys, material from newspapers, statistical analyses, published pamphlets, ephemera, military papers, profiles of prominent individuals, maps and many other types of document, it consists of the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from the British state’s point of view.
Archives Unbound
Archives Unbound presents topically-focused digital collections of historical documents that support the research and study needs of scholars and students at the college and university level. Collections in Archives Unbound cover a broad range of topics from the Middle Ages forward-from Witchcraft to World War II to twentieth-century political history.
Border and Migration Studies Online
This collection of primary source documents, archives, films, and ephemera relate to significant border areas and events from the 19th to 21st centuries. It offers historical context and resources, from both personal and institutional perspectives, to the growing fields of border(land) studies and migration studies, as well as history, law, politics, diplomacy, area and global studies, anthropology, medicine, the arts, and more. Includes text, video, and images. Materials in the collection are organized around fundamental themes of Border Identities, Border Enforcement and Control, Border Disputes, Border Criminologies, Maritime Borders, Human Trafficking, Sea Migration, Undocumented and Unauthorized Migration, and Global Governance of Migration.
British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries, from 1500-1900
include approximately 100,000 pages of published letters and diaries from individuals writing from the 1500 to 1900, plus several thousand pages of previously unpublished materials. Drawn from more than 1,000 sources, including journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings, much of the material is in copyright. Represented are all age groups and life stages, all ethnicities, many geographical regions, the famous and the not so famous. More than 500 biographies enhance the use of the database
Digital National Security Archive (DNSA)
The Digital National Security Archive contains the most comprehensive set of declassified government documents available. The resource now includes 40 collections consisting of over 94,000 meticulously indexed documents, with more than 650,000 total pages. Each of these collections, compiled by top scholars and experts, exhaustively covers the most critical world events, countries, and U.S. policy decisions from post World War II through the 21st century.
Eighteenth century collections online
Provides full-text and full-page-image access to a vast range of English-language and foreign-language titles printed in the United Kingdom between 1701 and 1800, along with thousands of important works from the Americas. Includes books, pamphlets, broadsides, and ephemera. Based on the extensive microfilm collection: the Eighteenth Century.
Food and Drink in History
Five centuries of primary source material documenting the story of food and drink throughout history. The materials in this collection illustrate the deep links between food and identity, politics and power, gender, race and socio-economic status, as well as charting key issues around agriculture, nutrition and food production. Explore a wide range of primary source material, including printed and manuscript cookbooks, advertising ephemera, government reports, films, and illustrated content revealing the evolution of food and drink within everyday life and the public sphere. Includes sources from across the globe to reflect a wide range of food cultures and traditions. The earliest documents are from the sixteenth century and the latest from the early twenty-first century. Includes six rare Apicius cookbooks, the earliest of which dates from the ninth century
Gale Primary Sources
Provides an interactive research environment that allows researchers to cross-search multiple Gale collections, including Archives Unbound, Archives of Sexuality & Gender, Associated Press Collections Online, Brazilian and Portuguese History and Culture, British Library Newspapers, the Indigenous Peoples: North America database, Nineteenth Century Collections Online, The Making of Modern Law, U.S. Declassified Documents Online, U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs, 1832-1978, and the Women's Studies Archive.
Gerritsen Women's History Collection of Aletta H. Jacobs
Covers years 1543-1945, bulk is 1880-1920, with monographs and serials from the U.S., the U.K., Canada, New Zealand, and continental Europe. The collection is especially rich in women's journals, scholarly medical and sociological studies, and housekeeping and advice manuals.
The Gilded Age and Progressive Era
Explores America's transformative age of industrialization, expanding wealth, inequality, and social change through personal collections, business records, and visual content. The bulk of the material ranges from 1870-1920, with some personal collections continuing later in the twentieth century. Collections range from papers of key industrial corporations, charities, influential families, and cultural institutions to visual content in the form of political cartoons, photographs, and ephemera.
Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration and Cultural Exchange
This resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of global commodities in world history. The commodities featured in this resource have been transported, exchanged and consumed around the world for hundreds of years. They helped transform societies, global trading operations, habits of consumption and social practices
History Vault: Slavery & the Law
Provides access to primary source, cross-searchable, full-text, full-image documents on widely studied topics in 19th and 20th-century American history. Content is applicable to research in history, African American studies, women's studies, political science, social sciences, sociology, and international studies. Contents include NAACP Papers' Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantations Records; Vietnam War and American Foreign Policy, 1960-1975; Confidential U.S. State Department Central Files, Africa and Middle East, 1960-1969; Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) records, 1880-1930; and more.
London low life : street culture, social reform and the Victorian underworld.
Full-text searchable resource, containing colour digital images of rare books, ephemera, maps and other materials relating to 19th and early 20th century London; designed for both teaching and study, from undergraduate to research students and beyond. Will be of interest to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including literature, cultural studies, urban studies, social history and the study of leisure and tourism. There is a strong emphasis on rare or unique material, particularly in the range of ephemera and street literature available.There is also an emphasis on visual material.
Making of the Modern World
MOMW had its origins in the systematic building of collections of works of "economic literature." Provides access to extensive collections for research into the history of the dynamics of Western trade, including the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, banking and finance, and the emergence of the modern corporation. It is also strong in the rise of the modern labor movement, the evolving status of slavery, the condition and making of the working class, colonization, the Atlantic world, Latin American/Caribbean studies, social history, gender, and the economic theories that championed and challenged capitalism in the nineteenth century. Also offers deep resources in the role of finance and taxation and the growth of the early modern monarchy. Includes texts published 1450 to 1945.
Nineteenth Century collections online
A multi-year global digitization and publishing program focusing on primary source collections of the nineteenth century; will be comprised of numerous collections to be released over many years, including a variety of material types--monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, statistics, and more--in one cross-searchable location.
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories
Composed of contemporaneous letters and diaries, oral histories, interviews, and other personal narratives.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries
North American Women's Letters and Diaries (NAWLD) includes the immediate experiences of 107 women, as revealed in more than 9,000 pages of iaries and letters. Particular care has been taken to index this material so that it can be searched more thoroughly than ever before. When complete, the collection will include more than 150,000 pages of primary material spanning more than 300 years.
Post-war Europe: refugees, exile and resettlement, 1945-1950
Collection of "primary sources for the study and understanding of the challenges facing the European peoples in the aftermath of World War II." Topics covered include the administration of refugee camps across Europe including England, Germany, Italy, Hungary and Yugoslavia; displaced Persons Assembly Centre reports; Jewish Relief Unit field reports; British Military Government in Germany; Belsen DP Camp; Maclean Mission in Italy; Politics of the Refugee Crisis; and, strengthening of the Zionist cause.
Public Health Archives : Public Health in Modern America, 1890-1970
documents the rise of the twentieth-century public health system in the United States through correspondence, reports, pamphlets, ephemera, and more. For scholars in the fields of American history, American studies, history of science and medicine, public health studies, sociology, political science, psychology, and economics, it documents through primary sources that record the evolution and impact of public health legislation, policies, and campaigns at the local, national, and federal levels, opening for researchers a new window on the roles played by key organizations and individuals to advance public health practices and outcomes.
Slavery & Anti-slavery: A Transnational Archive
Slavery and Anti-Slavery includes documents from the United States and Europe, as well as other parts of the world. In addition to newspaper collections and books published in the antebellum era, Slavery and Anti-Slavery contains documents from several archives originally available only on microfilm.
Social and Cultural History: Letters and Diaries Online
Database of English language letters, diaries, autobiographies, oral histories, and other personal narratives providing insight into history dating from the 1550s to the present. Documents included in the index and ful-text collections are indexed for subjects, historical events, personal events, places, and dates.
Victorian popular culture
Consists of four components: Spiritualism, Sensation and Magic; Circuses, Sideshows and "Freaks;" Music Hall, Theatre and Popular Entertainment, and Moving pictures, optical entertainments & the advent of cinema. Includes full-text, full-color reproductions of books, ephemera, handbills, pamphlets, photos, posters, programs, scripts, and other types of materials. Coverage is most extensive for Great Britain; but there is also a fair range of materials for the U.S.A.
Women and Social Movements, International: 1840 to Present
Online archive of published and manuscript primary sources focusing on women's international activism since the mid-nineteenth century. The archive includes proceedings of women's international conferences, books, pamphlets, articles from newspapers and journals, as well as correspondence, diary entries, and memoirs.
Women and Social Movements in Modern Empires since 1820
Women and social movements in modern empires since 1820 explores prominent themes in world history since 1820: conquest, colonization, settlement, resistance, and post-coloniality, as told through women's voices. With a clear focus on bringing the voices of the colonized to the forefront, this highly-curated archive and database includes documents related to the Habsburg Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British, French, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, and United States Empires, and settler societies in the United States, New Zealand and Australia.
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000
A resource for students and scholars of U.S. history and U.S. women's history. Organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000, this collection seeks to advance scholarly debates and understanding about U.S. women’s history generally. The collection currently includes 124 document projects and archives with more than 5,100 documents and 175,000 pages of additional full-text documents, written by 2,800 primary authors.

European History Primary Sources
European History Primary Sources (EHPS) is a joint initiative of the Library and the Department of History and Civilization of the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. It is also part of the WWW Virtual Library History Central Catalogue that is hosted at the EUI. The purpose of EHPS is to provide an easily searchable index of scholarly digital repositories that contain primary sources for the history of Europe.
Harvard Law School Library's Nuremburg Trials Project
The Harvard Law School Library's Nuremberg Trials Project is an open-access initiative to create and present digitized images or full-text versions of the Library's Nuremberg documents, descriptions of each document, and general information about the trials. For help using the project, see https://guides.library.harvard.edu/c.php?g=877385&p=6301312
Digital Public Library of America
Contains millions of items - photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more—from libraries, archives, and museums around the United States. Users can browse and search the DPLA’s collections by timeline, map, format, and topic; save items to customized lists; and share their lists with others.

New York Area Archives and Special Collections

This is a very short list of archival repositories that are close to Barnard's campus or available online. For more help locating archival collections, navigating finding aids and scheduling research appointments with other archivists, or for an introduction to archival research, or schedule a research consultation. You can also use the ArchiveGrid to search across finding aids in over 1,000 archival repositories.

Barnard Archives Digital Collections
You can access the digital collections of Barnard Archives here. Our Digital Collections feature a small fraction of our collections, including the yearbook, the Barnard Bulletin, student publications, and some photographs, with more added daily.
Archives at the Columbia Libraries
Search in CLIO over the finding aids of six different archival repositories at Columbia.
Brooklyn Historical Society
Brooklyn Historical Society collects, preserves, and makes accessible the world’s most comprehensive collection of materials related to Brooklyn’s history and culture. The collections foster new and cutting-edge scholarship; support public learning and research; and enrich BHS’s exhibitions, educational activities, and public programming.
Interference Archive
The mission of Interference Archive is to explore the relationship between cultural production and social movements. This work manifests in an open stacks archival collection, publications, a study center, and public programs including exhibitions, workshops, talks, and screenings, all of which encourage critical and creative engagement with the rich history of social movements. The archive contains many kinds of objects that are created as part of social movements by the participants themselves: posters, flyers, publications, photographs, books, T-shirts and buttons, moving images, audio recordings, and other materials.
Lesbian Herstory Archive
The Lesbian Herstory Archives is home to the world's largest collection of materials by and about lesbians and their communities. The collection includes digital images of ACT UP demonstrations and related ephemera.
New York Historical Society: Digital Collections
Created as part of the library, this digital collection represents a small portion of NYHS' archival and photographic holdings. You can search the entire holdings of NYHS' library through their catalog.
NYPL Archives and Manuscripts
Search over the New York Public Library's many different archival repositories, including the the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the general Manuscripts & Archives Division.
NYU Archival Collections + Brooklyn Historical Society + New-York Historical Society
Search across the finding aids of the various archival repositories at NYU (including the Fales Library and its Downtown Collection and the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives) as well as archival holdings at Brooklyn Historical and New-York Historical.
National Archives at New York City
Holds records of federal courts and agencies in New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Municipal Archives holds the historical records of the New York City government and agencies.

Historical Newspapers

This is a selection of databases that contain historical news content. The date ranges can vary from each database and even each paper. Note that the auto-citation can be a bit odd for some of these, as many historical newspapers do not have "authors" listed. Email me with questions!

Need more news? Check out other databases that contain news sources, and use the filters on the left hand side to find ones from the time and place you need.

Ad*Access
Presents images and database information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. Concentrates on five main subject areas: radio, television, transportation, beauty and hygiene, and World War II.
African American Historical Serials Collection
African American periodicals, annuals and reports published from 1829-1922 including materials from African American religious organizations and social service agencies.
African American Newspapers, 1827-1998
A compilation of African American newspapers taken from the America's historical newspapers collection.
Africa's Historical Newspapers
Searchable collection of historical African newspapers. Includes newspapers published between 1800 and 1922
Alternative Press Index
More than 300 alternative, radical, and left journals, newspapers, and magazines and includes selected abstracts from research journals. Indexes journals covering cultural, economic, political, and social change. Coverage is international and interdisciplinary.
America's Historical Newspapers
For searching and browsing American newspapers published in three centuries, America's Historical Newspapers is the most comprehensive online resource available. Continually expanding, it offers searchable digital facsimiles of thousands of titles from all 50 states. With eyewitness reporting, editorials, letters, advertisements, obituaries and much more, this acclaimed collection uniquely chronicles the evolution of American culture and daily life from 1690 to the recent past. America's Historical Newspapers features Early American Newspapers, 1690-1922; 20th-Century American Newspapers, Series 1-3; and American Ethnic Newspapers. The latter includes African American Newspapers, 1827-1998, Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980; and Ethnic American Newspapers from the Balch Collection, 1799-1971.
American Indian Newspapers
Presents the publications of a range of communities, with an extensive list of periodicals produced in the United States and British Columbia, including Alaska, Arizona, California, Nevada and Oklahoma, from 1828 to 2016.
British Library newspapers
Sourced from the extensive holdings of the British Library, British Library Newspapers delivers a wide range of irreplaceable local and regional voices to reflect the social, political, and cultural events of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. These newspapers, emerging during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a crucial channel of information in towns and major cities, provide researchers with a unique, first-hand perspective on history. With more than 160 newspaper titles, the series is comprised of approximately 5.5 million pages of historic content, from articles to advertisements. This collection illuminates diverse and distinct regional attitudes, cultures, and vernaculars, providing an alternative viewpoint to the London-centric national press over a period of more than 200 years.
Ethnic NewsWatch
Full text articles from newspapers and periodicals published by the ethnic, minority and native press in the U.S. Coverage is from 1960 to date.
Foreign Relations between Latin America and the Caribbean States
Organized by country, this collection covers a wide range of viewpoints on political, social, and economic issues. It sheds light on the foreign relations interactions between Central American and South American countries. In the Caribbean, Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic are represented. This collection includes cables, memoranda, correspondence, reports and analyzes, and treaties.
Gale Primary Sources Newspapers
Gale primary sources Newspapers delivers the definitive cross-searching experience for exploring Gale's range of historical newspaper and collections. Users can simultaneously search or browse across multiple products owned by their institution, including: 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers; British Library Newspapers; 19th Century U.S. Newspapers; 19th Century UK Periodicals; American Historical Periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society; Daily Mail Historical Archive; Financial Times Historical Archives, Liberty Magazine Historical Archive; Picture Post Historical Archive; and many others.
Nexis Uni
An interdisciplinary, full-text database of over 18,000 sources including newspapers, journals, wire services, newsletters, company reports and SEC filings, case law, government documents, transcripts of broadcasts, and selected reference works.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers
Full-text and full-image articles from major American newspapers: Atlanta Constitution, Baltimore Sun (1837-1985), Boston Globe, Call and Post (1934-1991), Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor (1908-1997), Irish Times (1859-2009), Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Norfolk Journal and Guide (1921-2003), Philadelphia Tribune (1912-2001), San Francisco Chronicle (1865-1922), Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Scotsman (1817-1950). Every page in PDF files.
Television News Archive
Searchable archive of abstracts of news broadcasts from 1968 to present (ABC, CBS, NBC), 1995 to present (CNN), selected content from PBS and FOX News. Video content from CNN viewable with RealOne media player.
World Newspaper Archive
Searchable collection of historical African, Latin American, and South Asian newspapers from around the world from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Oral Histories

According to the Oral History Association's website, "Oral history is a field of study and a method of gathering, preserving and interpreting the voices and memories of people, communities, and participants in past events." Oral history is both the oldest type of historical documentation and one of the most modern, initiated with reel-to-reel recorders at Columbia University in the 1940s and now taking advantage of 21st-century digital technologies.

This is a small collection of websites with oral histories. Not all will be digitized or even transcribed.

Berkeley Oral History Center
The Oral History Center contains 4,000 interviews on almost every topic imaginable. The vast majority of these interviews have been transcribed and made available online.
ACT UP Oral History Project
The ACT UP Oral History Project is a collection of interviews with surviving members of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, New York. The project is coordinated by Jim Hubbard and Sarah Schulman, with principal camera work by James Wentzy and additional camerawork on the West Coast by S. Leo Chiang and Tracy Wares.
Columbia University Center for Oral History Digital Collections
The Columbia Center for Oral History (CCOH) is the oldest and largest organized oral history program in the world. The Oral History Archives is one of the largest oral history collections in the United States. Here you can find the interviews that have are available online.
Library of Congress Oral Histories
Digital collections with oral histories available online from the Library of Congress
New York Public Library Community Oral History Project
The New York Public Library's Community Oral History Project was an initiative at NYPL branches that aims to document, preserve, and celebrate the rich history of the city's unique communities by collecting the stories of people who have experienced it firsthand.
Southern Oral History Archive
Provides online access to audio of interviews with a variety of individuals who have lived in the US South. This resource also includes the transcripts of interviews and allows you to browse to specific occupations, and ethnicity or search by keyword.

The HistoryMakers
The HistoryMakers is a national 501 (c)(3) non-profit video oral history archive headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The HistoryMakers is dedicated to preserving African American history as the missing link in American history. Focused on American history, oral history and education in general and more specifically on African American history, education, music, law, the arts, science, technology, media, medicine, entertainment, fashion&beauty, business, the military, politics and sports, The History Makers is a combination archive, library, museum, stock footage collection, on-line educator and educational PBS/TV programming. Its topics include but are not limited to African American organizations and associations, slavery, reconstruction, the labor movement, the civil rights movement and black authors.

History

Finding Primary Resources in CLIO

Check out the Archival Research Guide!

History Librarian

Historical Primary Resource Databases

New York Area Archives and Special Collections

Historical Newspapers

Oral Histories