Research Guides: HIST 290: The Historians Craft: Priamary Resources

Primary Resources Databases

19th Century British Pamphlets This link opens in a new window 19th Century British Pamphlets, created by Research Libraries UK (RLUK), contains the most significant British pamphlets from the 19th century held in research libraries in the United Kingdom. The digitization of more than 26,000 pamphlets from collections in seven universities in the UK spanning more than one million pages brings together a corpus of primary sources for the study of sociopolitical and economic factors impacting 19th-century Britain.
African American Newspapers This link opens in a new window This enormous collection of African American newspapers contains a wealth of information about cultural life and history during the 1800s and is rich with first-hand reports of the major events and issues of the day, including the Mexican War, Presidential and Congressional addresses, Congressional abstracts, business and commodity markets, the humanities, world travel and religion. The collection also provides a great number of early biographies, vital statistics, essays and editorials, poetry and prose, and advertisements all of which embody the African-American experience.
African Newspapers, Series 1 This link opens in a new window Provides access to almost 70 newspapers published between 1800 and 1922 in Sub-Saharan Africa. Content features English- and foreign-language titles from countries including Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
African Newspapers, Series 2 This link opens in a new window Provides access to 40 newspapers published in Africa during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Content features English- and foreign-language titles from countries including Algeria, Angola, Liberia, Madagascar, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, and Uganda.
American Periodicals This link opens in a new window Special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and historically significant periodicals, covering 1740-1900.
American Prison Newspapers, 1800-2020: Voices from the Inside This link opens in a new window On March 24, 1800, Forlorn Hope became the first newspaper published within a prison by an incarcerated person. In the intervening 200 years, over 450 prison newspapers have been published from U.S. prisons. Some, like the Angolite and the San Quentin News, are still being published today. American Prison Newspapers will bring together hundreds of these periodicals from across the country into one collection that will represent penal institutions of all kinds, with special attention paid to women's-only institutions. Development of the collection began in July 2020 and will continue through 2021, with new content added regularly.
American West This link opens in a new window Online access to the Graff Collection of Western Americana at the Newberry Library. Contains books, manuscripts, maps, engravings, and many other primary sources related to the U.S. West, covering topics such as Native Americans, the Gold Rush, fiction, outlaws, and conservation.
Archives of sexuality & gender This link opens in a new window If searches in this database retrieve incorrect results, clear cache/cookies to resolve the problem. Primary source documents from major international activist organizations and local grassroots organizations providing information on social, political, health and legal issues impacting LGBTQ communities. Includes often-excluded groups, even within the LGBTQ community, and enables users to draw new connections across the development of LGBTQ culture and activism.
Building Oregon This link opens in a new window Digital collection developed and maintained by the the UO Libraries, provides access to over 20,000 images and documents about the built environment of the Pacific Northwest with emphasis on Oregon.
Caribbean history and culture, 1535-1920 This link opens in a new window Created from the renowned holdings of the Library Company of Philadelphia, Caribbean History and Culture, 1535-1920, is the largest and most significant collection of its kind. More than 1,200 fully cataloged and searchable books, pamphlets, almanacs, broadsides and ephemera cover the history of this broad region from the 16th century to the early 20th century.
Caribbean newspapers, 1718-1876 This link opens in a new window Caribbean Newspapers, 1718-1876—the largest online collection of 18th- and 19th-century newspapers published in this region—will provide a comprehensive primary resource for studying the development of Western society and international relations within this important group of islands. This unique resource will prove essential for researching colonial history, the Atlantic slave trade, international commerce, New World slavery and U.S. relations with the region as far back as the early 18th century.
CRL library catalog This link opens in a new window CRL acquires and preserves newspapers, journals, documents, archives and other traditional and digital resources for research and teaching.
These resources are then made available to member institutions cooperatively, through interlibrary loan and electronic delivery. The UO Libraries is a member of the Center for Research Libraries.
Chicago Defender (1910-1975) This link opens in a new window Leading newspaper of the black community.
The newspaper was a proponent of The Great Migration, the move of over 1.5 million African-Americans from the segregated South to the industrial North from 1915 to 1925. It reported on the Red Summer race riots of 1919, and editorialized for anti-lynching legislation and the integration of blacks into the U.S. military.
Colonial Africa in official statistics, 1821-1953 This link opens in a new window These statistics cover the history of thirteen colonies across Africa. The date range of statistics for each colony depends on who ran it at the time. Most colonial statistics cover that colony's funds, population, names of its officers, public services, as well as countries each colony was trading with and what they bought or sold. Some topics, such as numbers of slaves and military spending, appear only during the time periods that they are pertinent.
Digital national security archive This link opens in a new window Collection of declassified US government documents. Includes primary documents, glossaries, chronologies, bibliographies, overviews, and photographs.
Documenting white supremacy and its opponents in the 1920s This link opens in a new window The goal of this project is to assemble and make fully-searchable a comprehensive collection of Klan and other white nationalist newspapers alongside newspapers published Catholic, African-American and Jewish organizations to counter the narrative of hate and bigotry. The collection contains national Klan publications (for example: the Imperial Night-Hawk and the Kourier) as well as regional and local Klan produced papers (i.e., Sgt. Dalton’s Weekly, Jayhawker American, and the Minnesota Fiery Cross). The collection will also include a set of papers sympathetic to the Klan (i.e., The Good Citizen and The Fellowship Forum) alongside anti-Klan publications (Tolerance, The Record, Our Sunday Visitor).
Early English Books Online This link opens in a new window Digitized facsimiles of all printed materials published in Great Britain between 1473 and 1700, and materials published elsewhere in the world in English during the same period. Includes searchable text from the Text Creation Project, Phase I.
Materials include books, tracts, pamphlets, advertisements, ballads, rhymes, and other ephemera. The database continues to develop, with over 100,000 records currently included and increasing capabilities for direct keyword searching of the texts.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window If searches in this database retrieve incorrect results, clear cache/cookies to resolve the problem. 18th century English-language publications in the humanities, arts, and sciences. Digitized copies of significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in Great Britain during the eighteenth century, along with thousands of important works from the Americas. ECCO includes a variety of materials from books and directories, Bibles, sheet music, sermons, advertisements, and other works by both well-known and lesser-known men and women writers.
Empire Online This link opens in a new window Spanning five centuries, and charting the rise and fall of empires around the world, Empire Online enables students and researchers to explore colonial history, politics, culture and society. With primary source material from American, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, German and British perspectives, Empire Online provides varying points-of-view for comparative research. Documents from Africa, India and North America are also featured.
Fuzoku Gaho This link opens in a new window The first issue of Fuzoku Gaho, released in 1889 by Toyodo publishing house and continued to be sold for 27 years until 1916, was the first graphic magazine produced in Japan, and is also known as a major journal source for the research of customs and social mores. The magazine contains a total of 518 issues covering content pertaining to social and cultural trends and conditions in the Edo, Meiji and Taisho periods, customs, history, literature, things/objects and affairs, geography (regional and world), war and disasters.
OCLC #555613084
Gale in Context. U.S. history This link opens in a new window If searches in this database retrieve incorrect results, clear cache/cookies to resolve the problem. Coverage - scholarly articles, primary sources, encyclopedia entries, audio, video, - of topics in U.S. History, from the arrival of Vikings to Vietnam, Watergate and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Gale primary sources This link opens in a new window If searches in this database retrieve incorrect results, clear cache/cookies to resolve the problem. Artemis Primary Sources allows researchers to search Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) and Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO) simultaneously.
Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980 This link opens in a new window Newspapers published between 1808 and 1980 that chronicle the daily life, cultural heritage and world views of Hispanic communities in the U.S.
Features Spanish-language newspapers and titles published bilingually in Spanish and English.
Hollywood, Censorship, and the Motion Picture Production Code, 1927-1968 This link opens in a new window The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Production Code Administration Files collection documents forty years of self-regulation and censorship in the motion picture industry. The Production Code was written in 1929 by Martin J. Quigley, an influential editor and publisher of motion picture trade periodicals, and Reverend Daniel A. Lord, a Jesuit advisor to Hollywood filmmakers. Officially accepted in 1930 by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), the precursor organization to the MPAA, the Production Code presented guidelines governing American movie production. The five hundred titles selected were chosen by the staff of the library’s Special Collections Department, with advice from film historian Leonard J. Leff.
Independent and revolutionary Mexican newspapers This link opens in a new window The Independent and Revolutionary Mexican Newspapers collection traces the evolution of Mexico during this pivotal period. Comprising over 1,000 titles from Mexico’s pre-independence, independence and revolutionary periods (1807-1929), the newspapers in this collection provide rare documentation of the dramatic events of this era and include coverage of Mexican partisan politics, yellow press, political and social satire, as well as local, regional, national and international news. Part of the Global Press Archive.
Independent Voices This link opens in a new window Independent Voices is a digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.
Indigenous peoples of North America This link opens in a new window If searches in this database retrieve incorrect results, clear cache/cookies to resolve the problem. Digitized primary sources covering the cultural, political and social history of Native Peoples from the 17th through the 20th centuries.
Late Qing and Republican-Era Chinese Newspapers This link opens in a new window The Late Qing and Republican-Era Chinese Newspapers collection provides researchers a richly comprehensive perspective on Chinese life, culture, and politics throughout the collapse of the Qing Dynasty, the years of provisional government and civil war, and the birth of the People’s Republic.
Latin American Newspapers, Series 1 This link opens in a new window Collection of historical Latin American newspapers.Includes newspapers published between 1805 and 1922 in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Guyana, Mexico, Peru, Trinidad and Venezuela.
Latin American Newspapers. Series 2 This link opens in a new window Additional coverage of newspapers from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba and Mexico. Includes countries not represented in Latin American Newspapers I, such as Bolivia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Belize.
Literaturnaia gazeta This link opens in a new window Coverage of the Russian Newspaper, Literaturnaia gazeta, 1929 -present. Presents articles on literary criticism, culture, economics, sociology, ethics, and daily life; excerpts from literary works, both prose and poetry; and information for discussion and debate.
London Low Life This link opens in a new window An extraordinary digital collection bringing to life the teeming streets of Victorian London, and inviting students and scholars to explore the gin palaces, brothels and East End slums of the nineteenth century’s greatest city. From salacious ‘swell’s guides’ to scandalous broadsides and subversive posters, the material sold and exchanged on London’s bustling thoroughfares offers an unparalleled insight into the dark underworld of the city. Children’s chapbooks, street cries, slang dictionaries and ballads were all part of a vibrant culture of street literature.
Los Angeles Times (1881-1997) This link opens in a new window Historical analysis of the development of California and the Pacific Rim with a focus on immigration issues, coverage of the early days of the film industry, and coverage of Native American culture and society.
Middle Eastern and North African Newspapers This link opens in a new window The Middle Eastern & North African Newspapers collection includes publications from across this dynamic region, providing unique insights into the history of individual countries, as well as broad viewpoints on key historic events from the late nineteenth century through the present. Key topics include the decline of colonialism, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Suez Crisis, the Cold War, the rise of the petroleum industry, twentieth-century pan-Arab movements, both World Wars, the establishment of the state of Israel, the Iran-Iraq War, and the recent Arab Spring. Content is predominantly in Arabic, but also includes key titles in English and French.
New York times (digital reproduction, 1851-2015) This link opens in a new window Digital reproduction of the NY Times, with full page and article images as well as searchable full text back to the first issue.
Nineteenth century U.S. newspapers This link opens in a new window If searches in this database retrieve incorrect results, clear cache/cookies to resolve the problem. Includes major newspapers as well as those published by African Americans, Native Americans, women's rights groups, labor groups, the Confederacy, and other groups and interests.
Oregon Digital This link opens in a new window Oregon Digital provides discovery of and access to unique digitized and born-digital materials, including photographs, articles, sheet music, manuscripts, ephemera, and more. Materials in the broad collection are contributed from the University of Oregon and Oregon State University.
Newspapers.com: University of Oregon (1851-1980) This link opens in a new window Provides access to a growing collection of historic newspapers published in Oregon. Access on campus and off-campus to current UO faculty students and staff.
Political Extremism and Radicalism This link opens in a new window If searches in this database retrieve incorrect results, clear cache/cookies to resolve the problem. Combines content on far-right and fascist movements, alongside significant coverage of radical left groups, allowing researchers to access material from both sides, and providing points for comparison.
Pravda This link opens in a new window Digital archive of this Russian and Soviet newspaper.
Russian Central Newspapers This link opens in a new window Coverage of national news, current events, economic developments and cultural events in Russia.
Official sources (Rossiiskaia gazeta, Krasnaia zvezda, ITAR-TASS), independent media and partisan publications are all represented on this database, thus offering a wide array of opinions and perspectives. Several English-language newspapers including the notable Moscow Times, widely read by the international community in the Russian capital, constitute an important part of the database.
Sabin Americana: history of the Americas, 1500-1926 This link opens in a new window If searches in this database retrieve incorrect results, clear cache/cookies to resolve the problem. Based on Joseph Sabin's bibliography. Contains works about the Americas published throughout the world from 1500 to the early 1900's. Includes books, pamphlets, serials, etc. providing original accounts of exploration, trade, colonialism, slavery and abolition, the western movement, Native Americans, military actions and more.
Sixties in America This link opens in a new window Surveys the events, people and culture of the 1960's in the United States. Provides in-depth coverage of all aspects of the three major events of the 1960's that give the decade its distinctive characterthe Civil Rights movement, the social revolution, and the Vietnam Warbut also surveys important developments in the arts, science and technology, business and the economy, government and politics, and gender issues.
South Asian Newspapers (Readex) This link opens in a new window Provides access to 19th and 20th century newspapers from South Asia. Featuring titles from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Vogue Archive This link opens in a new window Digitized, full-color images of every issue of Vogue magazine from 1892 to the present
Wan Qing qi kan quan wen shu ju ku (1833-1911) This link opens in a new window Covers almost the entire collection of periodicals published in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) with more than 280,000 pieces of literature.
Women and social movements in the United States 1600-2000 This link opens in a new window Primary sources dealing with U.S. women's history from 1600 to 2000

Primary Resources

What is a primary source?

Primary sources are documents, web pages, videos, etc., created by people or organizations directly involved in an issue or event. Primary sources are information before it has been analyzed by scholars, students, and others.

Some examples of primary sources:

diaries and letters
academic articles presenting original scientific research
news reports from the time of the event
literature (poems, novels, plays, etc.)
fine art (photographs, paintings, sculpture, pottery, music etc.)
official records from a government, judicial court, or company
oral histories
speeches
autobiographies