Research Guides: HIST 201: Inventing America: Primary Sources

Primary Source Databases

American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals This link opens in a new window EBSCO partners with American Antiquarian Society (AAS), the premier library documenting the life of America's people from the Colonial Era through the Civil War and Reconstruction, to provide digital access to the most comprehensive collection of American periodicals published between 1684 and 1912.
American historical Periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society This link opens in a new window More than 200 years ago, the American Antiquarian Society was founded and has been recognized as a major source for U.S. primary sources published pre-1876, housing the single largest collection of Americana from the Colonial period into the twentieth-century. Now, Gale and the Society have entered an exclusive partnership to digitize the Society’s current and future periodical holdings. By including the Society’s holdings alongside our existing collections, Gale fulfills a core mission: to develop outstanding research collections for use by scholars and students in universities and libraries worldwide. Pairing the Society’s American periodical holdings with Gale’s pioneering primary source interrogation tools opens new research opportunities. Users will have new ways to explore and interact with this unrivaled collection of journals, periodicals, and magazines documenting the American people from the Colonial Era through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the twentieth century.
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.
Chronicling America : historic American newspapers This link opens in a new window Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1777-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
Documenting the American South : primary resources for the study of Southern history, literature and culture This link opens in a new window Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. DocSouth includes sixteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.
The University Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill sponsors Documenting the American South, and the texts and materials come primarily from its southern holdings. The UNC University Library is committed to the long-term availability of these collections and their online records. An editorial board guides development of this digital library.
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.
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.
Times digital archive This link opens in a new window The Times Digital Archive is an online, full-text facsimile of more than 200 years of The Times, one of the most highly regarded resources for eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century news coverage. This historical newspaper archive allows researchers an unparalleled opportunity to search and view the best-known and most cited newspaper in the world online in its original published context. Read by both world leaders and the general public, The Times has offered readers in-depth, award-winning, objective coverage of world events since its creation in 1785 and is the oldest daily newspaper in continuous publication. With over 12 million articles available, the archive supports research across multiple disciplines and areas of interest, including business, humanities, political science, and philosophy, along with coverage of all major international historical events.
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

Digital Collections

What are primary sources?

Primary sources are records of events as they are first described, usually by witnesses or by people who were involved in the event. Many primary sources were created at the time of the event, but can also include memoirs, oral interviews, or accounts that were recorded later.

Some examples of primary sources include:

Books, magazine and newspaper articles published at the time
Hand-written documents like diaries and journals
Maps
Laws & court cases
Speeches, interviews, letters
Memoirs and autobiographies
literary manuscripts
Records of government agencies
Records of organizations
Public opinion polls
Fiction from a particular time and place
Research data
Religious or philosophical texts
Artifacts of all kinds: physical objects, furniture, tools, clothing, etc.
Photographs, audio recordings, movies and videos
Art, including paintings, prints and other media