Research Guides: Finding Primary Sources: Web Resources

About Web Resources for Primary Sources

There are many digital library projects accessible online. The United States and Western Europe have particularly strong digital resources. A selection of sites are included on the following tabs to give an idea of the breadth of materials available.

Internet History Source-book Project
A series of history primary sourcebooks by time period and region intended to serve the needs of teachers and students in college survey courses.
UNESCO Archives Portal Primary Sources Online
Provides links to texts from all over the world.
Online Books Page
A website from the University of Pennsylvania that facilitates access to books that are freely readable over the Internet. It also aims to encourage the development of such online books, for the benefit and edification of all.

African History Source-book
Africa South of the Sahara
A guide from Stanford University providing links to primary sources on Africa.

East Asian History Source-book
Indian History Source-book
E-Asia
A collection of full-text documents and e-books about East Asian topics.

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.
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.

EuroDocs: Primary Historical Documents from Western Europe
Links connect to Western European (mainly primary) historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. They shed light on key historical happenings within the respective countries (and within the broadest sense of political, economic, social and cultural history). The order of documents is chronological wherever possible.
ARTFL Project
A collection of online texts, bibliographies and databases intended to encourage research in French language and literature. Also includes select texts in other languages.
Gallica
The digital library of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Includes texts from the middle ages through the 19th-century.

Internet Modern History Source-book
Latin American Network Information Center
A portal to Latin American Studies websites.

American Memory
A project of the Library of Congress providing over 7 million digital items.
Guide to Online Collections, Library and Archives Canada
Making of America
A digital library of primary sources in 19th century American social history. A collaborative project beginning with the libraries of Cornell University and the University of Michigan.

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.

Historical Records
A section of the Oregon History Project from the Oregon Historical Society.
more...less...
http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/index.cfm
Oregon State Archives
Provides a variety of digital records including local government records, genealogy sources and web exhibits and projects.
Oregon State University Archives
Accesses several collections including the Braceros in Oregon photo collection, Linus Pauling Research Notebooks and Linus Pauling & the Race for DNA.
SODA: Southern Oregon Digital Archive
A digital library primarily from the Southern Oregon University Library's collections of federal, state, and county publications concentrating on two collections of regional materials pertaining to the Southern Oregon Bioregion and the First Nations/Tribal Collection.