A-Z Databases

Find the best library databases for your research.

40 Databases Found for:Primary Sources | Archives

All Databases

A

  • Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA)
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
Contains more than 1,000 fully searchable printed works from the beginning of Jim Crow to post-World War I. These works provide insights into African American culture and life during this period of segregation and disenfranchisement and include such topics as African American identity, relationships with peoples of other nations, and literature.
  • Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA)
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
Contains nearly 1,400 fully searchable printed works from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of Jim Crow. It includes documents related to African Americans and citizenship, voting rights, literacy, land rights, employment, and more, including the gaps between written law and practice.
  • Contains Newspapers
  • Open Access
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
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.
Alternate Name(s):LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940
The Archives of Sexuality and Gender program provides a robust and significant collection of primary sources for the historical study of sex, sexuality, and gender. With material dating back to the sixteenth century, researchers and scholars can examine how sexual norms have changed over time, health and hygiene, the development of sex education, the rise of sexology, changing gender roles, social movements and activism, erotica, and many other interesting topical areas.

B

  • Open Access
  • Government Resources
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
This website contains approximately 1,600 documents focused on six different phases of Black Freedom: Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860), The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era (1861-1877), Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression (1878-1932), The New Deal and World War II (1933-1945), The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (1946-1975), The Contemporary Era (1976-2000)
  • Contains Newspapers
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources

.

Comprehensive coverage of the African American experience from earliest times to today. Sourced from nearly 19,000 American and global newspapers from 1704 to the present, including over 400 African American newspapers. Provides full-text searching as well as access to content by Topic, Event, and Eras in African American History. Updated daily.

  • Contains Streaming
  • Contains Newspapers
  • Magazine
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
Black Thought and Culture is a landmark electronic collection of approximately 100,000 pages of non-fiction writings by major American black leaders—teachers, artists, politicians, religious leaders, athletes, war veterans, entertainers, and other figures—covering 250 years of history. In addition to the most familiar works, Black Thought and Culture presents a great deal of previously inaccessible material, including letters, speeches, prefatory essays, political leaflets, interviews, periodicals, and trial transcripts. The ideas of over 1,000 authors present an evolving and complex view of what it is to be black in America.

C

  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
Colonial State Papers provides users with access to primary source documents from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The earliest English settlements in North America, encounters with Native Americans, piracy in the Atlantic and Caribbean, the trade in slaves and English conflicts with the Spanish and French are all covered in this database.

D

  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
ProQuest, in partnership with The National Security Archive produce the Digital National Security Archive, the most comprehensive collection available of significant primary documents central to U.S. foreign and military policy since 1945. Collections cover the most critical world events, countries, and U.S. policy decisions from post-World War II through the 21st century, providing unparalleled access to the defining international strategies of our time with more than 150,000 indexed, declassified government documents; many are published now for the first time.
  • Government Resources
  • Contains Primary Sources
Documents on British Policy Overseas (DBPO) is a fully searchable collection of primary source documents from Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), shedding light on diplomatic history throughout the 20th C. It is based on three print series which form a record of British peacetime diplomacy since the end of the 19th C: British Documents on the Origins of the War 1898-1914, Documents on British Foreign Policy 1918-1939 and Documents on British Policy Overseas. DBPO is produced in collaboration between ProQuest and the FCO.

New material is added to DBPO as it is released by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

E

  • Contains Streaming
  • Open Access
  • Website
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
EuroDocs is a collection of sources that connect to European primary historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. It also contains video or sound files, maps, photographs or other imagery, databases, and other documentation. The sources cover a broad range of historical happenings (political, economic, social and cultural), from prehistoric times to the present.

F

  • Contains Streaming
  • Contains Newspapers
  • Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA)
  • Contains Primary Sources
Throughout modern history, cameras have recorded public events, wars, cultural phenomena, and government programs. This collection is a treasure trove of archival and historical films from multiple sources.

G

  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
In the late 1800's, Dutch physician and feminist Aletta Jacobs and her husband C.V. Gerritsen began collecting books, pamphlets and periodicals reflecting the evolution of a feminist consciousness and the movement for women's rights. By the time their successors finished their work in 1945, the Gerritsen Collection was the greatest single source for the study of women's history in the world, with materials spanning four centuries and 15 languages. The broad scope of the collection allows scholars to trace the evolution of feminism within a single country, as well as the impact of one country's movement on those of the others. In many cases, it also provides easy access to primary sources otherwise available only in a few rare book rooms.

H

  • Government Resources
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
Going in chronological order, the first module in this category are the papers of one of the most prolific inventors in American History, Thomas A. Edison Papers. The other modules in this category consist of immigration records to the United States during the massive immigration wave from 1880-1930; legal collections from the Harvard Law School Library featuring the papers of three Supreme Court Justices, the first Black federal judge, and one of the most infamous criminal cases of the 20th century; papers of the Progressive leader Robert M. La Follette; records from the Franklin D. Roosevelt White House and other federal agencies on the New Deal and World War II; FBI Files on radical politics; records of the Truman and Eisenhower Presidencies; records of Students for a Democratic Society, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and other anti-Vietnam War organizations; and records on American Politics from the beginning of the Kennedy administration through the Nixon Administration.
  • Contains Newspapers
  • Government Resources
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
ProQuest History Vault's coverage of the Black Freedom Struggle offers the opportunity to study the most well-known and also unheralded events of the Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century from the perspective of the men, women, and sometimes even children who waged one of the most inspiring social movements in American history. This category consists of the NAACP Papers and federal government records, organizational records, and personal papers regarding the Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century. The NAACP Papers collection consists of 6 modules. The NAACP Papers collections contains internal memos, legal briefings, and direct action summaries from national, legal, and branch offices throughout the country. It charts the NAACP's work and delivers a first-hand view into crucial issues. With a timeline that runs from 1909 to 1972, the NAACP Papers document the realities of segregation in the early 20th century to the triumphs of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and beyond. The Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century consists of four modules: two modules of Federal Government Records, and two modules of Organizational Records and Personal Papers, offering unique documentation and a variety of perspectives on the 20th century fight for freedom. Major collections in these modules include Civil Rights records from the Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush presidencies; the Martin Luther King FBI File and FBI Files on locations of major civil rights demonstrations like Montgomery and Selma, Alabama or St. Augustine, Florida; and the records of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). This category also includes the records of the African American Police League.
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
This module contains several collections focusing on the interaction between American Indians and the U.S. government in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Notable collections in this module from the 19th Century focus on Indian Removal from 1832-1840, the U.S. Army and American Indians in the years from the 1850s-1890s, including detailed coverage of Indian Wars. The featured collections on the 20th Century are Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and records from the Major Council Meetings of American Indian Tribes.
  • Government Resources
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
This category consists of nine modules: Slavery and the Law; Slavery in Antebellum Southern Industries; records focused on the Slave trade and other legal issues pertaining to slavery; four modules of Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantation Records; a module on the Civil War entitled "Confederate Military Manuscripts and Records of Union Generals and the Union Army"; and Reconstruction and Military Government after the Civil War. Slavery and the Law features petitions on race, slavery, and free blacks that were submitted to state legislatures and county courthouses between 1775 and 1867. Southern Plantation Records document the far-reaching impact of plantations on both the American South and the nation. Plantation records are both business records and personal papers because the plantation was both the business and the home for plantation owners. The Confederate Military Manuscripts module brings together unique collections that are being digitized for the first time. Reconstruction and Military Government after the Civil War features correspondence of the U.S. Army's Office of Civil Affairs.
  • Contains Streaming
  • Contains Newspapers
  • Government Resources
  • Magazine
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources

.

Primary sources are critical for teaching novice researchers to think like historians, and to support advanced scholars with new insights and discoveries in their fields. ProQuest’s History Vault spans over 21 million pages of digitized original documents, collected in partnership with renowned archival institutions. These materials provide students and researchers with a dynamic first-hand look at social movements and other pivotal moments in U.S. history to support topics such as African American studies, women’s studies, history, political science, military and diplomatic history, immigration, and more.

I

  • Contains Newspapers
  • Open Access
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
Independent Voices is an open access 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.
  • Government Resources
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
Indian Claims Insight provides researchers with the opportunity to understand and analyze Native American migration and resettlement throughout U.S. history, as well as U.S. Government Indian removal policies and subsequent actions to address Native American claims. Content includes decisions, transcripts, docket books, journals of the Indian Claims Commission (a judicial panel for relations between the U.S. Government and Native American tribes), and related statutes and congressional publications.
  • Open Access
  • Website
  • Contains Primary Sources
The Internet History Sourcebooks Project is a broad primary source collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts with information ranging from ancient and medieval history to LGBT and women's history.

J

JSTOR
Featured
  • Contains Full Text Journal Articles
  • Contains Ebooks
  • Contains Primary Sources
Featured
  • Contains Full Text Journal Articles
  • Contains Ebooks
  • Contains Primary Sources

.

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. It provides access to more than 12 million academic journal articles, books, and primary sources in 75 disciplines.

L

Books, periodicals, and archival materials documenting LGBT political, social and cultural movements throughout the twentieth century and into the present day.

N

  • Contains Newspapers
  • Magazine
  • Contains Primary Sources
An archival collection comprising the backfiles of 15 major magazines (including the Newsweek archive), spanning areas including current events, international relations, and public policy. These titles offer multiple perspectives on the contemporary contexts of the major events, trends, and interests in these fields throughout the twentieth century. The collection will provide valuable primary source content for researchers in fields ranging from history and political science, through to law and economics.

P

  • Government Resources
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
ProQuest Congressional allows you to explore Congress in action with the most comprehensive online resource available for congressional publications and legislative research. You can perform in-depth research in public policy, historical, and legal areas of interest

R

  • Magazine
  • Contains Primary Sources
A searchable archive of magazines devoted to religious topics, spanning 19th-21st centuries. The publications were originally written by/for a wider populace rather than academic/cultural elites and offer insights into, for example, the influence of belief systems on public life, the history of popular religious movements and the means used by religions to gain adherents and communicate their ideologies. A wide variety of religions and denominations are represented, allowing for comparative studies of religions during this period.
  • Contains Newspapers
  • Open Access
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
The thematic collections from Reveal Digital are sourced from a wide array of libraries, museums, historical societies, and individual collectors. Reveal Digital curates the content in collaboration with an editorial board of library leaders and provides a crowd-publishing model in which libraries pool funds to develop the collections. The results are open access primary source collections of great value to scholars and researchers.
  • Contains Streaming
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
Revolution and Protest Online is a research and learning database providing in one place comprehensive, comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of political processes through the lens of revolutions, protests, resistance and social movements. This easily searchable collection examines the most studied and important events and themes related to revolution and protest from the 18th century through the 21st century.

S

  • Government Resources
  • Data
  • Contains Primary Sources
The Statistical Abstract of the United States is a comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States. Online it is 1400+ individually indexed tables with attached spreadsheets. Use the Abstract as a convenient volume for statistical reference, and as a guide to sources of more information both in print and on the Web.
  • Contains Newspapers
  • Open Access
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
“There have been student protests in the United States for nearly as long as there have been students.” So write the curators of the Interference Archive’s exhibit, Walkout: A Brief History of Student Organizing. Reveal Digital’s Student Activism collection aims to provide access to unique, yet essential, primary sources documenting the deep and broad history of student organizing in the United States.

T

  • Government Resources
  • Contains Primary Sources
The Annual Register is a year-by-year record of British and world events, published annually since 1758. This classic reference work provides historians and students with information on the major and minor events of the past 250+ years, with historical context and perspective and a mass of biographical information. The Annual Register also provides the student, teacher, and researcher with key insights into contemporary 18th and 19th century attitudes towards the political and social events, issues, developments, and trials of the time.

Coverage: 1758 - current
  • Open Access
  • Website
  • Contains Primary Sources
The Avalon Project is a collection of primary historical documents (mainly pertaining to legal and diplomatic history) from 4000 BCE to the present. Provided by the Yale Law School.
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
The Cecil Papers is a major collection of early-modern historical documents from the reigns of Elizabethan I and James I/VI. More than 150,000 pages have been digitised in full colour to create a definitive online archive of almost 30,000 manuscript documents written by some of the most significant figures of Elizabethan and Jacobean history. These are accompanied by the complete Calendar of the Cecil Papers, featuring summaries and/or transcripts of many documents and two eighteenth-century volumes of selected transcriptions.
  • Contains Newspapers
  • Government Resources
  • Data
  • Contains Primary Sources
Trends and Policy: U.S. Environment merges content from a variety of sources and presents
them in a unique interface designed to connect various environmental policies of the United States to their trending results. Included in this collection are all environment-related public laws and hearings, Legislative branch reports, Executive branch reports and data, press releases, and present-day and historical news articles.
  • Contains Newspapers
  • Government Resources
  • Contains Primary Sources
Trends and Policy: U.S. Healthcare merges content from a variety of sources and presents
them in a unique interface designed to connect various healthcare policies of the United States to their trending results. This resource includes timelines putting the history of healthcare policy in chronological context, contextual topic pages explaining complex healthcare policy issues, all major healthcare related public laws and Congressional hearings, legislative and executive branch reports, and carefully curated statistical data series.

U

  • Government Resources
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
House of Commons Parliamentary Papers are foremost among the richest and most detailed primary sources for the past three centuries, for Britain, its colonies and the wider world. As such, they constitute a major part of the world’s historical record. Parliamentary Papers influenced public opinion and social and political philosophy and provided a forum for the ideas of thinkers of the day.

V

  • Contains Newspapers
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
Facsimile full text of newspaper articles from Virginia towns and cities from early 1700s through 1882. This databases includes Virginia Newspapers published during the Civil War.

W

  • Magazine
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
An archival research resource comprising the backfiles of leading women's interest consumer magazines. Issues are scanned in high-resolution color and feature detailed article-level indexing. Coverage ranges from the late-19th century through to 2005 and these key primary sources permit the examination of the events, trends, and attitudes of this period. Among the research fields served by this material are gender studies, social history, economics/marketing, media, fashion, politics, and popular culture.
  • Contains Streaming
  • Contains Newspapers
  • Government Resources
  • Contains Full Text Journal Articles
  • Contains Ebooks
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
The World Digital Library (WDL) makes it possible to discover, study, and enjoy cultural treasures and significant historical documents on one site, in a variety of ways. Content on the WDL includes books, manuscripts, maps, newspapers, journals, prints and photographs, sound recordings, and films. The WDL is an international collaboration, led by the Library of Congress, with the support of UNESCO., and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world.

#

  • Contains Newspapers
  • Contains Images
  • Contains Primary Sources
Alternate Name(s):Nineteenth Century US Newspapers
19th Century U.S. Newspapers provides access to primary source newspaper content from the 19th century, featuring full-text content and images from numerous newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S. The collection encompasses the entire 19th century, with an emphasis on such topics as the American Civil War, African-American culture and history, Western migration and Antebellum-era life, among other subjects.
title
Loading...