Finding Primary Sources - History: Reliable Online Sources

Includes documents that chronicle United States history from 1776 to 1965.

Collection of primary documents and speeches essential for the study of US History. Arranged chronologically: as of August 2004, from Columbus' journals to the report of the 9/11 Commission.

Includes documents from the New World through the 21st century.

Text of 47 treaties, speeches, historical accounts and governmental documents that trace U.S. history from the settling of the continent to the founding of the country to the Civil War and early twentieth-century international relations.

Eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later.

The Indiana University Archives and the Digital Library Program are now offering a site for the Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection, which features 14,500 color images of life in America between 1938 and 1969.

Transcripts of phone calls and radio transmissions, and copies of police reports released by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, under a federal order resulting from a lawsuit brought by the New York Times.

The video library records, indexes, and archives all C-SPAN programming for historical, educational, research, and archival uses. Every C-SPAN program aired since 1987, now totaling over 170,000 hours, is contained in the C-SPAN Archives.

Historical materials related to the culture of the southern and central Appalachian region. Material includes photographs, reformatted typed pages, published books, unpublished manuscripts, personal diaries and correspondence, journal and newspaper articles, musical recordings, oral history recordings and transcripts, and other related reproductions.

Search or browse full text sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the early 20th century: slave narratives, other first-person narratives, literature, life during the Civil War and African American churches.

Presents some of the most significant voices captured during the first fifty years of sound recording, 1877-1927: William Jennings Bryan, Eugene Debs, Thomas Edison, Samuel Gompers, William McKinley, William Taft, and Booker T. Washington.

Scanned -- and redacted -- images of FBI files of (in)famous individuals and groups.

Digital objects including images, podcasts, videos and blog postings of personal accounts from those affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Materials primarily from the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, which was the center of American eugenics research from 1910-1940.

A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. (Collaborative effort with the University of Michigan; see below.)

A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology.

Gateway to hundreds of digital collections about New York State's people, places, and institutions. NewYorkHeritage.org brings together freely accessible digital collections from libraries, museums and archives from all over the state.

30,000 images of New York City, costume, design, U.S. history, etc. from books, magazines and newspapers, as well as original photographs, prints and postcards, mostly created before 1923.

700,000 images digitized from The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more.

Offers access to 55,000 documents of the early War Department, many long thought irretrievable but now reconstructed through a multi-year research effort. Covers the history of the Early Republic, from the handling of Indian affairs, pensions and procurement to the nature of the first American citizens’ relationship with their new Federal government.

Presidential promotional and commemorative items dating from 1789 to 1980, with elections from 1832 to 1960 particularly well represented.

Collects, preserves, and presents the history of 9/11/01 and its aftermath. The Archive contains more than 150,000 digital items, including emails and other electronic communications; first-hand stories; and digital images.

An accumulation of coverage by the Times from 2001 to the present, including retrospectives and resources.

A “library of news coverage of the events of 9/11/2001 and their aftermath as presented by U.S. and international broadcasters. A resource for scholars, journalists, and the public, it presents one week of news broadcasts for study, research and analysis.”

Monographs and government documents published in the United States, Spain, and the Philippines between 1870 and 1925. The primary focus of the material is the Spanish-American war and subsequent American governance (approximately 1898-1910).