Databases and Web Sites
Primary sources are documents that were created by someone
who had direct personal knowledge of the events described. Depending
on circumstances, diaries, interviews, letters, memoirs, maps,
movies, photographs, sound recordings, and speeches may all
be considered primary sources. Many museums, libraries, and
commercial publishers make reproductions of primary sources
available online. Here is a selection of useful databases and
collections:
- American
Memory - Documents,
images, maps, movies, and sound recordings from the Library
of Congress.
- American
Presidency Project -
Archive of speeches, documents, and statistics.
- American
Rhetoric Online Speech Bank -
Text, audio, and video of public speeches.
- Avalon
Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy
- Documents in law, history, and diplomacy from 1600 to the
present.
- Core
Documents of U.S. Democracy - Key documents such
as the Federalist Papers and papers of the Constitutional
Convention.
- C-SPAN
- Current video and audio clips, plus historical archives
of political speeches and events.
- Documenting
the American South - Texts and oral histories
relating "Southern history, literature, and culture."
- EuroDocs
- Historic documents of Europe from antiquity to modern times.
- Internet
History Sourcebooks Project -
Links to transcriptions of primary sources documents.
- LexisNexis
Congressional - Congressional documents,
including floor speeches [more
details].
- New
York Public Library Picture Collections Online
- Historic photographs from the collections of the New York
Public Library.
- POTUS:
Presidents of the United States - Biographies
of each presidents with links to documents and papers.
- Portal
to Texas History -
Search for historical documents, images, and sound recordings.
- Public
Papers of the President
(1991 to present) - Messages, statements, and speeches.
- Vital
Speeches of the Day
(1934 to present) - Read the full text of famous speeches
[part of Academic Search Complete].
- Voices
from the Days of Slavery
- Listen to oral history interviews with former slaves from
the Archive of Folk Culture collections.
- WPA
Life Histories - Short
life histories of average Americans made for WPA programs
in 1936-1940.
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Books
To find primary sources in books, search for your topic combined
with one of these terms: sources, correspondence,
or personal narratives.
Examples of Book Searches:
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Comments or questions? Please Ask
a Librarian.
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