History

Primary sources are original written or physical items created in the time period being studied. Historians use primary sources as the evidence about the past from which they build their historical scholarship. The book or article written by the historian is the secondary source which has been based on analysis of primary sources.

Examples of Primary Sources are:

• Artifacts
• Ephemera (theatre programs, leaflets, posters, broadsides, etc.)  
• Government or Institutional Records
• Speeches
• Photographs
• Diaries
• Maps
• Correspondence
• Original Works of Art (plays, manuscripts, paintings, musical compositions, etc.)
• Personal records
• Newspaper or Magazine articles published at the time under question

Learn more about Primary Sources in the library databases in our guide.

The links below are a sampling, and by no means exhaustive list, of online resources which provide access to primary source documents.

• British History Online
• Civil Rights Digital Library
• Dying Speeches and Bloody Murders: Crime Broadsides (Harvard Law Schools Library) 
• Fashion Plate Collection (University of Washington Libraries)
• Florida Memory 
• Internet Ancient History Sourcebook (Fordham University)
• HathiTrust Digital Library
• Internet Medieval Sourcebook
• Internet Modern History Sourcebook
• Medieval Digital Resources (MDR)
• Library of Congress
  • American Memory
  • Digital Collections
  • Primary Source Sets
  • Primary Source Sets by State
• National Archives
• Nuremberg Trials Project: A Digital Document Collection
• Perseus Digital Library (Tufts University)
• PALMM - Publication of Archival, Library, & Museum Materials  (State University Libraries of Florida)
• Vintage Ad Browser