Research Guides @ Fordham: American History: Primary Sources

Tips for Finding Primary Sources

Learn about finding, evaluating, and using primary sources through the guide "Primary Sources on the Web: Finding, Evaluating, Using" by the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a subset of the American Library Association (ALA).

Primary Sources on the Web: Finding, Evaluating, Using

Find primary sources in the Library Catalog by searching for the topic and the type of resource you're interested in:

[Research interest or person] - correspondence or diaries

Examples:
Civil War - sources
Immigrants - personal narratives
Women's suffrage - diaries
Eleanor Roosevelt - letters

Sources goes with topics; Archives goes with people and organizations. To be safe, try this: [research interest] - sources or archives

(From the book Magic Search: Getting the Best Results from your Catalog and Beyond. Kornegay, R.S., et al. (2009), Chicago: American Library Association.)

Historic Audio Sources

Music and Dance Online: American Music - Access Ends 7/31/25
Provides a suite of online audio recordings to support the teaching of American musical traditions including country, folk, jazz, bluegrass, western, old time, American Indian, blues, gospel, R&B and more.
National Jukebox
Historical recordings from the Library of Congress including songs and the spoken word.

Recommended Primary Source Resources

Gale Primary Sources: Archives Unbound
Over 400 topically-focused digital collections of historical content arranged into sixteen subject areas.
“Gale Research Complete: Archives Unbound Guide”. https://gale.libguides.com/ArchivesUnbound_GRC
Gale Primary Sources Platform Search (Not Included in GRC)
Gale's primary sources platform for cross-searching.
History Commons (formerly Accessible Archives)
Formerly Accessible Archives. Primary source materials from books, newspapers and periodicals with views of American history and culture during the 19th century. Eyewitness accounts of historical events, descriptions of daily life, advertisements, and genealogical records are available.
Nineteenth Century Index - Access Ends 7/31/25
Full text of over 1.7 million books, documents and articles from thousands of journals and newspapers.

Civil Rights Digital Library
Compilation of digitized primary source material including film archive from two Georgia television stations, oral histories, documents and photographs.
Library of Congress Digital Collections
Library of Congress Primary Source Sets from the Classroom Materials Collection
Library of Congress Primary Source Sets From the Online Collections
NARA - National Archives and Records Administration
Includes several online exhibits and catalog of digitized documents and photographs.
National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections
Provided by the Library of Congress, NUCMC is a searchable catalog of manuscript collections in WorldCat.
Newberry Library Digital Collections: Everett D. Graff Collection of Americana
Documents America's westward expansion; includes many primary sources.
Shapell Manuscript Foundation
"The Shapell Manuscript Foundation has an extensive collection of primary sources, such as letters, documents, photographs, and other artifacts. [They] specialize in manuscripts relating to American History, including the Civil War, American Presidents, etc."
Smithsonian Collections
Digital images of the Smithsonian's collections.

Making of America, books
Digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection includes the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology.
PEN America Digital Archive
Online archive of more than 1500 hours of audio and video recordings featuring the world’s foremost writers, intellectuals, and artists in candid and often heated discourse about the most relevant cultural and political issues of our times. Dates back to 1966.

Digital Historic Documents

[U.S.] Constitution Annotated: Analysis and Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution
From the Library of Congress.
Avalon Project
Full text of documents relating to the fields of history, law, politics, diplomacy, government and economics from the colonial era to the present.
A Century of Law Making
Full text documentary record of the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention and the first 42 Congresses of the United States (1774-1873) from the Law Library of Congress.
Foreign Relations of the United States
Search within the UWM Digital Collection for the Foreign Relations of the United States subset.
Official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions that have been declassified and edited for publication. The series is produced by the State Department's Office of the Historian. There are two cumulative indexes covering 1861-1899 and 1900-1918.
Historic Government Publications from World War II: a Digital Library.
Collection of over 200 WWII era pamphlets mostly dealing with the home front, civil defence and war work.

Original Sources (formerly Omega Sources)
Primary sources and other documents from discovery and colonization to the present.
READING EPUB FILES
When opening an ePub file, make sure to choose “save file”
Remember the file name and where it is saved on your computer. You will need to know this when it is time to read the file in the EPUBReader extension.

Add the CHROME EPUBReader browser extension:
menu icon (3 dots) > more tools > extensions > get more extensions > search for EPUBReader > add to chrome > close welcome box.
The EPUBReader icon should be automatically added to your toolbar.

Add the Firefox browser extension:
menu icon (3 lines) > add-ons > get add-ons > see more add-ons > search for EPUBReader > add to firefox > close the welcome box
The EPUBReader icon should be automatically added to your toolbar.

TO READ AN EPUB FILE:
Click on the EPUBReader icon in your Chrome or Firefox toolbar to open it > click on the folder icon at the top of the page and select the previously saved ePub file.
NOTE: Your file will not be saved in the Reader; you will have to open the file each time you want to read it.

Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project.
Collection of primary sources relating to the 1692 trials and a new transcription of the court records. Digital Humanities at the University of Virginia (DH@UVA).
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
Collection of materials on ships, crews, slaves and places of embarkation and landing.
Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930
Digital collection from Harvard documenting immigration to the U.S. Primarily focusing on the 19th century, it includes books, pamphlets, photographs and manuscript material.

Digital Collections of Early Books & Journals

American Periodicals (ProQuest)
Full text of over 1,100 journals and magazines both scholarly and popular published from 1740 to 1900.
Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans Digital Edition
Full texts of all the books published in America from 1639 until 1800.
Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker
New interface 1/4/24. From Readex. Books, pamphlets, and broadsides published during the early 19th century from the bibliography by Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online
Full texts of over 180,000 books published mostly in the UK from 1700 to 1799.
European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750
A comprehensive bibliography of printed works about the Americas written in Europe before 1750.

Digital Collections of Diaries, Letters, etc.

Influenza Encyclopedia: The American Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919
Collection of digitized primary source documents, images and narratives detailing the impact of the 1918-19 epidemic on 50 American cities.
Library of Congress Early Presidential Collections
View the presidential papers of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, and Calvin Coolidge.
American Journeys: Eyewitness Accounts of Early American Exploration and Settlement
Collection of first hand accounts of exploration from the Vikings to the 1800s.
American Notes: Travels in America, 1750-1920
Published narratives by Americans and visitors traveling in the colonies and U.S.
The Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project
From the University of North Carolina/Greensboro; searchable; includes diaries, letters, oral histories, photographs, posters, publications, and uniforms
Civil Rights Digital Library
Compilation of digitized primary source material including film archive from two Georgia television stations, oral histories, documents and photographs.
Diaries, Memorials, Personal Reminiscences of World War I
From Brigham Young Libraries
Discovering American Women's History Online
Digital collections of primary sources (photos, letters, diaries, artifacts, etc.) that document the history of women in the U.S. from the 1600's to the present.
Documenting the American South
Digitized primary source material (books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs) relating to southern history, literature and culture.

Making of America, journals and monographs (Cornell University)
Now hosted on Hathi Trust, the Cornell University Library Making of America Collection is a digital library documenting American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction.
Making of America, journals and monographs (University of Michigan)
Digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology.

Rosa Parks In Her Own Words
An exhibit from the Library of Congress.
American Presidency Project
A comprehensive collection of resources pertaining to the study of the presidency from UCSB.

American History: Primary Sources

What is a Primary Source?