Research Guides: Primary Sources: Online Primary Documents

Mixed Collections

These collections offer a variety of types of primary sources (documents, photographs, videos, etc) for a wide range of time periods and areas of interest.

British Library Collection of primary and secondary sources
Digital Culture of Metropolitan New York Digital Culture of Metropolitan New York (DCMNY) provides online access to digital collections of libraries, archives, museums and historical societies located in and around New York City.
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) The Digital Public Library of America brings together photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more from America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available.
Early Modern Manuscripts and Archives Western manuscripts and archives from the years 1500 to 1800 from Oxford's Bodleian Library.
EuroDocs EuroDocs access to European primary historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. In addition you will find video or sound files, maps, photographs or other imagery, databases, and other documentation.
HathiTrust Digital Library HathiTrust is a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving 17+ million digitized items. HathiTrust offers reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. copyright law.
Internet Archive
Library of Congress Digital Collections Access online collections: view maps & photographs; read letters, diaries & newspapers; hear personal accounts of events; listen to sound recordings & watch historic films.

MasterFILE Premier This link opens in a new window Contains full text for more than 1,750 periodicals covering general reference, business, health, education, general science, multicultural issues and much more. This database also contains full text for nearly 500 reference books, 86,019 biographies, 105,787 primary source documents, and an Image Collection of 293,480 photos, maps & flags.

World Digital Library Links to over 5,000 primary documents and images from collections around the world. Sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Search by date, era, country, continent, topic, and type of resource.
Digital Collections of the Library of Virginia The Library of Virginia has digitized a wide variety of their collection such as county and city records, maps, state archive collections as well as curated collections related to the War of 1812 and the CIvil War.

These collections are a short list of examples of collections that focus on specialized areas of research. To find a digital collection relevant to your area of research, ask for help from a librarian.

19th century European-American views on Life in and the Peoples of the American West Collection of period books on Native Americans, the Indian wars of the late nineteenth century, life in the West and George Armstrong Custer.
Avalon Project (Yale University) 150 historical documents in the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government, from the Athenian Constitution to key documents of World War II and the Cold War.
Cornell University Witchcraft Collection Cornell’s Witchcraft Collection contains over 3,000 titles documenting the history of the Inquisition and the persecution of witchcraft, primarily in Europe.
Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture The Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture collects and creates electronic resources for study and research of the decorative arts, with a particular focus on Early America. Included are electronic texts and facsimiles, image databases, and Web resources.
Digital Library on American Slavery The Digital Library on American Slavery (DLAS) is an expanding resource compiling independent collections focused upon race and slavery in the American South.
Discovering American Women's History Online This database provides access to digital collections of primary sources (photos, letters, diaries, artifacts, etc.) that document the history of women in the United States.
Documenting the American South Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture.
Geography of Slavery in Virginia The Geography of Slavery in Virginia is a digital collection of advertisements for runaway and captured slaves and servants in 18th- and 19th-century Virginia newspapers.
London Lives 1690-1800 London Lives makes available, in a fully digitised and searchable form, a wide range of primary sources about eighteenth-century London, with a particular focus on plebeian Londoners.
North American Slave Narratives "North American Slave Narratives" collects books and articles that document the individual and collective story of Black people struggling for freedom and human rights in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries.
Slavery & Abolition in the US Slavery and Abolition in the US: Select Publications of the 1800s is a digital collection of books and pamphlets that demonstrate the varying ideas and beliefs about slavery in the United States as expressed by Americans throughout the nineteenth century.
SlaveVoyages The SlaveVoyages website is a collaborative digital initiative that compiles and makes publicly accessible records of the largest slave trades in history, including the Trans-Atlantic and Intra-American trafficking.
Sydney howard Gay's "Record of Fugitives" This digital collection is of the records kept by Sydnew Howard Gay, the editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, of every fugitive slave who came to his office.
Virginia Memory Digital collection provided by the Library of Virginia including photographs, Virginia newspapers, maps, and public records.
Women's Travel Diaries Over 100 diaries written by British and American women who documented their travels to places around the globe, including India, the West Indies, countries in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, as well as around the United States.
Women Veterans Historical Project The Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project (WVHP), established at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) in 1998, documents the contributions of women in the military and related service organizations since World War I. The WVHP includes a wide range of source material including photographs, letters, diaries, scrapbooks, oral histories, military patches and insignia, uniforms, and posters, as well as published works.
Women Working, 1800-1930 Women Working, 1800 - 1930 provides access to digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard's library and museum collections.

The archives of many famous or influential individuals have been put online. Here is a short list of some examples.

Edgar Allen Poe Digital Collection This digital collection was created to accompany the 2009 Poe Bicentennial exhibition, From Out That Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe. It incorporates images of all of Poe's manuscripts and letters at the Ransom Center (some with transcriptions by the Poe Society of Baltimore) with a selection of related archival materials, sheet music based on his poems, and portraits from the Ransom Center collections.
Albert Einstein Archives The Albert Einstein Archives contains the largest collection of original manuscripts by Einstein in the world and includes his vast correspondence with the most influential physicists and intellectuals of the 20th century.
John F. Kennedy Digital Archives
Charles Darwin's Papers Online This is the largest ever publication of Darwin papers and manuscripts, totalling about 20,000 items in over 100,000 electronic images.
Thomas Jefferson Papers An electronic archive from the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Henry Executive Papers Digital Collection, 1776-1778 This Library of Virginia digital collection covers two years of Patrick Henry's term in office as the Governor of Virginia.

Virginia Specific

Histories Along the Blue Ridge Histories Along the Blue Ridge is the new name for the Exploring Rockingham’s Past project, which was launched in 2017-2018 to make selected historic records from the Rockingham County Court digitally available to the public. Since 2018, the project has grown rapidly beyond Rockingham County through collaborations with interested community actors and courthouses in neighboring counties along the Blue Ridge Mountain Range in Virginia.
Martha Washington: a Life Explore "the contours of Martha Washington’s life while also providing a window on women’s lives during the 18th century." Includes primary sources materials such as letters. Click on the "Archive" link.
Papers of the War Department Digitized documents form the US War Department from 1784 and 1800. "The War Department was responsible for Indian affairs, veteran affairs, naval affairs."
Unknown No Longer: Names of Enslaved Virginians The Virginia Museum of History & Culture launched Unknown No Longer in 2011 to make accessible biographical details of enslaved Virginians from unpublished historical records in its collections.
VCU Libraries Digital Collections "Ranging in subject matter from African American history in Virginia to Richmond's past and present...Collections are presented in a variety of formats, including photographs, art, text, video, and audio. "
Virginia and Maryland Probate Inventories, 1740-1810 "Probate records provide valuable information about the lifestyles of people during the colonial and early national periods. Such listings of possessions, from a time when household goods were not widely mass-produced, illuminate a family’s routines, rituals, and social relations, as well as a region’s economy and connection to larger markets. They also shed light on attitudes and policies toward slavery."
Virginia Memory Digital collection provided by the Library of Virginia including photographs, Virginia newspapers, maps, and public records.
Virginia State University Special Collections and Archives Includes a variety of collections and resources. Especially useful is the web links list on the right!
Voices of Freedom Oral histories from Civil Rights Movement in Virginia. From VCU Libraries.
Voices of Virginia Voices of Virginia pulls together stories from oral history collections from across decades and archives to create an all-audio source companion for Virginia’s high school and college students. The "album" is only two hours long, but contains dozens of short oral histories from eyewitnesses to key moments in American history, from the end of the Civil War to the 1980s. The excerpts are downloadable, accessible by smartphone, and accompanied by a transcript.
Archival Histories of the Virginias Archival Resources of the Virginias (formerly Virginia Heritage) is a consolidated database of finding aids that provides information about the vast array of manuscripts and archival materials housed in Virginia and West Virginia.

Historical Maps and Atlases

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map Collection "The Sanborn map collection consists of a uniform series of large-scale maps, dating from 1867 to the present and depicting the commercial, industrial, and residential sections of some twelve thousand cities and towns in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The maps were designed to assist fire insurance agents in determining the degree of hazard associated with a particular property and therefore show the size, shape, and construction of dwellings, commercial buildings, and factories as well as fire walls, locations of windows and doors, sprinkler systems, and types of roofs. The maps also indicate widths and names of streets, property boundaries, building use, and house and block numbers."
Library of Congress: Maps Collection Selection of digitzed maps from the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress.
Norman B. Leventhal Map Center The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library contains over 200,000 historic maps and 5,000 historic atlases from the 15th century to the present. Browse through digitized versions online by location, subject, author, date, publisher and projection.
Bodleian Map Room Includes digitized maps of British history and many areas of the world that were once part of the British Empire.
Historic Maps Archive From the University of Alabama Map Library. Maps of United States and the world. Browse by geographic location and time period.
World Digital Library Links to over 5,000 primary documents and images from collections around the world. Sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Search by date, era, country, continent, topic, and type of resource.

Historic Newspapers

British Newspaper Archive Digitized historic newspapers from Britain. Hosted by the British Library. Select the check box, "Display only Free Content" for more efficient searching.
Chronicling America This site allows you to search and view newspaper pages from 1860-1922 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. The data is open and can be used outside of the platform.
Friend of Man Friend of Man is one of the most significant and little studied newspapers documenting early anti-slavery and other reform movements.

Harper's Weekly, 1857-1877 This link opens in a new window Historic newspaper, including illustrations, advertisements, and news stories.

Historic Mexican & Mexican-American Press The Historic Mexican and Mexican American Press collection documents and showcases historic Mexican and Mexican American publications published in Tucson, El Paso, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sonora, Mexico from the mid-1800s to the 1970s.
Richmond Daily Dispatch November 1860-December 1865. There are currently 1384 issues of the paper available online,
Virginia Chronicle Virginia Chronicle is a historical archive of Virginia newspapers, providing free access to full text searching and digitized images of over 4 million newspaper pages. This collection contains 482,459 issues comprising 4,243,426 pages. In addition to the growing collection of newspapers found at Virginia Chronicle, the Library of Virginia offers access to a wide array of resources for researching newspapers, from its broad collection of over 3,000 Virginia and West Virginia imprints, both in original ink press copy and on microfilm, to a suite of online resources that provide gateways to a significant range of historical newspapers.

Virginia's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window Full text newspapers from the state of Virginia covering the time of colonial development to World War I.

Other institutions have put together many helpful lists of places to find primary sources online.

The African American Electorate by Hanes Walton; Sherman C. Puckett; Donald R. Deskins
Call Number: JK1924.W36 2012
ISBN: 9780872895089
Publication Date: 2012-07-20

African American History Links to primary sources in African American history. From the University of Washington.

Historical Statistics of the United States Millenium Edition This link opens in a new window Includes over 37,000 data series on a variety of topics such as migration, health, crime, slavery, American Indians, and poverty.

Internet Modern History Sourcebook Links to full text historical documents, such as philosophical writings and court decisions.

Other institutions have put together many helpful lists of places to find primary sources online.

NINES: Nineteenth Century Scholarship Online NINES provides peer-review of digital resources and archives created by scholars in nineteenth-century studies. Search the site for digitized nineteenth-century documents from 114 sites.
Victorian Web Links to over 61,408 documents on the age of Victoria, including: literature, painting, sculpture, book illustration, history, religion, though the sections on history and technology include hundreds of documents.
Internet Modern History Sourcebook Links to full text historical documents, such as philosophical writings and court decisions.
Internet Medieval Sourcebook Contains thousands of sources from medieval writers, with the goal to replace the need for students to purchase a separate sourcebook