LibraryGuides: Finding Primary Sources: 1900-Present

Archival Advertisements

Ad*Access
Over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements covering five product categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda - dated between 1911 and 1955.

Access World News
Current and historical news articles from local, regional, national, and international newspapers, including the New York Times and Omaha World-Herald.
Alternative Press Index
Citations, indexing, and abstracts for more than 300 international journals, magazines, and newspapers offering an alternative, radical, or left perspective (1991-present). Some citations also include links to full text.

Library of Congress Digital Collections
Digital collection of primary documents, maps, sound recordings, motion pictures, and photos, from the Library of Congress.

Gale Primary Sources
Primary source documents in seven topic areas, including 19th-century missions, westward expansion, the Federal Writer's Project, Native American issues, and the Vatican in World War II.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
A sample of a collection of over 2300 interviews of former slaves conducted between 1936 and 1938 by the Works Progress Administration. Maintained by the American Memory Project
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html
Chronicling America
A collection of fully search-able historical newspapers from the Library of Congress.
Digital Schomburg
Digital projects of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, hosts numerous tools for researching African-American history, the African Diaspora, and African history.
Documenting the American South
A digital publishing initiative sponsored by the University Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that provides access to digitized primary materials that offer Southern perspectives on American history and culture.
http://docsouth.unc.edu/
EuroDocs: Primary Historical Documents From Western Europe
Links to Western European historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated.
Gallica - National Library of France (BNF)
Digitized primary source documents from the National Library of France.

MyHeritage
Genealogy collection of U.S. Census data (1790-1930), family and local history, Revolutionary War records and more.
Submit a CU Libraries' Troubleshooting ticket to request the password for access.
HathiTrust
HathiTrust is a partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future. Contains over 10 million volumes, roughly 28% of which are available in full text online.
HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
HeinOnline is an online database containing more than 270,000 titles of historical and government documents in a fully searchable, image-based format. See the HeinOnline page for a listing of all databases available in HeinOnline: HeinOnline Databases
HeinOnline bridges an important research gap by providing comprehensive coverage from the inception of more than 2,700 law-related periodicals. In addition, HeinOnline contains the entire Congressional Record, Federal Register, and Code of Federal Regulations, complete coverage of the U.S. Reports back to 1754, and entire databases dedicated to treaties, constitutions, case law, world trials, classic treatises, international trade, foreign relations, U.S. Presidents, and much more
JSTOR
Archive of over 2,400 leading academic journals, with content going back to the early 1900s. Very useful if you are researching the history of an academic movement or discipline.

Historical Statistics of the United States (HSUS)
Historical Statistics on a range of topics and locations. An essential source for statistical data before 1975.
Project Gutenberg
A collection of over 50,000 ebooks, many from the 19th and early 20th century.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times
This resource digitally reproduces every issue of the New York Times (1851-2010) from cover-to-cover. It provides full page-image and full-text searching of the newspaper.
The Times Digital Archive
A searchable, full-text, online database of more than 200 years of The Times (London, England), with every page of every issue from 1785 through 2012. Covers local events in Britain and international events in India, China, South Africa, and the Americas.

Wilson Center Digital Archive
Constructed and maintained by the Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program, the Digital Archive contains newly declassified historical materials from archives around the world—much of it in translation and including diplomatic cables, high level correspondence, meeting minutes and more.
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/