Research Guides: Find Primary Sources: Books & More

American books, broadsides, etc.

American Broadsides and Ephemera 1760-1900 Everything from Civil War accounts, town meeting reports, trade cards, theater & music programs, to menus, and more.
Archives Unbound [Gale] Digital primary source collections on a wide variety of topics, countries, and time periods, from women's history and feminism, to civil rights, foreign policy, missionary societies, the Federal Writers' Project, etc.
Early American Imprints, 1639-1820 Books, pamphlets, and broadsides on every aspect of American life, based on Charles Evan's American Bibliography and the continuation by Shaw-Shoemaker.
The Making of the Modern World [Gale] 1450-1945 Covers social history, early commerce, trade, colonization, industry, political systems, revolutions, slavery, exploration, philosophy, and more.
Sabin Americana [Gale] 1500-1926 Based on Sabin's Bibliotheca Americana: A Dictionary of Books Relating to America from Its Discovery to the Present Time. Full-text books, pamphlets, broadsides & documents, from sermons & tracts to legislation & literature. Covers all the Americas.
Slavery & Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive [Gale] Contains primary source documents from the United States & Europe, as well as other parts of the world; formats include antebellum books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, images, and extensive archival material.

Women's History

Archives Unbound [Gale] Digital primary source collections on a variety of topics including women's history.
Everyday Life and Women in America [AM Digital] c. 1800-1920 Rare books, pamphlets & periodicals relating to US social & cultural history; strong on conduct & household management; contrasts urban & rural cultures.
Gerritsen Collection 1543 -1945 An international collection of books, pamphlets and periodicals on feminism & the women's rights movement worldwide.
History Vault: Struggle for Women's Rights 1880-1990 Digitized records of the National Women's Party, the League of Women Voters, and the Women's Action Alliance.
Women and Social Movements in the U.S.,Scholar's Edition [Alexander Street] Primary documents, books, images, scholarly essays, book reviews & teaching tools relating to US history, as seen through women's eyes.
Women and Social Movements International [Alexander Street] 1840+ Digital primary sources, including conference proceedings, reports of international women's organizations, publications & web pages of women's organizations, plus letters, diaries & memoirs of women active internationally since the mid-19th century.

Women Working: 1870-1930 (Harvard University Library) Fully-digitized versions of books, manuscripts, pamphlets, consumer trade catalogs and photographs exploring women's roles in the US economy between the Civil War and the Great Depression.

Margaret Sanger Papers: Smith College Collections and Collected Documents [ProQuest] Digitized versions of Sanger's personal papers, outgoing correspondence, and records; coverage includes the birth control movement, women's rights, suffrage, feminism, reform & social work, arts, and middle-class family life.
Women's Studies Archive [Gale] Primary sources from the 19th & 20th centuries, including diaries, letters, photographs, news clippings, organizational records & journals; documents the issues that have affected women's societal contributions & social status and the women's movement.
Women's Magazine Archive [Proquest] Contains (each from their start to 2005): Better Homes & Gardens, Chatelaine, Cosmopolitan, Essence, Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal, Parents; Redbook; Seventeen, Town and Country, Woman’s Day, and Women’s International Network News.

Government Documents

ProQuest Congressional 1789+ Congressional Indexes, Publications, Testimony, Bills, Laws, and more. Includes Congressional Hearings Digital Collection, Part A: 1824-1979 and Part B: 1980-2003.
House and Senate Journals, Series I. 1789-1817 Original, digitized version of the minutes of the meetings of each chamber Congress, up to 1817. The official record of business on petitions, memorials, motions, bills, resolutions, and the votes on them. Predates the U.S Congressional Serial Set.
Senate Executive Journals, Series I. 1789- 1866 A record of the U.S. Senate's closed session deliberations, mostly on two principal topics: treaties and nominations. Particularly useful for historical, foreign policy, and biographical research.

U.S. Congressional Serial Set 1817-1994 Reports, Documents, and Journals of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives provide a rich primary source material on all aspects of American history.
HathiTrust Full text books & journals digitized by HathiTrust partner libraries, Google, the Internet Archive, etc. Includes searchable access to over 10 million volumes total; 3 million public domain volumes are fully viewable online and allow downloading one page at a time. Complements Google Books.

International

Archives of Sexuality & Gender: LGBTQ History & Culture Since 1940 [Gale] Primary source collections on social, political, health & legal issues impacting LGBTQ communities in the U.S. and internationally. Includes the collections Community and Identity in North America, International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture, LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940 Parts I and II, and L'Enfer de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, a collection of French works from the 1800s that were considered to be contrary to the morals of the time.
Archives Unbound [Gale] Digital primary source collections on a variety of topics, from witchcraft in Europe and America to Appalachian culture, the Federal Writers' Project, Feminism in Cuba, etc.
Confidential Print: Africa [AM Digital] 1834-1966 Letters, telegrams, reports, treaties, etc. generated by the British Foreign & Colonial offices. Topics range from coastal trading in the 19th c. through the Scramble for Africa, World War II, colonial independence movements, to Apartheid.
Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969 [AM Digital] Letters, telegrams, reports, treaties, etc. generated by the British Foreign and Colonial offices. Topics include colonization, border disputes & wars, education, finance & commerce, political movements, economy & resources, relations with indigenous peoples & the slave trade.
Confidential Print: Middle East [AM Digital] 1839-1969 Letters, telegrams, reports, treaties, etc. generated by the British Foreign & Colonial offices relating to the Middle East.
Confidential Print: North America, 1824-1961 [AM Digital] Letters, telegrams, reports, treaties, etc. generated by the British Foreign and Colonial offices. US materials: Prohibition, World War II, Lend Lease, Communism, the Ku Klux Klan, desegration, etc. Canadian materials: Railroads, fisheries, border disputes, the Hudson’s Bay Company, Native Americans, etc. Caribbean materials: Slavery, trade, agiculture, boundary disputes, health & disease, etc.
Defining Gender [AM Digital] 1450-1910 Primary sources from British archives on conduct & politeness; domesticity & family; consumption & leisure; education & sensibility; the body.
Early English Books Online (EEBO) 1475-1700 Over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640), Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700), and the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661).
Early European Books [ProQuest] 1450-1700 Digitized collection of rare books & incunabula; includes works from the national libraries of France, Florence & the Netherlands; the Wellcome Library (London); the Royal Library, Denmark, with more libraries set to join the program.
East India Company, 1600 - 1947. [AM Digital] Contains royal charters, correspondence, trading diaries, minutes of council meetings, expedition reports, etc., documenting British trade & rule in the Indian subcontinent & beyond.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) [Gale] 1701-1800 Includes every significant English- and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas.
Electronic Enlightenment Wide-ranging collection of edited correspondence, early 17th - mid-19th century, covering Europe, the Americas & Asia.
Empire Online [AM Digital] Primary sources related to colonial history, politics, culture and society, from Columbus to debates on American Imperialism, in thematic sections: Cultural Contacts; the Literature of Empire; the Visible Empire; Religion; and Race, Class & Imperialism.
Grand Tour [AM Digital] Manuscript & printed works, c1550-1850, highlighting the influence of continental travel on British art, architecture, urban planning, literature & philosophy.
John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera (Bodleian Library, Oxford) Focuses on the changing nature of everyday life in Britain in the 18th, 19th & early 20th centuries. Categories include entertainment; the book trade; popular prints; crimes, murders & executions; and advertising.
Literary Print Culture: The Stationers' Company Archive, 1544-2007 [AM Digital] Documents the early book trade; the printing & publishing community; the legal underpinnings of copyright provisions; the history of bookbinding.
London Lowlife [AM Digital] Color digital images of rare books, ads, cartoons, ephemera, maps and other materials relating to 18th, 19th and early 20th century London.
The Making of the Modern World [Gale] 1450-1945 Covers social history, early commerce, trade, colonization, industry, political systems, revolutions, slavery, exploration, philosophy, and more.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online [Gale] 19th century primary source collections, including books, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, etc. covering civilization, commerce, culture, diplomacy, literature, medicine, music, politics, popular culture, science, theater, and technology in Europe, Africa, and Asia.
Slavery & Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive [Gale] Contains primary source documents from the United States & Europe, as well as other parts of the world; formats include antebellum books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, images, and extensive archival material.
Smithsonian I: Worlds Fairs and Expositions [Gale] 1840-1940 Primary source documents on major expositions, 1840-1940. Covers architecture, fine & decorative arts, technology, industrial design, science, entertainment, urban planning, manufacturing, cultural history, etc.
Smithsonian II: Trade Literature, the Merchandising of Industry [Gale] 1820-1926 Catalogs, pamphlets, advertising materials & ephemera on essential industries that emerged in the 19th & early 20th centuries, e.g. steam engines, railroads, motorized vehicles, agricultural/farm machinery, building & construction, mining, etc.

Victorian Popular Culture Primary source material on popular entertainment in America, Britain & Europe, 1779-1930, including spiritualism, circuses, music halls & theater, optical entertainments/early cinema, etc.