Through the IU Libraries and digitized collections available on the open web, you have access to millions of potential primary sources. Start browsing and searching in some of the recommendations below, or contact me if you're looking for something more specific. Remember that IUCAT can also be a great place to find individual or compilations of primary sources.
Portal for accessing descriptions of archival and special collections held by libraries, archives and other cultural heritage units at Indiana University or affiliated with Indiana University.
Archives Unbound presents topically-focused digital collections of historical documents. Collections cover a broad range of topics from the Middle Ages forward-from Witchcraft to World War II to twentieth-century political history. Particular strengths include U.S. foreign policy; U.S. civil rights; global affairs and colonial studies; and modern history. Collections are chosen based on requests from scholars, archivists, and students.
Archives Unbound is a suite of collections, each devoted to a particular topic. The collections include primary, unpublished historical documents and draw from institutional and governmental sources (Africa and African America; Source Library: Federal Bureau of Investigation Headquarters Library) and private collections (Women in Cuba; Library: Personal collection Dr. K. Lynn Stoner).
Brings together primary source documents related to the Cold War from around the world.
Beginning in the 1940s, a U.S. government organization that became part of the CIA, monitored, recorded and translated any item related to the Cold War from foreign mass media and government publications. The scope of this effort was vast: over time it covered newspapers, magazines, radio broadcasts, television broadcasts and more from every corner of the world.
Collection of 2,360 formerly classified U.S. government documents (most of them classified Top Secret or higher). Includes declassified documentary records related to the successes and failures of the U.S. intelligence community in its efforts to spy on the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
This document collection covers the period from the end of World War II in 1945 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but also includes a number of formerly classified historical reports and articles written by U.S. intelligence historians since the end of the Cold War.
Shared digital library created and designed by partnership of major research libraries.
HathiTrust makes the digitized collections of some of the nation’s great research libraries available for all. HathiTrust was initially conceived as a collaboration of the thirteen universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, the University of California system, and the University of Virginia to establish a repository for those universities to archive and share their digitized collections. HathiTrust will quickly expand to include additional partners and to provide those partners with an easy means to archive their digital content.
Access to the Library of Congress catalogs of over 171 million books, periodicals, manuscripts, maps, music, recordings, images, and electronic resources.
The LC Online Catalog contains over 20 million records describing these collections. You can search Catalog records by keyword or browse by authors/creators, subjects, names/titles, series/uniform titles, and call numbers. Browse lists also include searching aids such cross-references and scope notes.
Primary source documents related to the history of injury, treatment and disease, and medical advances during warfare.
The four conflicts robustly represented are the Crimean War, the American Civil War, the First World War and the Second World War. Many other conflicts also have relevant documents and can be discovered via keyword searching, including the Boer Wars, Spanish-American War and the Spanish Civil War. Includes access to two modules, 1850-1927 and 1928-1949. It covers medical advances during warfare from the mid-nineteenth century to the outbreak of the influenza epidemic in 1918, the discovery of penicillin in 1928, and up to post-war reforms such as the foundation of the British National Health Service.
Searchable, primary documents on the politics, administration, wars, and diplomacy of Palestine, the Independence of Israel, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Fully searchable database of primary source documents from the British National Archives that chronicle the politics, wars, administration, and diplomacy surrounding the Palestine Mandate and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Topics covered include the background to the establishment of the State of Israel, Black September, the Border wars of the 1950s, the British capture of Jerusalem, the Cold War in the Middle East, the formation of the United Arab Republic, Jewish terror groups, and milestones in the Palestine-Zionist tension and their impact on British policy leading to the Partition of 1948.
Primary source collections covering the long nineteenth century. Includes monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, photographs, statistics, and other kinds of documents in both Western and non-Western languages.
Includes access to the following modules: Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange ; British Politics and Society ; British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture ; European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection ; Children's Literature and Childhood ; Mapping the World ; Europe And Africa ; Photography: the World Through the Lens ; Science, Technology, and Medicine; Women: Transnational Networks.
Includes electronic editions of hundreds of large and small U.S. newspapers and titles worldwide.
Source types include print and online-only newspapers, blogs, newswires, journals, broadcast transcripts and videos. Offers coverage at local, regional, national and international levels. Covers a range of disciplines, including political science, journalism, English, history, environmental studies, sociology, economics, education, business, health, and social sciences. Enables researchers to track subjects geographically and over time, analyze trends and statistics.
Comprehensive digital access to historic newspapers, newsbooks, ephemera and national & regional papers from British Isles.
Includes access to:
British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800-1900:
Ranging from early tabloids like the Illustrated Police News to radical papers like the Chartist Northern Star, the 47 publications in Part I span national, regional, and local interests. Other notable papers of Part I include the Morning Chronicle, with famous contributors such as Henry Mayhew and John Stuart Mill; the Graphic, publishing both illustrations and news as well as illustrated fiction; and the Examiner, the radical reformist and leading intellectual journal.
British Library Newspapers, Part II: 1800-1900
Part II includes additional English regional newspapers with 22 additional publications. Researchers can find the newspapers of a number of towns and regions included in this collection: Nottingham, Bradford, Leicester, Sheffield, and York, as well as North Wales. The addition of two major London newspapers, The Standard and the Morning Post, captures conservative opinion in the nineteenth century, balancing the progressive, more liberal views of the newspapers that appear in Part I.
British Library Newspapers, Part III: 1741-1950
Part III includes 35 newspapers, encompassing provincial news journals like the Leeds Intelligencer and Hull Daily Mail, local interest publications such as the Northampton Mercury, and specialist titles such as the Poor Law Unions’ Gazette. Other noteworthy titles in Part III include the Westmoreland Gazette, whose early editor, Thomas De Quincy (of Confessions of an English Opium Eater) was forced to resign due to his unreliability.
British Library Newspapers, Part IV: 1732-1950
From early newspaper titles like the Stamford Mercury to what may be the oldest magazine in the world still in publication, the Scots Magazine, the 23 newspapers in Part IV offer local and regional perspectives from Aberdeen, Bath, Chester, Derby, Stamford, Liverpool, and York. In addition, Part IV includes the 1901-1950 runs of papers such as the Aberdeen Journal and Dundee Courier whose earlier newspapers are available in Part I and Part II.
British Library Newspapers, Part V: 1746-1950
With a concentration of titles from the northern part of the United Kingdom, the 36 newspapers in Part V includes titles from the Scottish localities of Fife, Elgin, Inverness, Paisley, and John O'Groats, as well as towns just below the border, such as Morpeth, Alnwick, and more. Includes access to the Coventry Herald, which features some of the earliest published writing of Mary Ann Evans (better known as George Eliot).
Collection of 18th and 19th century newspapers published in the Caribbean. Includes research on colonial history, the Atlantic slave trade, international commerce, New World slavery, and related topics.
Most of the newspapers included were published in the English language, but a number of Spanish, French, and Danish language titles are also provided. Countries represented include Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Curaçao, Dominica, Grenada, Guadaloupe, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Montserrat, Nevis, Puerto Rico, St. Bartholomew, St. Christopher, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Tobago, Trinidad, and the Virgin Islands. Also found within this resource are newspapers from Bermuda, an island not technically part of the Caribbean, but situated on shipping routes between Europe and this region and integrally related to this region.
Access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages. Search historic newspaper pages from 1789-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
Produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). NDNP, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages.
Digital archive of historical newspapers. Each issue of each title includes the complete paper, cover-to-cover, with full-page and article images.
A collection of historical newspapers from around the globe.
World Newspaper Archive is a fully-searchable collection of historical newspapers from around the globe. It was created in partnership with the Center for Research Libraries- one of the world's largest and most important newspaper repositories.