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Many of the resources in the massive A-Z List of databases contain primary source content of interest to historians, but the size of the list makes it difficult to navigate. This section is divided into three sections to help you find what you're looking for.
"Best Bets" (below): large collections of various types of primary sources, best suited for those who want to rely on search functions to find what they are looking for.
US History: organized chronologically and topically, with resources on early American history, the long nineteenth century (c. 1780-1920), post-World War I, African Americans, women, and American Indians.
Global History: organized geographically, with resources on Africa, East Asia, Eastern Europe/Russia, the Islamic World, Latin America and the Caribbean, South/Southeast Asia, and Western Europe.
Online tool designed to support students of the humanities and social sciences. Introduces the key approaches to working with source materials and historical evidence, as well as the methodologies and practicalities of visiting archives, evaluating sources and writing up research.
Includes nearly 200 hundred essays, videos, "How to" guides and case studies by subject specialists which answer questions about working with primary sources. Materials provide guidance on where to find historical documents, and how to best to approach analyzing the content they hold.
Best Bets
Several of the links below are portals to dozens of other primary source databases.
For a list of non-IU websites with digitized primary sources, see the following guide and link:
The SHAFR Task Force on Freely Available Research Databases has compiled this bibliography of electronic resources to aid research in U.S. foreign relations history.
Allows users to search all Adam Matthew digital collections.
Search the following Adam Matthew digital collections:
African American Communities
African American Communities (AAC)
Age of Exploration
AM Explorer
America in World War Two
American Consumer Culture
American History, 1493-1945
American Indian Histories and Cultures
American Indian Newspapers
American West
Americana
Archives Direct
Children's Literature and Culture
China Studies
China, America and the Pacific
China: Culture and Society
China: Trade, Politics and Culture
Church Missionary Society Periodicals
Colonial America
Colonial Caribbean
Defining Gender
Early Modern England
East India Company
Eighteenth Century Drama
Eighteenth Century Journals
Empire Online
Ethnomusicology
Everyday Life and Women in America, 1800-1920
First World War
Food and Drink in History
Frontier Life
Gender: Identity and Social Change
Global Commodities
Grand Tour
India, Raj and Empire
Interwar Culture
J. Walter Thompson: Advertising America
Jewish Life in America, 1654-1954
Leisure, Travel and Mass Culture: The History of Tourism
Literary Manuscripts Berg
Literary Manuscripts Leeds
Literary Print Culture
London Low Life
Market Research and American Business
Mass Observation Online
Mass Observation Project
Medical Services And Warfare
Medieval Family Life
Medieval Travel Writing
Meiji Japan
Migration to New Worlds
Nineteenth Century Literary Society
Perdita Manuscripts
Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975
Popular Medicine in America, 1800-1900
Poverty, Philanthropy and Social Conditions in Victorian Britain
Race Relations in America
Research Methods Primary Sources
Romanticism: Life, Literature and Landscape
Service Newspapers of World War Two
Sex and Sexuality
Shakespeare in Performance
Shakespeare's Globe Archive
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice
Socialism on Film
The Gilded Age
Trade Catalogues and the American Home
Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History
Victorian Popular Culture
Virginia Company Archives
World's Fairs
WTNA Finding Aid (standalone site)
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).
The purpose of EHPS is to provide an easily searchable index of scholarly digital repositories that contain primary sources for the history of Europe. As the number of digital archives on the internet continues to grow, finding and selecting digital repositories becomes increasingly difficult. EHPS strives to fill that gap by listing the most important collections of digital primary sources for the history of Europe, either as a whole or for single countries. EHPS is updated continuously and we invite all users to send us their suggestions for websites to include.
Archival collections documenting topics in eighteenth- through twentieth-century American history. Provides access to digitized letters, papers, photographs, scrapbooks, financial records, diaries, and many more primary source materials taken from the University Publications of America (UPA) Collections.
