Primary Sources: Primary Sources on the Web

Documents for the Study of American History. Includes full-text copies speeches, letters and other documents covering different aspects of political, social and cultural history. Organized by century and topic.

Produced at Brigham Young University. A collection of "Selected Transcriptions, Facsimiles and Translations," pertaining to Western Europe. Organized by country and then loosely by topic

The Library of Congress' digital library containing documents, photographs, motion pictures and sound recordings pertaining to America.

A co-production of the University of Michigan and Cornell University. Full-text collection of 19th century books and journals relating to American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. You must search both to see the whole collection.

From the Digital Public Library of America, these are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills by exploring topics in history, literature, and culture through primary sources. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide.

Google has digital copies of many magazines, some of them going back several decades. Browse by title, and click 'Browse all issues' to see older issues. Examples include Life Magazine 1953-1972, The Crisis 1911-2009, or Billboard from 1980-2009.

Search scanned copies of newspapers. Not all dates/issues are present. See, for example, the Toledo Blade.

Tool for finding online digitized historical newspaper content from newspapers published in the United States and the Caribbean. Search by keyword, newspaper title or by city, county or state to locate titles. From your search result, click on the link(s) to connect to the digital newspaper(s). In many cases, this content is keyword searchable, depending on the hosting organization.