Primary Sources: Primary Sources on the Web

Holdings back to 1775 preserved because they are important to the workings of Government, have long-term research worth, or provide information of value to citizens.

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

Mostly before 1923

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.

Digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction.

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.

Eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later.

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

Explore more than 490,000 works from around the world and throughout history.

Founded in 2008, HathiTrust is a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving 17+ million digitized items.

ArchiveGrid includes over 7 million records describing archival materials, bringing together information about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more.

GovInfo (formerly FDSys) is a service of the United States Government Publishing Office (GPO) which provides free public access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government. It is a Federal agency in the legislative branch.

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.

Streaming video database containing every program aired on the public affairs cable network C-SPAN since 1987. Includes over 197,000 hours of footage from all 3 C-SPAN channels. Indexed and searchable by subjects, names, titles, affiliations, sponsors, committees, categories, formats, policy groups, locations, and keywords

Database descriptions are taken from UToledo Libraries List of Research Databases compiled by Sheryl Stevens, Electronic Resources Librarian.

Library guide with many primary resources for the Toledo area.

History of Toledo and Lucas County.

President Hayes's personal library along with archival material from his military and political career, particularly his presidency (1877-1881). Includes references to the Ohio locations of Fremont, Sandusky, and Lake Erie. The collection also includes over 90,000 books which reflect Hayes' special interests, including genealogy, local history, and the Gilded Age period in which he lived.

Historical photographs documenting the history of greater Cleveland and the Western Reserve region of northeastern Ohio.

The OhioLINK Finding Aid Repository is designed to showcase the rich collections housed in archives, libraries, and other institutions throughout the state of Ohio. The Repository provides access to collections on a broad scale, increasing the visibility of these unique and valuable resources for research.

Large-scale street plans of Ohio communities, produced by the Sanborn Fire Insurance company from 1867-1970.

Great Lakes research links.