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Primary Sources: United States & Canadian History
Primary sources for research on the history of the United States and Canada.
An alphabetical listing of databases containing primary sources. Also consult other tabs in this guide for primary source databases organized by historical theme or time period.
Includes access to African American Newspapers parts I-XII, Charlestion South Carolina Gazette, Pennsylvania Gazette, The Liberator Folio I – VII, Civil War: A Newspaper perspective.
Part of Duke Univeristy Library's Digital Collections, AdView includes thousands of television commercials created or collected by the D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B) advertising agency, dated 1950s - 1980s.
Throughout U.S. History, African Americans have played an integral part in the development and achievement of this country. These unique original documents reveal a side of the African American story that few have seen before.
Full-text books, pamphlets, serials and other works about the Americas. The collection is rich in original accounts of discovery and exploration, pioneering and westward expansion, the U.S. Civil War and other military actions, Native Americans, slavery and abolition, and religious history.
The definitive online resource for researching the individuals, regiments, and battles of the American Civil War. Contains indexed, searchable information on over 4 million soldiers and thousands of battles, together with over 17,000 photographs.
Formed in 1968, the American Indian Movement (AIM) expanded from its roots in Minnesota and broadened its political agenda to include a searching analysis of the nature of social injustice in America. These FBI files provide detailed information on the evolution of AIM as an organization of social protest and the development of Native American radicalism
Contains periodicals published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children’s and women’s magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals.
Titles range from Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine and America's first scientific journal, Medical Repository; popular magazines such as Vanity Fair and Ladies' Home Journal; regional and niche publications; and groundbreaking journals like The Dial, Puck, and McClure's. covers more than 1,000 titles from 1741-1940. Produced through partnership with the Center for Research Libraries, of which Tulane is a member.
From 1936 to 1938, the Federal Writers' Project employed writers and journalists to interview ex-slaves in the United States. Nearly 4,000 interviews were ultimately collected and are presented in this database.
The Graff Collection is a unique resource which contains original manuscripts, maps, ephemeral material and rare printed sources.
Browse a wide range of rare and original documents including printed books, journals, historic maps, broadsides, periodicals, advertisements, photographs, artwork and more.
Provides access to family history via documents that record the lineage of individuals from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, and more.
The Annual Register is a year-by-year record of British and world events, published annually since 1758. Includes every volume published and will be updated with the latest volume each year. Particularly useful for coverage of the American Revolution.
AP captures events from history and brings them to life with photographs, audio sound bites, graphics, and text. Coverage spans over 185 years. Content is accessible through a variety of searches – from keyword and category to color and concept searching.
Digital collections of historical material on many topics. Includes manuscripts, printed books and periodicals, and government documents. Material comes from the U.S. National Archives, the U.K. National Archives, and many other libraries and archives.
In-depth browsing and searching of both the bibliographic and the full-text elements of complete published non-fiction works as well as interviews, journal articles, letters and other fugitive material. The works include monographs, essays, articles, speeches, and interviews written by leaders within the black community from the earliest times to the present
Full text of papers that were presented to the Privy Council and the Board of Trade between 1574-1757, and that relate to the governance of, and activities in, the American, Canadian and West Indian colonies of England.
Comprehensive collection of historic and current congressional information, including bills & laws, hearings, CRS reports, committee prints, reports, and the Congressional Record
Online access to previously classified government documents. Covering major international events from the Cold War to the Vietnam War and beyond, users can locate key information underpinning studies in international relations, American studies, United States foreign and domestic policy studies, journalism and more.
Contains the most comprehensive collection of primary documents available. The database includes more than 60,000 of the most important declassified documents regarding critical U.S. policy decisions.
Covers every aspect of American life during the early decades of the United States, provides full-text access to the 36,000 American books, pamphlets and broadsides published in the first nineteen years of the nineteenth century
Early Canadiana Online (ECO) is a digital library providing access to 3.5 million pages of Canada's printed heritage. It features works published from the time of the first European settlers up to the early 20th Century.
1) Pilot Project: Approximately 500,000 pages from a variety of subjects, including Canadian women’s history, English Canadian literature, the history of French Canada, and native studies.
2) Early Governors General of Canada: 60 publications focusing early Governors General of Canada.
3) Hudson’s Bay Company publications: 160 titles
4) Jesuit Relations: 73 volume set of books in the original Italian, Latin and French with commentary and translation into English.
5) Official publications: 1.5 million pages of pre-1900 Canadian official publications, including journals of legislative assemblies of the various colonies of pre-Confederation Canada, Journal of the House of Commons, Debates of the House of Commons, Debates of the Senate, Reconstituted Debates of Canada, Sessional papers, Journals of the Senate, tatutes of Canada, Statutes of the pre-Confederation colonial legislative councils, and debates of the pre-Confederation colonial house of assemblies.
6) Periodicals: Approximately 1.25 million pages of pre-1920 Canadian periodicals.
Contains letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts of early encounters from 1534-1850. Effective browsing and searching capabilities allow, for example, to identify all encounters between the French and the Huron between 1650 and 1700.
Resource for the study of American social, cultural, and popular history, providing immediate access to rare primary source material from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History, Duke University and The New York Public Library. It comprises thousands of fully searchable images (alongside transcriptions) of monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes.
The collection is especially rich in conduct of life and domestic management literature, offering vivid insights into the daily lives of women and men, as well as emphasizing contrasts in regional, urban and rural cultures.
In partnership with the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, the Library of Congress presents a digital library of documents highlighting the French presence in North America from the 16th to the end of the 19th centuries.
The definitive cross-cultural resource for information on women's history (1543-1945). Trace the evolution of feminism within a single country, as well as the impact of that country's feminist movement on other countries and their movements.
Covers the cultural landscape of America during the decades between the end of the Civil War and the election of Theodore Roosevelt. Includes essays, songs, letters, photographs, cartoons, government documents, ephemera, and interviews.
The Great War Primary Documents Archive is dedicated to the collection, preservation, and development in electronic form of materials relating to the First World War. It is the first and largest online full text international collection of documents and images related to the Great War period, 1880-1926.
Includes full text of reference books, encyclopedias, historical documents, biographies, photographs, and video. Database contains 58,000 historical documents; 43,000 biographies of historical figures; more than 12,000 historical photos and maps. and more than 80 hours of historical video.
Includes photographs detailing social, military, and political perspectives. Also includes graphical content such as envelopes, song sheets, recruiting posters, imprints, and cartoons. Formerly known as American Civil War: Photographs, Posters, and Ephemera.
This resource explores the history of Jewish communities in America bringing to life the communal and social aspects of Jewish identity and culture, whilst tracing Jewish involvement in the political life of American society as a whole.
This database contains more than 61,000 books from the period 1460-1850, and 466 pre-1906 serials. In almost 12 million pages, it focuses on economics interpreted in the widest sense, including political science, history, sociology, and special collections on banking, finance, transportation and manufacturing.
Contains the personal writings of women of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, displayed as images of the original manuscripts. The collection is drawn entirely from the holdings of the American Antiquarian Society.
Original records shed new light on Native American history. Includes Native American photos, Indian Census Rolls (1885-1940), Dawes Enrollment Cards (1898-1914), and more.
Draws on the strength of established indexes such as the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, The Wellesley Index, Poole's Index and Periodicals Index Online to create integrated bibliographic coverage of over 1.5 million books and official publications, 71,000 archival collections and 18.9 million articles published in over 2,500 journals, magazines and newspapers.
Collection of women's diaries and correspondence from Colonial times to 1950. Sources include journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings, much of the material is in copyright. Represented are all age groups and life stages, all ethnicities, many geographical regions, the famous and the not so famous.
Provides indexing of over three million articles from more than 550 leading magazines. Offers a wide range of researchers access to information about history, culture and seminal developments across nearly a century.
Brings the 1960s alive through diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary.
From the everyday to the extraordinary, these rare diaries and the supporting correspondence describe the travel experiences, destinations and desires of nineteenth and twentieth century American women.
The project has wide ranging interdisciplinary appeal, offering first hand accounts of major historical events as reported by eye witnesses, detailing key interests and themes in women’s lives, providing snapshots of cities, cultures and customs, and charting the rise of modern tourism and the travel industry. Topics covered include: Emigration and daily life, Missionary Work, World War I, World War II, Boxer War in China, Frontier Life in America, Personal Enlightenment through travel, Education and Finishing School, Sightseeing, Holidays and Tourism, Customs, culture and leisure.
The earliest texts in this comprehensive collection on witchcraft date from the 15th century and the latest are from the early 20th century. The majority of the material concerns the 16th to 18th centuries, the so-called "classic period."
In addition to these classic texts, the collection includes anti-persecution writings, works by penologists, legal and church documents, exposés of persecutions, and philosophical writings and transcripts of trials and exorcisms.
The history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000. Seeks to advance scholarly debates and understanding about U.S. history generally at the same time that it makes the insights of women's history accessible.
The collection currently includes 91 document projects and archives with more than 3,600 documents and 150,000 pages of additional full-text documents, and more than 2,060 primary authors.
A collection from the Imperial War Museum, London, which includes charity and international relief reports, pamphlets, photographs, and press cuttings, along with interpretative essays from leading scholars. Together these documents are useful for the study of 20th Century social, political, military and gender history.
