LibGuides: Primary Sources: Archives on the Web

California

Calisphere
The collections on Calisphere have been digitized and contributed by all ten campuses of the University of California and other important libraries, archives, and museums throughout the state.
California Digital Newspaper Collection
A Freely Accessible Repository of Digitized California Newspapers from 1846 to the Present
Online Archive of California (OAC)
OAC contains publicly-available, digitized primary resource collections from over 200 institutions throughout California.
California State Library: California History
Thousands of rare books, maps, newspapers, and periodicals in addition to a huge collection of one-of-a-kind photographs, letters, and ephemeral items such as posters, pamphlets and sheet music.
California State Archives
Los Angeles Public Library Images
The Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection emphasizes the history of Los Angeles, Southern California, and California. This Internet-accessible collection is one of the treasures of the Central Library.
Los Angles Public Library Visual Collections
The LA Public Library visual collections include both local history collections and other historical collections. Includes maps, images, drawings, posters, menus, and other types of ephemera.
County of Los Angeles Public Library Local History Web Sites
Includes information on Native Americans, local missions and the early history, other historical topics, images of historic community photographs and other documents, and links and citations to additional community history resources.

The United States

The American Presidency Project
This project contains a searchable database of tens of thousands of documents from U.S. presidents from 1789 to the present. It covers inaugural addresses, press briefings, signing statements, and debates.
Black Freedom Struggle in the United States
A collection of primary sources from the 1790s-2000s including images, writings, news, government and court documents, and more.
Civil Rights Digital Library
materials from libraries, archives, museums, public broadcasters, and others on a national scale. The CRDL features a collection of unedited news film from the WSB (Atlanta) and WALB (Albany, Ga.) television archives held by the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia Libraries.
Digital History
University of Houston’s Digital History database offers a wealth of links to textbook, primary sources, and educational materials in digital history. The database has multimedia, an interactive timeline, active learning, and resources for teachers.
Digital Public Library of America
A vast project that works with many cultural heritage institutions to bring together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums.
Harvard Open Collections
Over 6 million digitzed objects- from ancient art to modern manuscripts and audio visual materials.
The Library of Congress Digital Collections
View maps & photographs; read letters, diaries & newspapers; hear personal accounts of events; listen to sound recordings & watch historic films.
National Archives and Records Administration
Investigative journalism center, research institute on international affairs, library and archive of declassified U.S. documents.
National Security Archive
The National Security Archive combines a unique range of functions: investigative journalism center, research institute on international affairs, library and archive of declassified U.S. documents.
Nineteenth Century Documents Project
When completed this collection will include accurate transcriptions of many important and representative primary texts from nineteenth century American history, with special emphasis on those sources that shed light on sectional conflict and transformations in regional identity.

World

Eurodocs
Selected transcriptions, facsimiles, translations from Western Europe.
Hanover Historical Texts Project
A working-in-progress project covers documents from ancient Greece to the 20th Century.
United Nations Treaty Collection
A collection of treaties and international agreements registered or filed and recorded with and published by the Secretariat since 1946.
Digital Library of the Caribean
Digitized versions of Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections.
World Digital Library
Search 16,561 items about 193 countries between 8000 BCE and 2000.
Slave Voyages (The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database)
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database has information on almost 35,000 slaving vogages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. It offers researchers, students and the general public a chance to rediscover the reality of one of the largest forced movements of peoples in world history.
Digitized Manuscripts of the British Library
Use this website to view digitised copies of manuscripts and archives in the British Library’s collections, with descriptions of their contents. Highlights include: Harley Golden Gospels, Beowulf, the Silos Apocalypse, Leonardo da Vinci’s Notebook, the Petit Livre d’Amour, the Golf Book, almost 900 Greek manuscripts, The Royal Manuscripts and Botany in British India, Over fifty Thai manuscripts and the Chakrabongse Archive of Royal Letters, early Singapore manuscripts, Persian manuscripts, and Hebrew manuscripts.

Historical Newspapers

Historical Los Angeles Times (1881-1994) This link opens in a new window
Historical Los Angeles Times offers completely searchable full text and full image coverage from 1881-1994. It gives quick and accurate Web access to articles, editorials, classified ads, comics, cartoons, photos, maps, and graphics. The collection provides access to every page from every available issue. For electronic access to current Los Angeles Times from 1985 to present, use Los Angeles Times (1985-present).
New York Times (1851-2019) This link opens in a new window
The New York Times (1851-2019) offers full-page and article images with a searchable full text back to the first issue. The collection includes digital reproductions providing access to every page from every available issue.
For current New York Times (1980-present) check the entry New York Times (1980-present)

Guide to Historical African American Newspapers Available Online (Marist Univeristy Guide)
This guide provides a list of historical African American Newspapers available online as part of digitization projects at libraries and historical societies as well as digitization projects done by Google. Much of the content is available for free, though some is under restricted access. It includes archives of current papers and papers that are no longer operating. It does not include papers that are currently running and only offer access to the most recent articles.

London Times Digital Archive (1785-1985) This link opens in a new window
The Times Digital Archive has millions of articles from the London Times. The entire newspaper is captured, with all articles, advertisements and illustrations/photos divided into categories to facilitate searching.
Current Digest of the Russian Press (CDRP) This link opens in a new window
Published weekly since 1949, The Current Digest of the Russian Press Digital Archive paints a broad picture of Soviet and post-Soviet times, including coverage of domestic affairs and social issues.
Articles translated for The Current Digest include important news and comments from the leading dailies and government reports of the day. During the Soviet era, hundreds of other special interest journals and authoritative sources were also scoured for relevant articles to include.
Coverage: 1949-present
Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Includes digital facsimile images of both full pages and clipped articles for hundreds of 19th century U.S. newspapers. For each issue, the newspaper is captured from cover-to-cover, providing access to every article, advertisement and illustration.
Click the link for a list of Newspapers included in the collection.
Early American Imprints, Series 1: Evans 1693-1800 This link opens in a new window
Contains searchable books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, government documents and ephemera printed in America over three centuries.

Google News Archive
free access to scanned archives of newspapers and links to other newspaper archives on the web, both free and paid. Some of the news archives date back to 1700s.
Europeana News Archive
Aggregating 18 million historic newspaper pages for Europeana and The European Library, the project converted 10 million newspaper pages to full text.

Chronicaling America Historical Newspapers
Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1789-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
Historic Mexican and Mexican American Press
From the University of Arizona. The Historic Mexican and Mexican American Press collection documents and showcases historic Mexican and Mexican American publications published in Tucson, El Paso, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sonora, Mexico from the mid-1800s to the 1970s.

U.S. Law & Legislation

WestlawNext Campus Research This link opens in a new window
WestlawNext Campus Research provides legal materials including cases, statutes, and regulations of the U.S. government and state governments.
It includes the legal encyclopedia American Jurisprudence 2nd and American Law Reports, as well as Black's Law Dictionary and Campus Research Legal Guides.

Primary legal information--Cases from courts in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and from the federal courts since 1789; reported and unpublished decisions; statutes and regulations from all 50 states and federal statues published in the United States Code Annotated (USCA); Federal regulations published in the Federal Register and the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)
Secondary sources--American Jurisprudence 2d, a comprehensive encyclopedia of state and federal law; American Law Reports (ALR) articles that summarize and analyze court decisions on a particular legal issue; hundreds of journals and law reviews from leading law schools
The database also covers news and business informaiton

GUIDES:
Congressional Publications This link opens in a new window
ProQuest Congressional Publications provides access to historical and current Congressional information and publications on all aspects of legislation.
Coverage: 1789 to the present.
Provides full-text for Congressional Committee Prints, House and Senate Documents and Reports (Congressional Serial Set), Hearings, and Legislative Histories. It also covers full text of congressional working papers and bills, as well as the Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, and the U.S. Code. It provides access to a wide variety of additional information, including member biographical and committee assignment information, voting records, and financial data.

Avalon Project at the Yale Law School: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy
The project contains digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government from pre-18th Century to current.
Congress.gov
This is part of the Library of Congress website that was launched in 1995 and makes federal legislative information freely available to the public.
U.S. Supreme Court
Court documents, opinions, rulings, history, justice biographies, and news.

FedWorld/FLITE U.S. Supreme Court Decisions
Full text of Supreme Court Decisions issued between 1937 and 1975.

Oral Histories

Berkley Oral History Center
Over 4,000 interviews on almost every topic imaginable. The vast majority of these interviews have been transcribed and made available online.
CSU Fullerton Oral History Center
With close to 6,000 recorded interviews and related transcripts, photographs, and other materials, COPH maintains the largest oral history archive in the state of California.
Northwestern University Guide to Oral Histories

Art, Photography & Design

America from the Great Depression to World War II
55,000 black and white (more coming) and 1600 color photographs from the Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information collection have been digitized. I
By the People, For the People
Subtitled Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943, this searchable site contains over 900 posters from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal.
Emergence of Advertising in America
The Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850 - 1920 (EAA) presents over 9,000 images, with database information, relating to the early history of advertising in the United States.
LIFE Photo Archive Hosted by Google
Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today.

ArtStor Digital Library This link opens in a new window
Provides over 1.6 million digital images with new image collections added several times a year. It covers many time periods and subjects including architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, design, anthropology, ethnographic and women's studies, as well as many other forms of visual culture.
The database can be searched by Keyword, Creator, Title, Location, Repository, Subject, Material, Style or Period, Work Type, Culture, Description, Technique, and Number.
Berg Fashion Library - Bloomsbury This link opens in a new window
Berg Fashion Library provides integrated text and image content on world dress and fashion throughout history. It includes the Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, an extensive E-Book collection, a vast image bank, extra reference resources and more.

The Met Digital Collections
Over 400,000 digital representations of create works from cultures around the globe.

Historical Maps

American Memory Maps Collection
An American map collection 1500-2004
David Ramsey Historical Map Collection
The historical map collection has over 22,000 maps and images online. The collection focuses on rare 18th and 19th century North American and South American maps and other cartographic materials. Historic maps of the World, Europe, Asia, and Africa are also represented.
Sanborn Maps
Large-scale maps, dating from 1867 to the present and depicting the commercial, industrial, and residential sections of some twelve thousand cities and towns in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
University of Texas Historical Maps

Historical Music

Historic American Sheet Music Project
Digitized images of over 3000 pieces of American sheet music from 1850 to 1920 are presented, along with their full-color cover art and advertisements, in this searchable index. Search for specific criteria such as subject or date, or browse by cover. From The Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University.

Music & Dance Online This link opens in a new window
11 million audio tracks*, 2,500 hours of video, 1.4 million pages of scores, and 500,000+ pages of reference, archival primary sources, and periodicals, comprising the largest and most comprehensive online offering of in-copyright audio and video performances and scores available anywhere. Broad-ranging materials include videos of live performances, audio recordings, instructional films, previously unpublished works from acclaimed playwrights, performance posters and playbills, video interviews, and choreography not seen since the time of its original performance.
Please use VPN to access the database remotely.
It includes the following collections:
Music Online: Listening
Music Video Collection
Music Reference Collection
Music Online: Classical Scores Library
Music Online: Music Periodicals of the 19th Century
Dance Online: Dance in Video, Volume I
Dance Online: Dance in Video, Volume II
Dance Online: Dance Studies Collection

Latin American History

John Carter Brown Library, Brown University
for digitized rare books, see Digital Book Collections for image bank of digitized colonial-era images, see Image Collections
Latin America Digital Initiatives, University of Texas
Collections with an emphasis on collections documenting human rights issues and underrepresented communities.
Latin American Pamphlets
Scarce and unique pamphlets, primarily from Chile, Cuba, Bolivia and Mexico, published during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Princeton’s Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean Ephemera
Archivo General de Colombia
contains extensive collection of digitized documents dealing with slavery and salve trade in Colombia.
Early Americas Digital Archives
digitized works of documents about the Americas written from 1492 to the 1820s.
Gender and Race in colonial Latin America

University Library

Primary Sources

California

The United States

World

Historical Newspapers

U.S. Law & Legislation

Oral Histories

Art, Photography & Design

Historical Maps

Historical Music

Latin American History