Selected Digital Primary Sources for History

Sourced from the Edward E. Ayer Collection at the Newberry Library, this collection spans 400 years, and includes topics such as: early encounters between American Indians and Europeans; American Indians and colonial powers, and later, the US government; the Indigenous peoples of Mexico; conflict, wars, and military contact; the fur trade and Indian traders; education and American Indian residential schools; and the civil rights movement and political activism. Cross-searchable with American West.

Sourced from the Everett D. Graff Collection of Western Americana at the Newberry Library, Chicago, this collection consists of original manuscripts, maps, and ephemeral materials (e.g., wanted posters, claim certificates, news-sheets, etc.); records of key railroad companies; and papers of early pioneers, explorers, and hunters. Canada and the Pacific Northwest are well-documented; coverage includes accounts of the Gold Rush and landscape. Cross-searchable with American Indian Histories and Cultures.

Archives Canada is a gateway to archival resources found in over 800 repositories across Canada. Supported by the Canadian Council of Archives, the Provincial and Territorial Networks, and the Department of Canadian Heritage.

A permanent archive of the Canadian war experience, from any war, as told through the wartime correspondence, photographs, and other personal materials from the battlefront and home front. This project was developed by the Department of History at Vancouver Island University.

Offers a full-text collection of books and pamphlets documenting Canadian history from the first European contact to the late 19th century. Particularly strong in literature, women's history, native studies, travel and exploration, and the history of French Canada. Includes 32 million pages of content. The only electronic resource that offers full text searching across the entire corpus of CIHM fiche.

Issued by Britain's Foreign Office (FO) and Colonial Office (CO), these documents range from one-page letters or telegrams to large volumes of text and treaties. All were circulated to leading officials in the FO, the Cabinet, and Heads of British missions abroad. Includes the entire classes: CO 880/1-32 North America, 1839-1914; CO 884/1-38 West Indies, 1826-1961; FO 414/1-278 North America 1824-1941; FO 461/1-13 America, 1942-1956; and FO 462/1-10 USA, 1947-1956.

Provides a gendered perspective on a vast body of original British source material useful for researchers in history, literature, sociology, and education. Includes contextual essays by leading scholars from Australia, Canada, the UK, and USA; the essays introduce the major themes of the project and provide direct links to sources. Sources include: ephemera, pamphlets, commonplace books, diaries, periodicals, letters, ledgers, manuscript journals, poetry, receipt books, and conduct and advice literature.

Subtitle: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment. Assembled from hundreds of sources, this collection documents the relationships among peoples in North America from 1534 to 1850. It focuses on personal accounts, and provides unique perspectives from traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials. Document types include published and unpublished accounts, such as narratives, diaries, journals, and letters.

Spans five centuries, from 1492 to 1969, and charts the rise and fall of empires around the world. Sections include: Cultural Contacts (1492-1969); Empire Writing and the Literature of Empire; The Visible Empire; Religion and Empire; and Race, Class, and Colonialism (c1789-1969). This resource provides original documents and contextual essays to enable exploration of colonial history, politics, culture, and society. Cross-searchable with Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration, and Cultural Exchange.

Features a wealth of primary source materials for the study of the Great War, complemented by a range of contextual secondary sources. Includes 3 modules:
1. Personal Experiences (with letters, photographs, diaries, postcards, sheet music, etc.)
2. Propaganda and Recruitment (with aerial leaflets, atrocity propaganda, international posters, cartoons, etc.)
3. Visual Perspectives and Narratives (with material from the Imperial War Museum, including artwork, museum objects, film clips, etc.)

The single largest source for the study of women's history in the world, containing materials dated from 1543 to 1945, written in 15 languages, and originating from Continental Europe, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand. Digitized contents include: books, pamphlets, and periodicals reflecting the evolution of feminist consciousness and the movement for women's rights.

Focuses on 15 commodities with intertwined histories: chocolate, coffee, cotton, fur, oil, opium, porcelain, silver and gold, spices, sugar, tea, timber, tobacco, wheat, and wine and spirits. Commodities are documented by a range of primary materials: maps, photographs, objects, and rare books. Facilitates research through the themes of exploration and discovery, imperialism and monopoly, trade wars, economic geography, slavery, mass production, luxury, and the evolution of global branding.

Provides keyword, title, author, and subject access to material published in a number of historically important Canadian periodicals including: Maclean's Magazine, Financial Post, Monetary Times of Canada, Massey's Magazine, Canadian Bookman, Canadian Magazine, Saturday Night, and University Magazine. Indexing for most publications begins in the late 19th or early 20th century and extends until the mid-20th century.

Provides a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to Canada and America. Contains over 100,000 pages of personal narratives, including: letters, diaries, pamphlets, autobiographies, and oral histories. Much of this material was previously unpublished. Coverage begins around around 1840 and extends to the present, focusing heavily on the period from 1890 to 1920.

Essential resource for research into the history of American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Canada's First Nations. Contains over 100,000 pages of text, much of which is previously unpublished, rare, or hard to find. Integrates autobiographies, biographies, Indian publications, oral histories, personal writings, photographs, drawings, and audio files.

Largest digital collection of women’s diaries and correspondence ever assembled. Contains approximately 150,000 pages of letters and diaries from colonial times to 1950, including 7,000 pages of previously unpublished manuscripts. Draws on over 1,000 sources, including: journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings. More than 1,500 biographies enhance the use of the database. Complements British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries.

Contains over 1,500 trench journal titles sourced from leading archives around the world, including those of the Imperial War Museums and The British Library, written by service people from every type of unit and every combatant nation. Most are journals from units based on the Western Front in France and Belgium; but there are also magazines from units serving on the Eastern Front in Gallipoli, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, Britain, and America.