WorldWide Online Digital Primary Sources
The Internet Archive is a vast store house of freely available information on the Internet. The Archive currently provides access to millions of books and text, audio files, film, videos, images, and software programs. The site’s Wayback Machine allows one to search for web sites no longer actively available on the Internet.
World Digital Library (Library of Congress)
The World Digital Library (WDL) is a project of the U.S. Library of Congress. The WDL makes available on the Internet, in multilingual format, significant primary materials from all countries and cultures around the World. Content on the WDL includes books, manuscripts, maps, newspapers, journals, prints and photographs, sound recordings, and films.
WDL items can be browsed by place, time, topic, type of item, language, and contributing institution. The search feature can be used to search all of the metadata and descriptions and the full text of printed books on the site.
Each item on the WDL is accompanied by an item-level description that explains its significance and historical context. Additional information about selected items is provided by curator videos. Other features include advanced image-viewing, timelines, interactive maps, and in-depth thematic sections on selected topics (in preparation).
Internet History Sourcebooks Project (Fordham University)
The Project is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts for educational resources, such as course syllabi. The collection focuses on the "western civilization" approach to history but also providing information on Byzantine, Islamic, Jewish, Indian, East Asian, and African history. You will also find many documents especially relevant to women's history and LGBT studies.
European Online Digital Primary Sources
These open access sources are readily available to all -- without fees or subscriptions.
Links connect to European primary historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. In addition, you will find video or sound files, maps, photographs or other imagery, databases, and other documentation. The sources cover a broad range of historical happenings (political, economic, social and cultural). The order of documents is chronological wherever possible.
Primary Sources for European History (University of California, Irvine)
This site is a fantastic clearinghouse for digital records documenting European history. It is essentially a “one stop fits all” site. The larger parent site for this project includes links to British, Asian, African, Latin American, and Middle East history.
Primary Sources for European History (Reference and User Services Association)
A clearinghouse of digital primary sources similar to the University of California, Irvine, site but with some additional links.
Shoah (Holocaust) (Brigham Young University)
Part of EuroDocs, this portal brings together primary source material documenting the Holocaust. Links provide access to material maintained by repositories and institutions around the world.
London Lives (The Digital Humanities Institute)
London Lives] makes available, in a fully digitized and searchable form, a wide range of primary sources about eighteenth-century London, with a particular focus on plebeian Londoners. This resource includes over 240,000 manuscript and printed pages eight London archives and is supplemented by fifteen datasets created by other projects. It provides access to historical records containing over 3.35 million name instances. Facilities are provided to allow users to link together records relating to the same individual, and to compile biographies of the best documented individuals.
Revolutionary Players: Making of the Modern World (University of Birmingham, England)
Collection of digital documents and narrative histories on the Industrial Revolution in England. The site brings together digital material from libraries, archives, and museums across the West Midlands of England.
German History in Documents and Images (German Historical Institute)
German History in Documents and Images (GHDI) is a comprehensive collection of original historical materials documenting German history from the beginning of the early modern period to the present. The project comprises ten sections, each of which addresses a discrete period in Germany's history.
African Online Digital Primary Sources
Internet African History Source Book (Fordham University)
This site is a sub-section of the Internet History Source Book project.
The South African History Archive (SAHA) is an independent human rights archive dedicated to documenting, supporting and promoting greater awareness of past and contemporary struggles for justice through archival practices and outreach, and the utilisation of access to information laws.
Islamic Manuscripts from Mali (Library of Congress)
Features 32 manuscripts from the Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library and the Library of Cheick Zayni Baye of Boujbeha, both in Timbuktu, Mali. The manuscripts presented online are displayed in their entirety and are an exemplary grouping that showcase the wide variety of subjects covered by the written traditions of Timbuktu, Mali, and West Africa.
Ross Archive of African Images
The Archive aspires to include all the figurative African objects in books, periodicals, catalogues, newspapers, and other publications appearing in 1920 and earlier - the oldest dates to 1591. The site does not include the ability to browse images. The site does provide basic and advanced search options.
Historical Papers held by the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
The Historical Papers research archive is a project of the William Cullen Library at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. The collection is one of the largest and most comprehensive independent archives in Southern Africa, housing over 3300 collections documenting the mid-17th Century to the present.