United States Online Digital Primary Sources

Archive of Native American Oral History

An online portal that brings together oral history interviews of Native Americans maintained by seven major universities in the United States.

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Digital Resources

A comprehensive site with links to state archives digital collections, various virtual collections documenting specific subjects, documentary editions and digitized family and personal collections.

DocsTeach (National Archives and Records Administration)

Access thousands of primary sources— letters, photographs, speeches, posters, maps, videos, and other document types — spanning the course of American history.

Founders Online (National Archives and Records Administration)

Through this website, you can read and search through thousands of records from George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison and see firsthand the growth of democracy and the birth of the Republic. Founders Online also includes transcriptions of thousands of documents that have not yet appeared in the published volumes, provided via our Early Access program.

The Long 19^th Amendment Project Portal (Harvard University, Schlesinger Library)

This project site provides a portal to digital material and collection finding aids for archival collections documenting United States women’s history. These collections are housed in archival facilities around the country.

JSTOR Open Community Collections

JSTOR’s Open Community Collections provides free and open access to primary source materials in the United States and around the world in a wide variety of subjects contributed by libraries, museums, and archives. This is a pay site, but NMU students, faculty, and staff may access it with their University username and password.

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers (Library of Congress)

Chronicling America provides access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages, and is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). NDNP, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages. Supported by NEH, this rich digital resource will be developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress. An NEH award program will fund the contribution of content from, eventually, all U.S. states and territories.

Library of Congress Digital Collections

The “clearinghouse” website for digital collections available at the LOC. The site is organized by collection. Formerly known as the “American Memory” project.

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)

DPLA is an online “portal” that provides access to digital content from libraries and archives around the United States. Researchers can browse by topic or geographic location. DPLA also includes a useful collection of “Primary Source Sets” that groups digital material by topic.

Getty Search Gateway (J. Paul Getty Institute)

The Getty Search Gateway allows users to search across several of the Getty repositories, including collections databases, library catalogs, collection inventories, and archival finding aids.

This tool is designed to help researchers, scholars, and educators discover the variety of resources available across the Getty's collections, which include collections in each the four programs: the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, and the Getty Research Institute. Users can use the tool to browse our collections broadly, by type of resource (i.e., paintings, books, archives), or to search directly for assets related to very specific subjects—historical periods, artists, object types, etc.

New York Public Library Digital Collections

A fantastic collection of nearly 900,000 digital items. The collection is easily searchable and can be browsed by historical topic or geographical area.

Museum of the City of New York Digital Collections

A vast collection of over 205,000 digital objects from manuscript material and artifacts documenting the history of New York, the central Atlantic region, and the United States.

Documenting the American South (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

Documenting the American South(DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes sixteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.

North Carolina Digital Collections (State Archives of North Carolina)

The North Carolina Digital Collections contain over 90,000 historic and recent photographs, state government publications, manuscripts, and other resources on topics related to North Carolina. The Collections are free and full-text searchable, and bring together content from the State Archives of North Carolina and the State Library of North Carolina.

Georgia Archives Virtual Vault (University of Georgia)

This site includes digital reproductions of the state of Georgia's most important historical documents, from 1733 to the present. The Virtual Vault provides virtual access to historic Georgia manuscripts, photographs, maps, and government records housed in the state archives.

Low Country Digital Library (South Caroline Digital Library)

The Lowcountry Digital Library (LCDL) produces digital collections and projects that support research about the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and historically interconnected sites in the Atlantic World.

The Iowa Heritage Digital Collections (State Library of Iowa)

The Iowa Heritage Digital Collection is an online repository of Iowa history and culture, maintained by State Library of Iowa, which brings together digital resources of Iowa libraries, museums, historical societies and other cultural institutions to enhance access to and preserve long–term accessibility of these valuable materials.

Schapell Foundation Manuscript Collection

The Foundation’s focus encompasses unique themes in American history and Occupied Palestine, with emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries. Its extensive holdings include manuscripts and items from American presidents, most notably a large collection of Abraham Lincoln manuscripts; Mark Twain; Jewish soldiers in the Civil War; Albert Einstein; Theodor Herzl and early Zionism; as well as diverse subjects including Custer and the Little Big Horn. The manuscripts bring out aspects of the human side of history, including moments of dramatic irony and the fragility of the human condition.

Canadian Online Digital Primary Sources

Library and Archives of Canada

This link will take you to the LAC archives search page where one can do basic or advance searches for digital material. The search results will immediately indicate whether the item is digital.

Canadian History: Primary Sources (University of Fraser Valley, Canada)

This site provides an extensive list of digital resources by institution with a focus on British Columbia and the Canadian government.

Canadian History Research Guide: Primary Sources (Brandon University)

Another site that provides a list of digital resources and projects by institution. The site covers digital documents, newspapers, and maps.