LibGuides: History (U.S.) Research Guide: Primary Sources

Primary Sources in the Library Collection

Our Nation's Archive by Erik Bruun (Editor); Jay Crosby (Editor)
ISBN: 1579120679
Publication Date: 1999
This book tells a history of the United States using over 1,000 primary sources and documents. Fascinating articles, history-making speeches, moving personal letters, momentous court cases and more paint an in-depth portrait of American life in all arenas: political, social, religious and cultural. Brief introduction by the authors give background information for each document. Every issue in U.S. history is covered - from the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights to Brown vs. the Board of Education and Roe vs. Wade.
The Civil War: The First Year Told by Those Who Lived It
Call Number: E464 .S56 2011
ISBN: 9781598530889
Publication Date: 2011-02-03
Drawn from letters, diaries, speeches, articles, poems, songs, military reports, legal opinions, and memoirs.

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Definitions

U.S. Constitution

A primary source is an original object or document -- the raw material or first-hand information, source material that is closest to what is being studied.

Primary sources vary by discipline and can include historical and legal documents, eye witness accounts, results of an experiment, statistical data, pieces of creative writing, and art objects. In the natural and social sciences, the results of an experiment or study are typically found in scholarly articles or papers delivered at conferences, so those articles and papers that present the original results are considered primary sources.

A secondary source is something written about a primary source. Secondary sources include comments on, interpretations of, or discussions about the original material. Secondary source materials can be articles in newspapers or popular magazines, book or movie reviews, or articles found in scholarly journals that evaluate or criticize someone else's original research.

A tertiary source is a distillation and collection of primary and secondary sources.

US History Primary Source Resources (APSU subscriptions)

American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals Collection (1691-1877) This link opens in a new window
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Collection of American periodicals published between 1691 and 1877
*EBSCO partners with American Antiquarian Society (AAS), the premier library documenting the life of America's people from the Colonial Era through the Civil War and Reconstruction, to provide digital access to the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection, the most comprehensive collection of American periodicals published between 1691 and 1877.

Series 1 (1691-1820)

AAS Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 1 presents more than 500 titles dating from 1691 through 1820. Almost every 17th- and 18th-century American title is represented in addition to the majority of works published before 1821. Subject strengths in this series include Afro-Americana, Agriculture, Children's literature, Education, Eighteenth-century imprints, Leisure and hobbies, Masonic works, Medicine, Religion, Science, Technology, The Trades, Women's literature

Series 2 (1821-1837)

AAS Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 2 presents over 1,000 titles dating from 1821 through 1837. Series 2 represents the Jacksonian Democracy era in history and is broad in scope including agriculture, entertainment, history, literary criticism, and politics.

Series 3 (1838-1852)

AAS Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 3 presents over 1,800 titles dating from 1838 through 1852. Series 3 reveals a rapidly growing young nation, where industrialization, the railroads, regional political differences, and life on the western frontier were daily realities.

Series 4 (1853-1865)

AAS Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 4 presents over 1,200 titles dating from 1853 through 1865. While the Civil War is a key focal point of Series 4, it also features a diverse record of the continuance of daily life for many Americans—both leading up to and during the war. News from the battlefront is found, in addition to the usual breadth of subject matter found in Series 1-3 (e.g., science, literature, medicine, agriculture, women’s fashion, family life, and religion).

Series 5 (1866-1877)

AAS Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 5 contains over 2,500 titles dating from 1866 through 1877. Themes presented reflect a nation that persevered through a most difficult set of circumstances—the aftermath of a bloody civil war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, the incorporation of the recently-freed African Americans into American life, a population that rapidly expanded into the Western territories, and much more. Series 5 coverage of broad subject areas reach into every facet of American life, including science, literature, medicine, agriculture, fashion, family life, politics, education and religion.
American Civil War: Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
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Primary resources on the Civil War
*knits together more than 400 sources of diaries, letters, and memoirs

*includes 100,000 pages of re-keyed and indexed text

*includes 4,000 facsimile pages of previously unpublished manuscript material
American Periodicals Series Online This link opens in a new window
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Images of the pages of American journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century
*includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century

*chronicles the development of America across 150 years

*researchers can see all of the original typography, drawings, graphic elements, and article layouts exactly as they were originally published
Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment This link opens in a new window
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History, Literature, Geography
*documents the relationships among peoples in North America from 1534 to 1850

*collection focuses on personal accounts and provides unique perspectives from all of the protagonists

*brings coherence to a wide range of published and unpublished accounts, including narratives, diaries, journals, letters and images of maps
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) This link opens in a new window
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Collection of digitized materials from the eighteenth century
*contains 26 million pages of text from more than 136,000 titles (155,000 volumes)

*contains Canonical titles of the period as well as contemporary works that analyze and debate those titles

*contains materials ranging from books and directories to Bibles, sheet music, sermons and advertisements
HeritageQuest Online This link opens in a new window
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Genealogical and historical research, U.S. census records
*includes all of the images, and extensive indexing, from the 1790 - 1930 U.S. federal censuses

*offers more than 20,000 book titles, including nearly 8,000 family histories and over 12,000 local histories \

*provides access to more than 250 primary-source documents such as tax lists, city directories, probate records, and more
Manuscript Women’s Letters and Diaries from the American Antiquarian Society This link opens in a new window
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Women's Studies, History
*Brings together 100,000 pages of the personal writings of women of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, displayed as high-quality images of the original manuscripts

*The collection is drawn entirely from the extensive holdings of the American Antiquarian Society

*Spanning 1750 to 1950, the database is particularly strong in nineteenth-century material
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories This link opens in a new window
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History, Sociology
*Provides a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada.

*More than 100,000 pages of personal narratives, including letters, diaries, pamphlets, autobiographies, and oral histories

*Materials begin around 1840 and extend to the present, focusing heavily on the period from 1890 to 1920
North American Indian Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
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History, American Indians
*Brings together more than 100,000 pages of personal stories, many of which are previously unpublished, rare, or hard to find

*The collection presents the entire spectrum of native peoples’ experiences from their own point of view

*In addition to biographies, included is a detailed timeline of Indian events, more than 20,000 photographs, and more than 2,000 oral histories, presented in audio and transcript form.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
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Women's studies, History
*Includes approximately 150,000 pages of letters and diaries from Colonial times to 1950, including 7,000 pages of previously unpublished manuscripts

*Material is drawn from more than 1,000 sources, including journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings

*The writings provide a detailed record of what women wore, what they ate, what they read, the conditions under which they worked, and how they amused themselves
Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926 (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new window
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History of Western Hemisphere (Primary Documents)
*Provides access to 29,000 titles (more than 6 million pages of text) and offers original accounts of exploration, pioneering, settlement, the western movement, military actions, Native Americans, slavery and abolition.

*Consists of books, pamphlets, broadsides and documents from sermons and political tracts to legislation and literature.

*Takes works from Joseph Sabin’s Bibliotheca Americana: A Dictionary of Books Relating to America from Its Discovery to the Present Time and makes them available online
Social and Cultural History: Letters and Diaries Online This link opens in a new window
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History, Native Americans, Sociology, Women's Studies
*Combines all of the content from Alexander Street’s seven award-winning collections of letters, diaries, and oral histories together with a growing archive of additional content

*Combined, the materials in this vast collection offer something entirely new and critically important for history research—personal, contemporaneous, first-person accounts
Brought together under a unified search interface is all the premium content from the following Alexander Street individual collections:
• North American Women’s Letters and Diaries
• Manuscript Women’s Letters and Diaries (from the American Antiquarian Society)
• British and Irish Women’s Letters and Diaries
• The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries
• North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories
• Black Thought and Culture
Women and Social Movements in the United States: 1600 to 2000 This link opens in a new window
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Women's Studies, History
*Brings together books, images, documents, scholarly essays, commentaries, and bibliographies, documenting the multiplicity of women’s activism in public life

*This resource examines perspectives on women’s social movements from colonial times to the present

*Includes primary documents, published materials, and research tools

US History Primary Source Resources (free to all)

African American History Research Guide
A research guide to primary sources for African American history from the University of Washington
American Memory (Library of Congress)
American Memory is a gateway to rich primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States. The site offers more than 5 million items from more than 90 historical collections.
American Women
A Gateway to Library of Congress Resources for the Study of Women’s History and Culture in the United States. Part of the American Memory project, but worth mentioning separately.
Digital History
includes U.S. history textbooks, essays, multimedia exhibits, historical maps, speeches and images. It also includes primary source materials on slavery, Mexican American, Asian American and Native American histories, as well as audio-visual resources, including historic music, photographs and art works, and film trailers.
Documenting the American South
A collection of sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century

European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750 This link opens in a new window
Printed records about the Americas written in Europe before 1750
*comprehensive guide to printed records about the Americas written in Europe before 1750

*derived from the seminal reference work European Americana: A Chronological Guide to Works Printed in Europe Relating to the Americas, 1493-1750.

*wide range of subject areas are covered; from natural disasters to disease outbreaks and slavery

Making of America Collection (Cornell University)
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This project provides access to a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. This site provides access to 267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints
Making of America Collection (University of Michigan)
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MoA is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection currently contains approximately 10,000 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints.

Digital Library of Tennessee (DLTN) This link opens in a new window
Tennessee Digital Collections
The Digital Library of Tennessee provides access to rare and unique primary sources housed in libraries, archives, and museums in the state of Tennessee. Explore photographs, letters, diaries, oral histories, maps, original art, music, material culture, and archival material that documents the cultural heritage of the state of Tennessee from the Pre-Columbian era to the present.

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