Primary sources provide firsthand evidence of historical events. They are generally unpublished materials such as manuscripts, photographs, maps, artifacts, audio and video recordings, oral histories, postcards, and posters. In some instances, published materials can also be viewed as primary sources for the period in which they were written. In contrast, secondary sources, such as textbooks, synthesize and interpret primary sources.
From the UCLA Institute on Primary Resources
Digital Public Library of America
Digitized primary sources from libraries, archives, and museums.
Discovering American Women's History Online
This database provides access to digital collections of primary sources (photos, letters, diaries, artifacts, etc.) that document the history of women in the United States. These diverse collections range from Ancestral Pueblo pottery to interviews with women engineers from the 1970s.
Explore millions of items from a range of Europe's leading galleries, libraries, archives and museums. Books and manuscripts, photos and paintings, television and film, sculpture and crafts, diaries and maps, sheet music and recordings, they’re all here.
Library of Congress Digital Collections
The Library of Congress has made digitized versions of collection materials available online since 1994, concentrating on its most rare collections and those unavailable anywhere else. The following services are your gateway to a growing treasury of digitized photographs, manuscripts, maps, sound recordings, motion pictures, and books, as well as "born digital" materials such as Web sites.
Online collections of Texas historical materials. Produced by the University of North Texas.
Texas: Selected Library of Congress Primary Sources
Primary source materials related to Texas history from the collections held by the Library of Congress.
Primary source materials related to Texas history. Produced by TCU.
