What are primary sources?
Primary sources are first-hand sources created at the time of a particular event or period.
- Primary source basics: a video tutorial (Gale Cengage)
- Comparing primary and secondary sources (NU Library)
- Using primary sources: questions to ask (Library of Congress)
Finding archives with sources on your topic:
Primary sources can be found online, reproduced in printed books, or in their original form in archival collections. To find out which American archives have manuscripts and records on your topic, search ArchiveGrid. See our ArchiveGrid tutorial.
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Historical Newspapers
Key European newspapers at Northeastern
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Illustrated London News (1842 - 2003)Historical archive of the world's first pictorial weekly newspaper. Pages are fully searchable.Try using the advanced search and limiting to "editorial and commentary" for opinion pieces.
Openly available on the web:
Austrian Newspapers Online. Many historical newspapers. Dates vary from 1780 to 1930s
Compact Memory (1806-1938 Jewish newspapers)
Denmark Illustreret Tidende (1759-1865)
International Times (London, 1966-present)
Le Figaro (1830-1942) From Gallica (National Library of France)
Le Gazzette Bolognesi (Italy 1674-1796)
Hamburger Abendblatt (German 1948 - present)
Hemeroteca Digital (Spain. Many newspapers, covering 1772-1933)
Historische Kranten. Dutch newspapers from the 1st half of the 20th century.
Illustrated London News, 1842-2003 Historical archive of the world's first pictorial weekly newspaper. Pages are fully searchable.
Leeuwarder Courant (Dutch 1752-present)
Le Temps(1861-1938) From Gallica (National Library of France)
La Vanguarda (Barcelona, Spain newspaper 1881-present)
Die Zeit Online (German 1946-present)
Europe: Large Primary Source Collections
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Anemi: Digital Library of Modern Greek StudiesA catalog and collection of online books about modern Hellenism (University of Crete Library)
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Avalon Project (Yale University)Includes documents in the fields of law, history, politics, and government. Significant coverage of treaties and conventions.
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Deutsche Digitale BibliothekA digital library of German history including images and cultural artifacts.
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Eurodocs (Brigham Young University)Links to primary source documents from European jurisdictions. Most are historical legal codes and official archives.
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European History Primary SourcesA search engine to help you find major primary source repositories, mostly national archives and major digital collections.
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EuropeanaA master search of digitized objects from many of Europe's major cultural institutions.
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French political pampletsA facinating if narrowly specialized collection from Brigham Young, from about 1550-1650.
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French Revolution Digital Archive (Stanford University Libraries and the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF))Key research sources of the French Revolution, based around two main resources, the Archives parlementaires and a vast corpus of images first brought together in 1989 and known as the Images de la Revolution française.
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GallicaStrong on manuscripts, maps and images documenting the history of France, including French colonies.
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L'Histoire par l'imageA gorgeous collection of images illustrating the history of France
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Kansalliskirjasto (National Library of Finland)More of an emphasis on images than on text documents like those found in the National Archives
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The Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval StudiesSponsored by Georgetown University, a large collection of primarily European medieval sources. Another example of early attempts to catalog the Web. Browsable both by topic (art, Judaism, philosophy, etc.) and format (images, primary texts, maps).
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Medici Archive ProjectFocus on early modern Florence and the Medici Court. Unlike many online collections, this is designed with digital humanities in mind, providing support for digital scholarship on the early modern period as well as access to documentary sources.
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Monumenta Germaniae Historica Digital (Bavarian State Library)a comprehensive series of carefully edited and published primary sources, both chronicle and archival, for the study of Northwestern and Central European history from the end of the Roman Empire to 1500. (Source:wikipedia)
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National Digital Library of PolandThe history of Poland reflected in books, periodicals, maps and atlases, photographs, prints and drawings, manuscripts, postcards. Of special interest are musical scores.
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Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatien (Institute of Netherlands History)In addition to this Dutch history collection, the Institute has scanned numerous primary source works. In Dutch.
Early Modern Britain
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Early English Books OnlineVirtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700, with digital facsimile page images.
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Eighteenth Century Collections (Gale Cengage)Significant English-language and foreign-language titles printed in the United Kingdom between the years 1701 and 1800. The database contains books, pamphlets, essays, and broadsides, and is full-text searchable on more than 33 million pages. The works that were filmed for this collection come from a number of major institutions, including the British Library, the Bodleian (Oxford), Cambridge University, Harvard University, Library of Congress, the Huntington Library, University of Manchester and many more.
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Eighteenth Century Ireland (Iris an dá chultúr)Journal of the Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society, regarding all aspects of the Irish experience, at home and abroad. Via JSTOR.
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Eurodocs: History of the United KingdomNicely organized collection of primary source official papers and documents of the British government, including individual monarchs.
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London Lives: 1690 to 1800: Crime, Poverty and Social Policy in the Metropolis240,000 manuscripts from 8 archives, fully searchable. Includes background, biographies of individuals, and references for further reading.
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Old Bailey OnlineFully searchable edition of the Proceedings of the Old Bailey, the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.
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Uniting the Kingdoms (Great Britain National Archives)This exhibition looks at how the governments and people of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, and of England's French territories, interacted in politics, warfare, religion, trade and everyday life, and describes events and forces that influenced ideas of identity, loyalty and nationhood.
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British History OnlineSignificant primary source materials from the Anglo-Roman period to the present, including some pre-1992 material from Ireland and documents relating to British colonies.