LibGuides: Primary Sources: Primary Sources Online

Arts and Humanities

Many disciplines in the art and humanities can find primary sources using digitized archival and museum collections, and digitized books and pamphlets. These collections may be fully or partially digitized, and may be available for free online. Below is a listing of digital collections to browse. Pay special attention to descriptions of what the collection holds, including topics, eras, and geographical location.

Digitized Books:

Hathi Trust
The Hathi Trust is an digital library containing digitized books and manuscripts.
World Digital Library
The World Digital Library (WDL) makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world. The WDL makes it possible to discover, study, and enjoy cultural treasures from around the world on one site, in a variety of ways. These cultural treasures include, but are not limited to, manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings.

Digitized Archival Collections:

American Journeys
American Journeys contains more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later.
Avalon Project
"The Avalon Project will mount digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government. We do not intend to mount only static text but rather to add value to the text by linking to supporting documents expressly referred to in the body of the text."
The British Library Digitized Manuscripts
The British Library has digitized many of their many of their manuscripts and archival collections, including literature, notebooks, music, and illuminated manuscripts.
The Digital Collections of the Natl. WWII Museum
The National World War II Museum is home to thousands of oral histories and hundreds of thousands of photographs.
Digital Scriptorium
An image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts.
EuroDocs
Links to sites with primary historical documents for European countries and regions. Includes prehistoric and ancient Europe.
European History Primary Sources
An index of scholarly websites that offer online access to primary sources on the history of Europe.
Hanover Historical Texts Collection
The Hanover Historical Texts Collection makes available digital versions of historical texts for use in history and humanities courses.
Harvard College Library Collections Digitization Program
To enhance access to its rich and varied collections, the Harvard College Library (HCL) has digitized thousands of historical photographs, pamphlets, manuscripts, books, music scores, rare maps and other rare and unique materials. The vast majority of these images are freely available online for public access.
Internet History Sourcebook
Fordham University's digital collection of primary sources about this time period include a collection of texts about early coffeehouses. Be sure to check out their other texts about the Enlightenment!
Library of Congress Web Guides
Guides created by the Reference Section of the Library of Congress to primary sources by subject. Many of these primary sources have been digitized to view online.
National Archives (UK)
Collections of documents relating to British History. Categories include: 20th Century Politics, Armed Services, and Migration.
NYSL American Revolutionary War, 1775-1783
The New York State Library holds an extensive collection of material on the American Revolutionary War in print, microform, and online formats. This material consists of troop rosters and other details extracted from muster and pay rolls, Loyalist records, colonial New York State history documents, military bounty land records, diaries, orderly books, personal papers of participants and broadsides.
NYSL Native American Materials
The New York State Library holds a wealth of first hand descriptions of the Native American experience in New York. These resources span four centuries, beginning with the Dutch colony of New Netherland and continuing to the close of the American frontier in western New York and beyond.
U.S. National Archives
Online Exhibits from the National Archives

Digitized Art and Museum Collections:

British Museum
The British Museum hosts world art and artifacts. Check out their online collections.
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sciences and Social Sciences

The most commonly used primary source in the sciences and social sciences is original research. Original research articles can be found using the library databases, including those listed below.

Try limiting your search using a methodology limiter or a subject limiter to focus your search on articles that contain research data.

APA PsycNET (PsycARTICLES and PsycINFO) This link opens in a new window
Index and abstracts to books, dissertations, journals and papers in psychology, including educational psychology, and full text of nearly seventy core journals. Like ERIC, PsycNET has controlled vocabulary search capabilities, and also allows limits based on demographics, age groups, methodology, and other criteria. Coverage: 1887 to present.
GreenFILE This link opens in a new window
Citations and some full text of scholarly, governmental, and general interest titles covering all aspects of human impact on the environment. Coverage: mid-1970's to present.
Health Reference Center This link opens in a new window
Full text of scholarly journals in nursing and allied health literature plus topical review articles and multimedia. Coverage: 1980 to present.
ProQuest Environmental Science Collection This link opens in a new window
The collection contains environmental science related full-text articles, access to figures and tables within articles, environmental impact statements, and the entire range of bibliographic records from Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management (ESPM).
ProQuest Health Management This link opens in a new window
Full text on healthcare administration, public health and safety, finance, personnel management, population studies, and labor law.
PUBMED This link opens in a new window
Index to medical literature from the National Library of Medicine with links to full text where available.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Citation indexes for scholarly research articles found in journals, books, and proceedings in the sciences, social sciences and art & humanities.