Archives and Primary Sources: Digital Primary Sources by Topic

This collection consists of 100 American trade cards printed during the late 19th century, including a majority of chards for businesses in the Northeast

Thousands of television commercials created or collected by the D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B) advertising agency, c. 1950-1989

A collection of digitized annual reports from Columbia Business Library, representing approximately 36 companies, c. 1950-1965

Over 3,300 advertising items and publications dating from 1850 to 1920, illustrating the rise of consumer culture and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States

The Industry Documents Library is a digital archive of documents created by industries which influence public health, including tobacco, chemical, drug, food, and fossil fuels

About 600 advertising items and publications dating from 1850 to 1920, illustrating the rise of consumer culture and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States

A collection of 247 patent medicine trade cards, c. 1870-1906

A portal to more than 30,000 images of outdoor advertisements

A collection of vintage ads from a variety of sources, sorted by category

The Archive for Digital Art collects and documents digital art projects, often including videos and context

The Archives of American Art is the world’s preeminent and most widely used research center dedicated to collecting, preserving, and providing access to primary sources that document the history of the visual arts in America

Over 200 oral histories of Chicago-based artists, architects, and designers

Broadside Ballads Online presents a digital collection of English printed ballad-sheets from between the 16th and 20th centuries, linked to other resources for the study of the English ballad tradition

A searchable collection of historic and contemporary landscape and garden images that include plans, engravings, paintings, and photographs

The Children's Poetry Archive includes recordings of children's poems read aloud

The Cities and Buildings Database is a collection of digitized images of buildings and cities drawn from across time and throughout the world

A collection of street art images relating to Covid-19, produced around the world and over the course of time

Digital collections focused around art and design held at the Smithsonian Museum

The collections include photo archive images and documentation, book materials, Frick Collection images, and archival documents

The Urban Art Mapping George Floyd and Anti-Racist Street Art database includes examples of street art from around the world that have emerged in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd as part of an ongoing movement demanding social justice and equality

Includes digital collections of some of the artwork presented at the Hammer Museum

Nearly 500 works of classical literature, including commentaries, of English translations of mainly Greco-Roman, Chinese, and Persian works

Includes drawings, photographs, letters and other materials related to the career of Marcel Breuer, one of the most influential architects and furniture designers of the twentieth century

Includes digital scans and metadata of periodicals published between 1890 and 1922

The Plains Indian Ledger Art Project includes digitized images of Plains drawings on paper, 1860-1900

The Poetry Archive includes recordings of significant poets reading their work aloud

Includes digitized materials from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Documents the musical heritage of the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans, a predominantly African American neighborhood since the early 19th century, including topics of jazz funerals, second lines, Mardi Gras, clubs, and other areas related to music and other aspects of Treme life

The Walt Whitman Archive endeavors to make Whitman's vast work freely and conveniently accessible to scholars, students, and general readers

Hosted by the University of California - Santa Barbra, the American Presidency Project includes presidential records, messages, transcripts of presidential debates, statistics of elections, and White House Press Briefing transcripts

Yale Law School database of documents related to law, history, and diplomacy spanning from 4000 BCE to the 21st century

Contains documents and images which chronicle events surrounding Supreme Court cases, busing and school integration efforts in northern urban areas, school integration in the Ann Arbor Public School District, and recent resegregation trends in American schools

The Compilation of Presidential Documents collection consists of the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents and the Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents which are the official publications of materials released by the White House Press Secretary

Includes famous presidential speeches hosted by the Miller Center, affiliated with the University of Virginia

Includes a collection of original essays, trial transcripts and exhibits, maps, images, and other materials relating to famous trials in world history, maintained by the University of Missouri, Kansas City Law School

Includes digitized copies of FBI files, documents, and media

Includes U.S. Government treaties with Native Americans, 1778-1883, and U.S. laws and executive orders concerning Native Americans,1871-1970

The database contains lawsuits, cease & desist letters, subpoenas, and other legal threats directed at those who engage in online speech

Includes presidential campaign commercials, 1952-2020, maintained by the Museum of the Moving Image

Includes National Security Administration (NSA) documents and releases housed by the American Civil Rights Union (ACLU)

Includes tribal constitutions, codes, treatises, Solicitor’s Opinions, research guides, tribal uniform commercial code drafts, and links to relevant legal websites pertaining to Native American law

Includes oral histories of members of the U.S. House of Representatives

Includes digitized copies of papers of the U.S. War Department, 1784-1800, including some transcription

Includes presidential election cartoons that appeared in Harper's Weekly, Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, Vanity Fair, and other periodicals, 1860-1912

Includes transcriptions of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon White House Tapes

Includes a collection of Puerto Rican Civil Court documents, many from the late 19th century

Selected historic decisions of the US Supreme Court, predating regular release of Court decisions on the internet

This digital collection is comprised of correspondence, dating from 1839-1841, by abolitionists, pro-slavery advocates, governmental officials, and the Amistad Africans themselves, related to the development of efforts to provide legal assistance to the Africans. The resulting trials in the U.S. court system; the political interests on the part of the United States, Cuba, and Spain; and the personal experiences of the imprisoned Africans are detailed in these letters

Includes treaties between the United States and Native American tribes, 1778-1868

Searchable database of U.S. Supreme Court decisions since 1760

A collection of materials from 50 institutions that documents the experiences and history of gender nonconforming and trans people, maintained at Northeastern University

Includes issues of the Empty Closet, one of the oldest continuously published LGBT papers in the United States, 1971-2015

These archives consist of the papers which relate to the work of the Gay Freedom Movement (GFM) in Jamaica, as well as documents the launch of the digital archives

Includes digital collections compiled by the GLBT Historical Society Museum & Archives

Includes archival footage of In the Life, a television news program and trailblazer in LGBTQ representation and equal rights advocacy

Includes videos of Just for the Record, a monthly program produced in New Orleans, 1987-1993, that covered both local and national topics of interest to the gay and lesbian community

Contains digitized copies of some of the 3,000 oral history cassettes in the Archives' Spoken Word Collection and 950 videotapes in the Video Collection

Includes a compilation of collections found in the New York Public Library that focus around LGBT experience, activism, and organization

Founded in 1952, ONE Archives currently houses periodicals, books, film, video and audio recordings, photographs, artworks, organizational records and personal papers relating to LGBTQ+ organization in the United States

Includes interviews and primary source documents from and about the LGBTQ+ community in Newark, NJ

Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP) digitizes and makes available queer zines

An ongoing project through the University of Minnesota to capture oral histories from the transgender community

The California Digital Newspaper Collection contains over 1,500,000 pages of significant historical California newspapers published from 1846-present

Digitized newspapers spanning 1777-1963 housed by the Library of Congress.

Includes more than 493 individual Colorado newspaper titles published in Colorado from 1859 up to 2020

Includes C-SPAN video footage

The Farm, Field and Fireside collection contains historically significant U.S. farm weeklies published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

The Florida Digital Newspaper Library exists to provide access to the news and history of Florida

The Historic Mexican and Mexican American Press collection documents and showcases historic Mexican and Mexican American publications published in Tucson, El Paso, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sonora, Mexico from the mid-1800s to the 1970s

The newspapers, North American Times (1902-1942) and North American Post (1946-1950), were published primarily in Japanese, with occasional, and then regularly appearing, pages published in English. Translation summaries (English) are provided for some front page stories (see “Translated Front Pages”).

Pennsylvania Civil War Era Newspaper Collection contain all the words, photographs, and advertisements from selected newspapers published during the pivotal years before, during, and after the U.S. Civil War

Includes copies of Stars and Stripes, the American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919

The posters in this collection document efforts to educate and inform people about topics relating to AIDS, 1982-present

Includes archival material and primary sources held at Harvard University's Center for the History of Medicine

A collection of images representing historically significant scientific instruments

Includes archival material and primary sources on diseases and epidemics worldwide

About 600 advertising items and publications dating from 1850 to 1920, illustrating the rise of consumer culture and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States

National Library of Medicine’s free online archive of selected book, serial, archives and manuscripts, and film resources

Includes archival material and primary sources held at the New York Academy of Medicine

A collection of 247 patent medicine trade cards, c. 1870-1906

Includes video and transcripts of interviews conducted by members of the Latina/o community affected by COVID-19

"Man-on-the-Street" Interviews Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor

Includes a collection of declassified U.S. government documents on the atomic bomb and the end of the war in the Pacific

Civil War diaries and letters held at the University of Iowa

This online collection provides access to about 7,000 different views and portraits made during the American Civil War (1861-1865) and its immediate aftermath

A Continent Divided is committed to digitizing primary source materials drawn from the UT-Arlington Library's Special Collections, long recognized as one of the premier repositories on the 1846-1848 conflict

Pamphlets, books, broadsides, cartoons, clippings, paintings, maps, and other print memorabilia about America from circa 1830 to 1880

Documents relating to the U.S. decision to drop the atomic bomb

The Donovan Nuremberg Trials collection consists of nearly 150 bound volumes of Nuremberg trial transcripts and documents from the personal archives of General William J. Donovan (1883-1959)

The First World War thematic collection gathers the untold stories and official histories of World War I, in a unique blend of cultural heritage collections and personal items contributed by European citizens

The Historic Government Publications from World War II contains 343 Informational pamphlets, government reports, instructions, regulations, declarations, speeches, and propaganda materials distributed by the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) during the Second World War

Focusing on the Korean War, this collection includes 275 documents totaling 1151 pages, including photographs and government reports

Includes Korean War propaganda leaflets, which often include cartoons and anti-communist messages.

Contains the full text of 260 League of Nations documents

The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas is a comprehensive program dedicated to documenting, preserving and disseminating the remembered past of persons affiliated with and affected by the Nevada Test Site during the era of Cold War nuclear testing

Includes trial transcripts, briefs, document books, evidence files, and other papers from the trials of military and political leaders of Nazi Germany

Features 68 motion pictures, produced between 1898 and 1901, of the Spanish-American War and the subsequent Philippine Revolution

Includes copies of Stars and Stripes, the American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919

Declassified documents relating to the Tet Offensive

In addition to images and military documents – such as muster rolls, generals’ orders, and supply requests – this collection also includes a significant amount of correspondence and journals related to the Civil War and Reconstruction Era

The Veterans History Project of the American Folklife Center collects, preserves, and makes accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans

Includes a series of photographs and oral history interviews related to veterans who served 1940s-present

Includes oral histories and digitized materials related to the Vietnam War

Materials relating to the War of 1812 maintained by Indiana University

The WVHP’s strengths are oral histories and materials from veterans of World War II, but it also includes the stories and materials of women who served in World War I, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War era, Desert Storm, the Gulf Wars, and the War on Terror

Includes newspaper clippings related to World War I, 1914-1926

This digital collection provides a sampling of UW-Madison's World War I Special Collection

Includes more than 300 World War II-era posters issued by various U.S. government agencies

A compilation of World War I Postcards held at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

Includes posters from World War I and World War II

Includes maps, images, and texts relating to African American migration throughout the United States

Includes broadsides, sheet music, pamphlets and government publications relating to alcohol, temperance, and prohibition

Includes documents, images, maps, and other archival material related to Northwest Coast and Plateau cultures

American Journeys contains more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration

Includes oral histories focused on the experience of migration, dislocation, and community formation as immigrants, asylum-seekers, refugees, and other newcomers themselves understood it

A selection of recorded oral history interviews chronicling African-American life during the age of legal segregation in the American South, from the 1890s to the 1950s

Includes archival material and primary sources documenting political and social touchstones in the fight for equality, 1790-present

Includes images, documents, and oral histories relating to the Bracero Program

Illustrates nineteenth and early twentieth century Chinese immigration to California through about 8,000 images and pages of primary source materials

Includes archival material and primary sources relating to African, Basque, Chinese, German, Italian, Japanese, Jewish, Mexican, Russian, and Native Americans in the Columbia River Basin

Includes oral histories and other materials from about about Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II

The Digital Library on American Slavery is an expanding resource compiling various independent online collections focused upon race and slavery in the American South, made searchable through a single, simple interface

Includes archival materials and primary sources held at the Disability History Museum Library

Includes sixteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs related to southern history, literature, and culture

The Duke Collection of American Indian Oral History online provides access to typescripts of interviews (1967-1972) conducted with hundreds of Indians in Oklahoma regarding the histories and cultures of their respective nations and tribes

Feeding America is an online collection of some of the most important and influential American cookbooks from the late 18th to early 20th century

The First Nations Collection of the Southern Oregon Digital Archives consists of documents, books, and articles relating to the indigenous peoples of parts of Oregon and California

Interviews and transcripts concerning the Great Depression

Includes video, images, oral histories, and other documentation concerning Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

Documenting voluntary immigration to the United States from the signing of the Constitution to the start of the Great Depression

The Indian Peoples of the Northern Great Plains Collection includes photographs, paintings, ledger drawings, documents, serigraphs, and stereographs,1874-1949.

Includes over 500,000 archival documents about Santa Fe Indian School and others, as well as boarding school records, yearbooks, and letters

Contains thousands of primary sources documenting Japanese American internment, including letters, diaries, photographs, and U.S. War Relocation Authority records

Includes more than 13,000 pages of documents, over 1,900 photographs, and about 180 sound files together in one searchable collection that documents the Korean American community during the period of resistance to Japanese rule in Korea and reveal the organizational and private experience of Koreans in America between 1903 and 1965

Includes archival material, primarily photographs and documents, meant to capture the history of Latino and Chicana/o people and culture in Southern California

Includes a collection of era photographs, documents, and oral history interviews concerning the Bracero Program

Includes autobiographical narratives of fugitive and former slaves published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books in English up to 1920

The Onda Latina Collection consists of 226 digitally preserved audio programs including interviews, music, and informational programs related to the Mexican American community and their concerns from the radio series "The Mexican American Experience" and "A esta hora conversamos" the Longhorn Radio Network, 1976-1982

Includes transcripts and audio of speeches given by social and political Black leaders of the 20th and 21st centuries

The Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division collects, preserves, and makes available for research purposes rare, unique, and primary materials that document the history and culture of people of African descent throughout the world, with a concentration on the Americas and the Caribbean

The Archive contains more than 150,000 digital items, a tally that includes more than 40,000 emails and other electronic communications, more than 40,000 first-hand stories, and more than 15,000 digital images documenting September 11th

This digital collection is comprised of correspondence, dating from 1839-1841, by abolitionists, pro-slavery advocates, governmental officials, and the Amistad Africans themselves, related to the development of efforts to provide legal assistance to the Africans. The resulting trials in the U.S. court system; the political interests on the part of the United States, Cuba, and Spain; and the personal experiences of the imprisoned Africans are detailed in these letters

Includes visual records (drawings, woodcuttings, postcards, etc.) recording the African slave trade and slave life in the early African diaspora both in the United States and internationally

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries millions of Africans were forced to become enslaved people in the American colonies. This guide provides access to Library of Congress digitized primary sources, links to related websites, and a print bibliography

Slavery narratives presented by the Museum of the African Diaspora

The Slave Societies Digital Archive (formerly Ecclesiastical and Secular Sources for Slave Societies), directed by Jane Landers and hosted at Vanderbilt University, preserves endangered ecclesiastical and secular documents related to Africans and African-descended peoples in slave societies

The Trans-Atlantic and Intra-American slave trade databases are the culmination of several decades of independent and collaborative research by scholars drawing upon data in libraries and archives around the Atlantic world

The Archive's collection is broad and interdisciplinary in documenting the social, cultural, religious, political, and economic life of Americans of Southeast Asian origin

Includes cartoons, propaganda, industry records, and other archival materials related to temperance and prohibition

A libguide of digital collections relating to the transatlantic slave trade presented by the University of Pittsburgh Library System

Includes oral histories of Vietnamese Americans with the primary goal of capturing first-generation stories

Includes oral histories focused on Latina/o experience in the United States

Includes a variety of material meant to preserve and document the Filipino American experience

The diaries in this digital collection were written by British and American women who documented their travels to places around the globe, including India, the West Indies, countries in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, as well as around the United States

Archival material and primary sources relating to women's impact on the economic life of the United States between 1800 and the Great Depression