Finding Primary Sources - HIST 389W - History Matters III: Senior Research Project - James P. Adams Library at James P. Adams Library

Primary Source Databases

Finding primary sources for your project can be a challenge! There are, however, resources to assist you. When searching for primary sources, consider what kinds of primary sources will be useful to you. Are you looking for diaries? Letters? Government documents? Other kinds of sources? Maybe you need a specific geographic region, or a specific kind of prospective?

The kind of source you're looking for will ultimately guide where you should look for your sources, but we've included some suggestions for this class below. Still having trouble? That's understandable, as this can be one of the harder aspects of advanced history research. However, our reference librarians are here to assist! Feel free to contact us: stop by in person, send us an email, or reach out by chat or phone.

EuroDocs
EuroDocs is a powerful resource for this class. This project, developed by Brigham Young University, collects links to freely accessible primary sources about Europe, from prehistory to the present. The selected sources are also entirely translated into English, which makes this resource even more valuable. It is sorted primarily by geographical region, and additionally, for documents that refer to multiple areas, by time period.
Hathi Trust
HathiTrust Digital Library is a digital preservation repository : an online library of full text books and documents. It provides long-term preservation and access services for public domain and in copyright content from a variety of sources, including dozens of academic research libraries, Google, the Internet Archive, and Microsoft.
HathiTrust Search Tips
HathiTrust provides these search tips for use with their database, as their collection is quite broad and covers a significant amount of material. Give these a read before you dive in--but if you're having trouble, feel free to reach out to a librarian!
Europeana Collections
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The material you find here comes from galleries, libraries, archives and museums from all over Europe that want to share their collections with a wider audience, whether it is for work, learning, or just to enjoy.
Internet Archive
Digitized books and periodicals, historical and current. To "check out" current books, you will need to create a free account.

JSTOR Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
Primary source collections currently available on JSTOR are multidisciplinary and discipline-specific and include select monographs, pamphlets, manuscripts, letters, oral histories, government documents, images, 3D models, spatial data, type specimens, drawings, paintings, and more.