Research Guides: Digital Primary Sources and Collections: Online Digitized Primary Source Materials

Onine Digitized Primary Source Materials

While there is no replacement for visiting an archives to do research, many archives are still closed due to COVID-19. While for some projects this can be an insurmountable hurdle, for many topics, digital resources are available that can help meet research and teaching needs in the absence of print availability.

Many libraries, archives, and cultural institutions have digitized materials from their collections. In some cases, only noteworthy documents and objects have been digitized; in others, thousands of images have been created from a single collection. Below are links to some major digitization projects that contain historical primary source materials- browse through the collections to see if something fits your research needs. If you are looking for digitized materials on a specific topic, please contact ff2662 at wayne.edu- we can try to identify documents and images from ditigized collections represented here or elsewhere to use in teaching and research.

Below are some major collections of documents. Many other institutions have digitized collections- far too many to list here. Please reach out to a librarian or archivist who can help you find digital materials for your project!

Library of Congress Digital Collections
Millions of digitized documents and objects from the Library of Congress.
HathiTrust
Digital library of over 17 million items from member institutions. WSU is a member library, and ebooks of some print-only books are also available in HathiTrust during COVID-19 building closures. Create account at LogIn button in upper right.
Europeana
Millions of digitized artifacts from Europe's museum, archives, library and cultural heritage institutions.
Michigan Memories
Digitized artifacts from Michigan's cultural institutions and archives.
Digital Public Library of America
Discovery site for millions of digitized materials from cultural institutions across America.
Internet Archive
Millions of books, papers, journals, and images uploaded by collectors and institutions. Site also contains scanned copies of print-only books available during library closures for COVID-19.
Biodiversity Heritage Library
Over 58 million scanned pages of material related to biodiversity history and research.
Medical Heritage Library
Platform for finding digitized medical history materials.
National Library of Medicine Digital Collections
Digitized materials related to the history of medicine.
Calisphere
Over one million digitized objects from California University and cultural heritage collections.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
Hundreds of thousands of digitized images and artifacts from the holdings of the New York Public Library.
Smithsonian Library Digital Collections
Digitized material form the Smithsonian collections.
Center for Research Libraries Digital Collections
More digitized materials available to researchers.
Avalon Project
Project through Yale Law School containing digitized documents related to law, history, and diplomacy
Photography collections online curated by the National Archives
National Security Archive
Some digitized material from FOIA requests made by National Security Archives, and donated material. WSU does not have a subscription to the DNSA.
Digitized records of the National Archives and Records Administration
Access to these records requires a subscription to one the National Archives' digitization partner platforms like Ancestry.com or Familysearch.com. WSU does not have a subscription to Ancestry.com; however, a basic ancestry.com subscription costs $24.95 per month. Free initial 7-day trial.
NARA Access to Archival Databases
"AAD is a search engine into some of NARA's holdings of electronic records. There are databases and indexes from more than 30 archival series, including over 350 data files totaling well over 50 million unique records; this number will continue to grow. Search by person, geographic areas, organizations, or dates."
National Archives Catalog
Search the catalog to identify relevant series and record groups for research. To limit to those available online, select the search filter "Available Online" at the top of the search results.
Hoover Institution Digital Collections
"A growing collection of digitized posters, photographs, manuscripts, moving images, sound recordings, and other historical materials from the Hoover Institution Library & Archives" related to twentieth century diplomacy.
Library and Archives Canada
Digitized materials from Canada's collections
NYU Guide to Labor History Collections Online
Fantastic directory of online websites, collections, and materials related to labor history. Please note that NYU subscription databases may not be available to WSU users.
Umbra Search African American History
"umbrasearch.org brings together hundreds of thousands digitized materials from over 1,000 libraries and archives across the country."
World Digital Library
"The WDL makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from all countries and cultures."
Digital Transgender Archive
"Based in Worcester, Massachusetts at the College of the Holy Cross, the DTA is an international collaboration among more than sixty colleges, universities, nonprofit organizations, public libraries, and private collections."
Indian Census of the United States - 1885-1940 (via Internet Archive)
692 digitized rolls of microfilm containing contents of the U.S. Indian Census. This microfilm was provided by the Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and sponsored by the Internet Archive.
American Archive of Public Broadcasting
"The American Archive of Public Broadcasting contains more than 50,000 hours of digitized public broadcasting programs and original materials. Some notable collections are featured here in Special Collections. Each Special Collection finding aid provides detailed information about the content, such as its creator, recommended search strategies, and related resources. Most of the materials described in the Special Collections are available online."
Historic Oregon Newspapers
"complete content for historic Oregon newspapers that have been digitized as part of the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program (ODNP). This full-text searchable database contains almost 1,400,000 pages from Oregon newspapers dated 1846 - 2020"
California Digital Newspapers
"This collection contains 577,491 issues comprising 6,388,821 pages and 42,398,323 articles.

The California Digital Newspaper Collection is a project of the Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research (CBSR) at the University of California, Riverside."
Historic Mexican and Mexican-American Newspapers
"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."
Emergence of Advertising in America
"This collection presents over 3,300 items relating to the early history of advertising in the United States. The materials, drawn from the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University, provide a significant and informative perspective on the early evolution of this most ubiquitous feature of modern American business and culture. The project was made possible by grant funding to Duke University from the 1998 Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital Library Competition."
Japan Search
"Japan Search links digital archives in the publications, cultural properties, and media arts fields and organizes metadata of varying of contents preserved by Japanese institutions and organizations into a searchable 'national, integrated and cross-sectoral portal website'."

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Onine Digitized Primary Source Materials

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