Library Guides: History, United States and Canada: Primary Sources

Full-text Online Collections: Canada

Full-text collections include complete texts from a particular literary genre, time period, or covering a particular subject. For more online collections for particular subjects, see Resources by Topic.

Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec Digital Collection
The National Library and Archives of Québec has digitized an impressive part of its collection, including municipal directories, court records, postcards, personal manuscript collections, and a large number of newspaper and periodical collections.
British Columbia City Directories
The Vancouver Public Library offers this online collection of British Columbia city directories, dating from 1860 to 1955.
The Canadian Letters & Images Project
An online archive of the Canadian war experience, from any war, as told through the letters and images of Canadians themselves. Located in the Department of History at Vancouver Island University.
Canadian National Digital Heritage Index
It provides access to digitized Canadian heritage collections located at Canadian universities and provincial and territorial libraries.
Canadian Pamphlets and Broadsides
Pre-1930 Canadian pamphlets and broadsides from the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto.
Canadiana
This site offers access to monographs, serials, and government publications about Canada’s past, from a coalition of memory institutions dedicated to providing access to Canada's documentary heritage.
Early Canadiana Online
This virtual library holds full-text historical content about Canada, including books, magazines, and government documents, published from the time of the first European settlers to the first half of the 20th century. Law, literature, religion, education, women’s history and aboriginal history are areas of particular strength.
Multicultural Canada
This digitization project, at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, makes accessible newspapers, interviews, photographs, and other print and material culture of Canada’s multi-ethnic communities.
New France Archives
In 2004, to mark the 400th anniversary of the French presence in North America, French and Canadian archives collaborated to create this online resource about New France.
Peel's Prairie Provinces
A multi-media resource about western Canadian history and the culture of the Canadian prairies. Includes bibliography, as well as full-text books, newspapers, postcards, maps, and other media.

Full-text Online Collections: United States

Two good places to start are

The Library of Congress Digital Collections
Smithsonian Collections Search Center (online catalog)
Search over 14 million records of museum objects, archives and library materials including more than three million online images, audio and video files, and blog posts.

The Colonial Period and the Early Republic

American State Papers, 1789-1838 This link opens in a new window
Search or browse U.S. congressional materials originating from 1789 and covering through 1838, including 1st Congress, 1st Session through 25th Congress, 2nd Session.
Colonial America This link opens in a new window
Colonial America will make available all 1,450 volumes of the CO 5 series from the National Archives, UK, covering the period 1606 to 1822. CO 5 consists of the original correspondence between the British government and the governments of the American colonies. Some Canadian material is included. Two of the five modules have been released so far.

Early American Imprints: Series I, 1639-1800
A database of some 37,000 titles, fully digitized from of the microform set Early American Imprints, Series I.
Early American Imprints: Series II, 1801-1819
This database provides full-text access to 36,000 American books, pamphlets, and broadsides.
The Virginia Company Archives
Documents the founding and economic development of Virginia as seen through the papers of the Virginia Company of London, 1606-1624.

The Nineteenth Century

American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I This link opens in a new window
From the American Antiquarian Society's collection, this database offers facsimile images of 15,000 broadsides printed between 1820 and 1900 and 15,000 pieces of ephemera printed between 1760 and 1900. Can also be searched in the database, "America's Historical Imprints."
American Civil War: Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
Provides access to an extensive range of diaries, letters, and memoirs of persons somehow involved in the American Civil War.

American Pamphlets: Series I, 1820-1922
Based from the New York Public Library's collection. Can also be searched in the database, "America's Historical Imprints."
Women Working, 1800-1930
An exploration of women's impact on the economic life of the United States between 1800 and the Great Depression.

The Twentieth Century

American decades primary sources This link opens in a new window
Full or excerpted primary sources representing seminal issues, themes, movements and events in American history.
Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) daily reports This link opens in a new window
A CIA program that monitored and translated open-source media.
Popular culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975 This link opens in a new window
This database explores the post-war period of social, political, and cultural change.

Topical

Documenting the American South
A digital publishing initiative sponsored by the University Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, this collection provides access to digitized primary materials that offer Southern perspectives on American history and culture.
Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930
This collection of historical materials is from Harvard's libraries, archives, and museums documents voluntary immigration to the United States.

In motion : the African-American migration experience This link opens in a new window
A new interpretation of African-American history that focuses on the self-motivated activities of peoples of African descent to remake themselves and their worlds.

Internet Broadway Database
Provides records of productions from the beginnings of New York theater until today.
Michiana Memory
A digital collection drawn from the St Joseph County Public Library's Local and Family History Department, documenting local area history.

Temperance and Prohibition Movement (ProQuest History Vault) This link opens in a new window
This collection contains almost all known records of the major national temperance organizations, including the Anti-Saloon League of America and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
Trade catalogues and the American home This link opens in a new window
Explore domestic consumerism, commercial tastes, and life and leisure in America between 1850-1950.

Women and Social Movement in the United States, 1600-2000 (Scholar's Edition)
This resource offers primary and secondary sources about the history of women and social movements in the United States and how they inform US history.

Full-text Online Collections: General (Canada & US)

Ad*Access
Over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements covering five product categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda - dated between 1911 and 1955.

American Indian histories and cultures This link opens in a new window
Presents insights into interactions between American Indians and Europeans from their earliest contact through late twentieth century. Browse through a wide range of rare and original documents from treaties, speeches and diaries, to historic maps and travel journals.
British online archives This link opens in a new window
This online archive offers digitized collections from British archives, about its American colonies and Canada, and later, the United States. Various topics are included, from missionary reports to diplomatic relations, and from the colonial period into the twentieth century.
Eighteenth Century collections online: ECCO This link opens in a new window
A searchable digital edition of the Eighteenth Century microfilm set, which has aimed to include every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas, between 1701 and 1800. Consists of books, pamphlets, broadsides, and ephemera.
Empire online This link opens in a new window
This resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of Empire. The materials span five centuries and are accompanied by secondary resources.
First World War This link opens in a new window
This portal showcases a wealth of primary source material for the study of the Great War, complemented by a range of contextual secondary features.
Making of the modern world This link opens in a new window
Tracks the development of the modern, western world through the lens of trade and wealth.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO) This link opens in a new window
A global digitization and publishing program focusing on primary source collections of the long nineteenth century.
North American Indian drama This link opens in a new window
Full text of plays by American Indian and First Nation (Canadian) playwrights of the 20th century, information about the plays and their production, and biographical data. It also includes issues of the Native playwrights' newsletter.
North American women's drama This link opens in a new window
When complete, this collection will include more than 1,500 plays written by women, along with related biographical, production, and theatrical information spanning from the 18th century to the present.
North American women's letters and diaries This link opens in a new window
Provides access to some 150,000 pages of letters and diaries of 1,300+ women writing from Colonial times to 1950. Writers reflect all age groups and life stages, all ethnicities, and many geographical regions.
Sabin Americana, 1500-1926 This link opens in a new window
Based on Joseph Sabin's landmark bibliography, this collection contains works about the Americas published throughout the world from 1500 to the early 1900's. Included are books, pamphlets, serials and other documents that provide original accounts.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery. Part 1: Debates over Slavery and Abolition This link opens in a new window
Documents and images of the transatlantic slave trade and the global movement to abolish slavery, from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries.
State papers online : the government of Britain, 1509-1714, pts. 1-4, and 18th Century, pt. 1 This link opens in a new window
Facsimiles of the manuscript papers of the Secretary of State from 1509 to 1782. Includes a fully searchable set of Calendars, linked to manuscript facsimiles, with essays by historians of the period.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
Documents almost 36,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Twentieth century North American drama This link opens in a new window
Contains more than 1,500 full-text plays by more than 200 playwrights. Includes selected playbills, production photographs, information on related productions, theaters, and production companies.
World's Fairs This link opens in a new window
Explore the phenomenon of world's fairs from the Crystal Palace in 1851 and the proliferation of North American exhibitions, to fairs around the world and twenty-first century expos.

Historical Newspapers

See also the Journalism and Newspapers guides.

Access World News Research Collection This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text information and perspectives from hundreds of U.S. and international news sources. Web-only content and images are available. Coverage varies with individual newspapers, but in general coverage is recent and / or current.

Center for Research Libraries (CRL)
CRL is an international consortium of university, college, and independent research libraries. It supports original research and inspired teaching in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences by preserving and making available to scholars a wealth of rare and uncommon primary source materials from all world regions.
The Wisconsin Historical Society Newspapers
The Wisconsin Historical Society holds the US's second-best newspaper collection and they have created several guides to help researchers access it, including the Cuban Refugee Camp Newspaper Collection and the Wisconsin Ethnic Newspaper Collection, 1833-2004, among others.

Canada

British Columbia Historical Newspapers
The BC Historical Newspapers project offers digitized historical papers from around the province. The titles date from 1865 to 1994.
Democracy at War: Canadian Newspapers and the Second World War
A digitized collection of more than 140,000 contemporary newspaper clippings that report on the events of the Second World War. The English-language clippings are from the archive of the Hamilton Spectator (Ontario), while the French-language materials are from Le Devoir (Montréal, Quebec).
Digitized Newspapers from Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia
Simon Fraser University has made available several collections of historical newspapers to make Canada's diverse, immigrant past accessible. Included here is the Chinese Times and a collection of immigrant papers from across BC.
Guide to Historical Canadian Newspapers Available Online
This guide, from Bowling Green State University, provides links to historical Canadian newspapers that are freely available on the Internet.
Maclean's
A national weekly newspaper that also covers international events, especially as they relate to Canada. Offers access from 1984.
Manitoba Digital Resources: Newspapers
Search a collection of English and French-language papers from the province of Manitoba.

United States

Accessible archives This link opens in a new window
Provides selected text and full images (of varying quality) from 18th and 19th-century American newspapers and newspaper collections including: Pennsylvania Gazette (1728-1800); The Civil War: A Newspaper Perspective (Nov. 1860-Apr. 1865); nineteenth-century African American newspapers; The Liberator (1831-1865); The Virginia Gazette (1736-1780), the nineteenth-century women's movement, and others. This is a growing collection.
America's historical newspapers This link opens in a new window
A growing collection allows users to search more than 1,000 U.S. historical newspapers published between 1690 and 1998 [and beyond], including titles from all 50 states. Created by Readex through partnerships with the American Antiquarian Society, Library of Congress, Wisconsin Historical Society and others.
American Indian Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Includes periodicals produced in the United States and British Columbia, from 1828 to 2016.
American Prison Newspapers 1800-2020 This link opens in a new window
Includes women's-only institutions. New content added regularly.
American Religion: Denominational Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Historical newspapers covering religious news, and the role religion played in American life and society. Supports research of early American history, religious history, ethnic studies, abolitionism, Civil War, and gender studies. More than 320 rare newspapers from over 30 states published between 1799 and 1900.
Caribbean Newspapers. Series 1 (1718-1876) This link opens in a new window
The largest collection of 18th and 19th-century Caribbean newspapers. Colonial history, the Atlantic slave trade, New World slavery and more a comprehensive resource for studying the development of Western society.

The Catholic News Archive
Part of the Catholic Research Resource Alliance, this growing collection focuses on digitizing Catholic newspapers during the Vatican II years (1958-1970). The site offers thousands of newspaper pages, from different cities, over multiple years. Includes newspapers editorials, pictures, and advertisements.
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
The Library of Congress's portal, for newspapers from 1789 through 1922.

CQ researcher This link opens in a new window
Covers the most current and controversial issues of the day with summaries, pros and cons, bibliographies and more, with a United States focus. Includes news covered in print issues of: Editorial research reports (1924-1986), Congressional quarterly's editorial research reports (1987-1991) and CQ researcher (1991-).
Independent voices This link opens in a new window
A digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals from the latter half of the 20th century. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines.
Nexis Uni (formerly LexisNexis Academic) This link opens in a new window
Nexis Uni offers print and online journals, television and radio broadcasts, newswires and blogs, as well as local, regional, national and international newspapers with deep archives.
Newspaper source plus This link opens in a new window
Provides full text for more than 40 national (U.S.) and international newspapers, and selected full text for more than 200 regional (U.S.) newspapers, Full text television & radio news transcripts are also included.

Nineteenth Century Newspapers
Offers digital facsimile images of newspapers; presented as full page layout as well as single articles; advertisements and illustrations retained. Includes newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S. and encompasses the entire 19th century.

Proquest Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Contains English language newspapers primarily from the United States (including some American Jewish newspapers) but has some non-American English language newspapers, including The Guardian (1821-2003) and The Observer (1791-2003), and Irish Times (1859-2011).

U.S. Newspaper Directory
1690 - present

Image and Multimedia Collections

These resources aid in locating images, films, oral histories, and records of artistic or musical performances. See the Art, Art History, and Design LibGuide for more information on locating images, including of works of art.

General

Internet Archive
Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
Over 700,000 items digitized from the New York Public Library's collection.

Popular culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975 This link opens in a new window
This database explores the post-war period of social, political, and cultural change; includes video and photographs.

The Virtual Museum of Canada
With more than 500 virtual exhibits, the Virtual Museum of Canada is the largest source of online content and experiences shared by large and small Canadian museums and heritage organizations.

Audio (Oral Histories and Music)

Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling Archives
A description of some of the oral histories by Canadians held at this archive. Most can only be accessed at the archive.
Chicago History Museum - Oral History Collection
A series on the 1968 Democratic Convention, and one on the history of the Garfield Park neighborhood since 1970.
First World War Audio Archive (Canadian)
This site offers a handful of oral interviews of Canadian veterans of WWI.
Great Speeches of the Twentieth Century
Japanese Canadian Oral History Collection
A collection of interviews conducted by the National Nikkei Museum & Heritage Centre with Japanese Canadians on topics ranging from early immigration; their participation in pre-World War II industries; and their internment during World War II.
Library of Congress - Audio Recordings
Michiana Memory--Oral Histories
This collection preserves the stories of the people of South Bend and St. Joseph County in their own words.
Music Online: American Music
This database allows people to hear and feel the music from America's past. It includes songs by and about American Indians, miners, immigrants, slaves, children, pioneers and cowboys. Included in the database are the songs of Civil Rights, political campaigns, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, anti-war protests, and more.

Oral History online This link opens in a new window
Provides indexing to English language oral histories held in repositories and collections; includes interview-level records (some with full text; some with links to audio or video on external websites).

Photographs and Prints

Ad*Access
Over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements covering five product categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda - dated between 1911 and 1955.
Chicago History Museum--Prints and Photographs Collection
Dating from the late 18th century to the present, this material comprises the single largest source of pictorial information for the Chicago metropolitan area.
Editorial Cartoons Collection (Canadian)
An online collection of thousands of original drawings published in Canadian newspapers between 1952 and the present, held at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.
Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920
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.
Flickr Commons
More than 100 libraries and museums (many non-US) contribute images from their collections.
Historical Photographs of British Columbia and the Yukon
The Vancouver Public Library offers this database of more than 30,000 photographs of British Columbia and the Yukon, from the 1880s to the 1980s.
Indiana Historical Society - Digital Image Collection
More than 60,000 digital images, available for research.
Library of Congress - Photo, Prints, Drawings

Video

adViews
Provides access to thousands of historic commercials created for clients or acquired by the D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles advertising agency or its predecessor during the 1950s - 1980s.

American history in video This link opens in a new window
Collection of commercial and governmental newsreels, archival footage, public affairs footage, and important documentaries.

AP Archive
The film and video archive of the Associated Press, of global news and entertainment stories dating from 1895.

Filmakers library online This link opens in a new window
Offers documentaries with relevance across the curriculum—race and gender studies, human rights, globalization and global studies, multiculturalism, international relations, the environment, and more.

Kanopy
On-demand, revolving streaming video for selected documentaries and theatrical releases.
Library of Congress - Film and Video

Television news archive, Vanderbilt University This link opens in a new window
Searchable archive of abstracts of news broadcasts from 1968 to present (ABC, CBS, NBC), 1995 to present (CNN), selected content from PBS and FOX News. Selected online video content from CNN and NBC viewable with RealPlayer.
World history in video This link opens in a new window
Provides access to critically acclaimed documentaries from filmmakers worldwide, with content that spans from the beginning of human history to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

State Papers

Canada

Canadian Government Publications Portal, the Internet Archive Canada
Internet Archive Canada, with advice and assistance from government and university librarians across Canada, have digitized more than 20,000 Canadian Government publications and made them freely available online.
Canadian Hansard Dataset
The Canadian Hansard Dataset is an online, searchable transcript of Canada's Parliamentary debates, from 1901 to the present.
CanLII
It provides access to court judgments, tribunal decisions, statutes and regulations from all Canadian jurisdictions.
Canadian Parliamentary Historical Resources
A searchable database of the debates and journals of the Senate and the House of Commons from Parliament 1, Session 1 (1867) until 1997, when coverage on Parliament of Canada begins.

Center for Research Libraries catalog This link opens in a new window
CRL collects legal and government resources for Canada, with an emphasis on serial publications, including legislative, administrative, financial, and statistical reports.

Departmental and Agency Publication Web Pages
This page provide sources and information for obtaining copies of Government of Canada publications that are not available from Publishing and Depository Services.
Federal Publication Locator
Offers access to Canadian federal government publications.
Government of Canada
The Government of Canada's official site.
Law Library Microfilm Consortium Digital
Through ND’s membership with the Center for Research Libraries, we have access to the Law Library Microfilm Consortium (LLMC) database. LLMC has digitized federal, provincial, and territorial Canadian legal and government publications. British imperial and Commonwealth sources are also available.
LEGISinfo
A research tool for finding information on legislation before Parliament. It is a collaborative effort of the Senate, the House of Commons and the Library of Parliament.
Parliament of Canada
Official site for the Senate and Parliament, which includes Parliamentary debates from 1997.
Supreme Court of Canada Reports
See the permalink: http://onesearch.library.nd.edu/NDU:nd_campus:ndu_aleph003121082

United States

Center for Research Libraries catalog This link opens in a new window
CRL has collected more than a half million volumes of monographic and serial publications of US state government agencies and legislatures from the earliest period through 1950. Most of the collection is not cataloged; to identify resources, consult state publications checklists or contact CRL’s Access Services (e-mail asd@crl.edu).
ProQuest Legislative Insight This link opens in a new window
United States legislative sources.

Law Library Microfilm Consortium Digital
Through ND’s membership with the Center for Research Libraries, we have access to the Law Library Microfilm Consortium (LLMC) database. LLMC has digitized federal, provincial, and territorial Canadian legal and government publications. British imperial and Commonwealth sources are also available.

ProQuest congressional This link opens in a new window
Provides access to historic and current congressional information. Includes full text of congressional publications, finding aids, a bill tracking service, public laws, information about members of Congress.

Presidents' Papers and Transcripts

Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress This link opens in a new window
The complete Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress consists of approximately 20,000 documents. The collection is organized into three "General Correspondence" series which include incoming and outgoing correspondence and enclosures, drafts of speeches, and notes and printed material.
Adams papers digital edition This link opens in a new window
This digital Edition comprises John Adams’s complete diaries, selected legal papers, and the ongoing series of family correspondence and state papers.

American President
This site offers presidential speeches, oral histories, and secret White House tapes, as well as essays and related content about US presidents.
James Madison Papers

JFK's foreign affairs and international crises, 1961-1963 This link opens in a new window
Originally microfilmed as JFK and Foreign Affairs, 1961-1963, this collection provides insights into President Kennedy’s views on foreign affairs, U.S. leadership of the "West," and various worldwide crises.
Papers of George Washington digital edition This link opens in a new window
A landmark in historical scholarship, The Papers of George Washington Digital Edition encompasses five separate series and the complete diaries. This digital edition offers the full content of 66 letterpress volumes in a single online publication.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson digital edition This link opens in a new window
Rotunda’s digital edition brings together the content of Thomas Jefferson's published volumes into one searchable online resource. This XML-based edition includes all the illustrations and bibliographical content of the print edition, with the added convenience of linked cross-references and indexes.

Presidential Recordings Digital Edition
5,000 hours of telephone and meeting tape that Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt through Richard M. Nixon recorded during their time in the White House is now accessible via the Presidential Recordings Digital Edition, the online portal for annotated transcripts of the White House tapes published by the Presidential Recordings Program.

Colonial America and the Early Republic

American State Papers, 1789-1838 This link opens in a new window
Search or browse US congressional materials, including 1st Congress, 1st Session through 25th Congress, and 2nd Session.
Colonial America This link opens in a new window
When completed in 2019, this database will include all 1,450 volumes of the CO 5 series of Colonial Office files held at The National Archives in London, plus all extracted documents associated with them.

Papers of the War Department, 1784 to 1800
Since fire destroyed the War Department in 1800, historians believed that its files had been lost. This collection unites copies of the lost files in a digital archive that reconstitutes this historical resource.
Probing the Past: Virginia and Maryland Probate Inventories, 1740-1810
Probate records are inventories of personal possessions, so they illuminate people's daily lives and social relations. This site includes 325 documents from Virginia and Maryland created between 1740 and 1810.

The Long Nineteenth Century

Southern Life and Slavery: Slavery and the Law
Collections of petitions on race, slavery, and free blacks that were submitted to state legislatures and county courthouses between 1775 and 1867. It also includes a comprehensive record of the laws governing American slavery from 1789-1865.

The Twentieth Century

Afghanistan and the U.S., 1945-1963: records of the U.S. State Department Central classified files. This link opens in a new window
The State Department files are a definitive source of American diplomatic reporting on political, military, social, and economic developments in Afghanistan in the latter half of the twentieth century.
Digital National Security Archive This link opens in a new window
From the nongovernmental National Security Archive, this resource holds declassified government documents covering US policy toward critical world events from 1945 to the present.

The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers: The Human Rights Years, 1945-1948
Chronicling Eleanor Roosevelt's development as diplomat, journalist, and political strategist in the years 1945 to 1948, this publication is filled with original writings and speeches.

Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) daily reports This link opens in a new window
It provides US government translations of radio broadcasts from foreign governments, official news services, and clandestine broadcasts from occupied territories, from 1941-1996.
Records of the Persian Gulf War This link opens in a new window
This collection contains materials related to the diplomatic and military response by the United States (as part of a multi-national force) to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990.
Tiananmen Square and U.S.-China relations, 1989-1993 This link opens in a new window
This digital collection reviews U.S.-China relations in the post-Cold War Era, and analyzes the significance of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, China’s human rights issues, and resumption of World Bank loans to China in July 1990.
Declassified Documents Reference System This link opens in a new window
U.S. Declassified Documents Online offers access to a broad range of previously classified federal records spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It brings together sensitive documents from all the presidential libraries and numerous executive agencies.

Law

Nexis Uni (formerly LexisNexis Academic) This link opens in a new window
Nexis Uni offers extensive legal sources for federal and state cases and statutes, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions since 1790.
Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises 1800-1926 (Law Library resource) This link opens in a new window
It covers many aspects of Anglo-America law--analytical, theoretical, and practical literature. The materials include casebooks, local practice manuals, books on legal form, works for lay readers, pamphlets, letters, and speeches.
Making of Modern Law. Primary sources (Law Library resource) This link opens in a new window
This resource holds early state and municipal codes, constitutional conventions, legal dictionaries, and published legislation and court proceedings of the American Colonies.
Making of Modern Law: Trials 1600-1926 (Law Library resource) This link opens in a new window
It holds trial transcripts for well-known as well as obscure British and American trials, but also related books and pamphlets and other publications.

Literature

Alexander Street Literature
This resource of literatures of place, race, and gender, includes collections of Black Short Fiction and Folklore, Black Women Writers, Latin American Women Writers, and Latino Literature.

Film Scripts Online This link opens in a new window
Full-text searchable database containing more than a thousand scripts for feature films. Most never before published and otherwise unavailable online. Provides details on scenes, characters, and writers.
Black short fiction This link opens in a new window
Black Short Fiction and Folklore: African, African-American, and Diaspora is a comprehensive collection of short stories and folktales from Africa and the African Diaspora, including oral traditions that date back many hundreds of years to contemporary tales of modern life.

Canadian Poetry
From the University of New Brunswick Libraries, this collection offers a comprehensive survey of Canadian poetry from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth.

Early American fiction, 1789-1875 This link opens in a new window
A collection of the full texts of 875 first editions of American novels and short stories.
Literature online the home of English and American literature on the World Wide Web LION This link opens in a new window
A virtual library containing more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, 200+ full-text literature journals, and other key criticism and reference resources. Usage info: Licensed for 4 simultaneous users
North American Indian drama This link opens in a new window
Full text of plays by American Indian and First Nation playwrights of the 20th century, information about the plays and their production, and biographical data. The collection represents groups across the United States and Canada , including Cherokee, Métis, Creek, Choctaw, Pembina Chippewa, Ojibway, Hawaiian/Samoan, Comanche, Cree, Navajo, Rappahannock , and others. Also includes issues of the Native playwrights' newsletter.
North American women's drama This link opens in a new window
When complete, this collection will include more than 1,500 plays written by women, along with related biographical, production, and theatrical information spanning from the 18th century to the present.
Readers' guide retrospective This link opens in a new window
Indexing of over three million articles from more than 550 leading magazines from 1890-1982.
Twentieth century North American drama This link opens in a new window
Contains more than 1,500 full-text plays by more than 200 playwrights. Includes selected playbills, production photographs, information on related productions, theaters, and production companies.

Periodical Literature

American periodicals series online, 1740-1900 This link opens in a new window
Consists of searchable, digitized page images from more than 1,500 18th and 19th century American periodicals. Derived from the American periodicals series microform collection I, II, and III.
Harper's weekly, 1857-1912 (HarpWeek) This link opens in a new window
HARP provides access to the weekly magazine’s illustrations, cartoons, news, literature, editorials, and advertisements.
Independent voices This link opens in a new window
A digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals from the latter half of the 20th century. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines.
LGBT Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
A searchable archive of major periodicals devoted to LGBT+ interests, dating from the 1950s through to recent years. It is in progress and is not yet complete.

Library of Congress - Periodicals

Life Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
Access to articles and images, 1936-2000.

The Modernist Journals Project
It offers digital editions of culturally significant English-language magazines from 1890 through 1922.

Periodicals archive online This link opens in a new window
Full text searchable journal collection of 350+ periodicals in the arts, humanities, and social sciences (a subset of Periodicals index online). See Periodicals index online for more extensive indexing and links to selected full text articles.
Periodicals index online This link opens in a new window
Index to millions of articles in over 4,500 periodicals in the arts, humanities, and social sciences published beginning 1770. Its scope is worldwide, covering major Western languages.
Readers' guide retrospective This link opens in a new window
Provides indexing of over three million articles from more than 550 leading magazines published in the US, 1890-1982.
Sports Illustrated Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
Access to the first issue (August 1954) through 2000.
Time Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
Cover-to-cover content from the first issue through 2000.
Women's Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
A searchable archive of 12 popular women's interest magazines, dating from the late nineteenth century through 2005. Titles include Better Homes and Gardens, Essence, Good Housekeeping, and Redbook.

Maps

The Atlas of Canada
Canadian government maps, historical and current.

Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History by Helen H. Tanner (Editor); Miklos Pinther (Illustrator)
Call Number: General Collection - E 78 .G7 A87 1986

Atlas of Historical County Boundaries
Documents changes in county boundaries for the history of the United States.

Atlas of North America
Call Number: Kellog/Kroc Information Center, General Collection - G 1105 .A8 2005 [In-Library Use Only]

Digital Sanborn maps, 1867-1970 This link opens in a new window
Includes more than 660,000 Sanborn maps charting the growth and development of more than 12,000 American towns and cities. Digital Sanborn Maps was created from ProQuest Information and Learning's microfilm collection of 660,000 Sanborn Maps, which were filmed from the Library of Congress' collection. The Library's Sanborn collection includes all maps submitted to the Library through copyright deposit and a set of maps transferred to the Library from the Bureau of the Census. Maps from the Bureau of the Census include corrections issued by the Sanborn Company that were pasted over the original map sheet. Maps acquired through copyright deposit remain in their original form. The coverages are listed, state by state, in Fire Insurance Maps in the Library of Congress. Washington, 1981. (Maps Z 6026 I7 U58 1981). Includes textual information on construction details (for example, steel beams or reinforced walls), building use (ranging from symbols for generic terms such as stable, garage, and warehouse to names of owners of factories and details on what was manufactured in them ; in the case of large factories or commercial buildings, even individual rooms and the uses to which they were put are recorded on the maps), and other building features (such as pipelines, railroads, wells, dumps, and heavy machinery).

The Edward and Sheila Scanlan Collection of Maps of the Great Lakes Region, Rare Books and Special Collections, Hesburgh Library
The Scanlan Collection includes close to 200 historical maps of the Great Lakes region of North America, ranging in date from the early seventeenth to the early twentieth century.
Harvard Map Collection
A very small part of Harvard's important map collection is available here, alongside geo-referenced images.
Historical Maps Online, University of Illinois
Charts the last 400 years of historical development in Illinois and the Northwest Territory.
Library of Congress - Maps
Only a small portion of the collection is available online, but they are freely available in high-resolution formats.

Archival Collections

Primary sources can be found as part of physical (as opposed to digital) collections. They are often stored in archives, which can be stand-alone institutions or parts of libraries or museums.
See the Archives and Archival Resources guide for information on how to search for archival collections and use them effectively (including things to consider before you go).

Places to look for archival collections

Canada

ArchivesCanada
A gateway to archival resources found in over 800 repositories across Canada, maintained by the Canadian Council of Archives.
Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec
This library and archive is probably the best repository of primary source material on French Canada.
Canadian Council of Archives' Directory of Archives
This is a searchable database of Canadian repositories. Use it to find particular Canadian repositories and retrieve information about their archival holdings.
Directory of Special Collections of Research Value in Canadian Libraries
A searchable database of manuscript and archival collections held in Canadian libraries.
Collections Canada (Library and Archives Canada)

United States

The Library of Congress
The United States' national library and the largest in the world.
National Archives
Contains census records, military records, immigration records (ship passenger lists), naturalization records, and land records.

General

Archival Consortia
The Society of American Archivists is North America's oldest and largest national professional association of archives and archivists. They developed this list of archival consortia: websites that offer lists of archival collections, usually by topic. The Black Metropolis Research Consortium and Chicago Collections Consortium can be found here, among many others.
ArchiveGrid
ArchiveGrid covers over four million records describing archival materials, bringing together information about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more.
ArchiveFinder
Directory that describes more than 220,000 collections of primary-source materials located in repositories in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland.
Internet Archive
This source includes books and poetry recordings but also alternative news programming, radio shows, and live music concerts.

WorldCat This link opens in a new window
A worldwide union catalog created and maintained collectively by more than 9,000 OCLC member institutions. With millions of online records built from the bibliographic and ownership information of contributing libraries, it is the largest and most comprehensive database of its kind.

Archives on Campus

Hesburgh Libraries Rare Books and Special Collections
The University of Notre Dame Archives
It holds the official records of the University of Notre Dame as well as that of the Catholic Church in America. Some collections have been digitized.
The Cushwa-Leighton Library's Archives, St. Mary's College
Holds papers on the history of St. Mary's College and also the William W. Dunkle Theatre and Circus Collection.
Julian Samora Library and Archives Institute for Latino Studies
The Julian Samora Library at the Institute for Latino Studies at Notre Dame collects, preserves, and provides access to rare books, manuscripts, personal papers, archives, and oral histories related to the Latino experience in the United States with a particular focus on the Midwest.
Sisters of the Holy Cross Archives, St. Mary's College
The official repository for materials about the history of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross since 1843.
The Snite Museum
The Snite Museum of Art offers many events and resources to help gain exposure into the arts.

Nearby Archives

South Bend

Archives at the Franklin D. Schurz Library, IU South Bend
The Archives is the campus repository for papers, photographs, recordings, and memorabilia that document the history of IU South Bend as well as the history of the greater Michiana area.
The South Bend Museum of Art

Indianapolis

Indiana Historical Society
It holds archives on the history of Indiana and the Old Northwest.
Indiana State Archives, a division of the Indiana Archives and Records Administration
The Indiana State Archives exists to provide for the protection of, and access to primary-source and historical documents, and those that contribute to Indiana's heritage.

Chicagoland (and a bit beyond)

The Chicago History Museum Research Center
This archive holds unique and printed materials (newspapers, books, and ephemera), about Chicago history.
The Chicago Public Library Archival Collections
Includes the largest African American literature and history collection in the Midwest, the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection at the Woodson Regional branch.
Gerber/Hart Library and Archives, Chicago, IL
Gerber/Hart Library and Archives was founded in 1981 to be a depository for the records of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer-identified (LGBTQ) individuals and organizations, and for other resources bearing upon their lives and experiences in American society. Gerber/Hart Library and Archives has since grown into being the Midwest’s largest LGBTQ circulating library with over 14,000 volumes, 800 periodical titles, and 100 archival collections.
Marquette University's Raynor Memorial Libraries' Special Collections and Archives, Milwaukee, WI
Holds the Dorothy Day--Catholic Worker Collection, the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions Records, and manuscripts of J.R.R. Tolkien.
National Archives at Chicago
A branch of the National Archives in Washington, DC, it holds historical Federal records for six states: Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan.
The Newberry Library
This independent research library holds deep and broad archival collections in US history, particularly focusing on the Midwest and Great Lakes region. It also holds one of the best collections of Native American and indigenous peoples.
The University of Illinois at Chicago's Richard J. Daley Library's Special Collections Department
In addition to holding the papers of Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, it has the collection of Jane Addams' Hull House and the papers of affiliated settlement movement leaders.
Wisconsin Historical Society
The Library-Archives Division holds both published and unpublished materials about the history of Wisconsin, the United States, and Canada. Collection strengths include the history of social action, organized labor, and a newspaper collection second only to the Library of Congress.
Women and Leadership Archives, Loyola University Chicago
The archives collects, preserves and makes available permanently valuable records of women and women’s organizations, which document women’s lives, roles, and contributions.