Primary Sources: Images & Recordings

The Library provides access to 7 Image and Maps databases. The A-Z Database list allows you to view them all in one list.

The Library provides access to 48 Video databases. The A-Z Database list allows you to view them all in one list.

Partnering with the Office of the Governor's Texas Film Commission, this ever-growing archive includes home movies, amateur films, advertisements, local television, and industrial and corporate productions, as well as Hollywood and internationally produced moving images of Texas.

The photographs in the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Photograph Collection form an extensive pictorial record of American life between 1935 and 1944. This U.S. government photography project was headed for most of its existence by Roy E. Stryker, who guided the effort in a succession of government agencies: the Resettlement Administration (1935-1937), the Farm Security Administration (1937-1942), and the Office of War Information (1942-1944). The collection also includes photographs acquired from other governmental and non-governmental sources, including the News Bureau at the Offices of Emergency Management (OEM), various branches of the military, and industrial corporations.

The Work Projects Administration (WPA) Poster Collection consists of 907 posters produced from 1936 to 1943 by various branches of the WPA. Of the 2,000 WPA posters known to exist, the Library of Congress's collection of more than 900 is the largest. The posters were designed to publicize exhibits, community activities, theatrical productions, and health and educational programs in seventeen states and the District of Columbia, with the strongest representation from California, Illinois, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The results of one of the first U.S. Government programs to support the arts, the posters were added to the Library's holdings in the 1940s.

This collection explores the complex relationships between modern medicine and modern advertising, or "Madison Avenue," as the latter is colloquially termed. It presents images and information for approximately 600 health-related advertisements printed in newspapers and magazines. These ads illustrate the variety and evolution of marketing images from the 1910s through the 1950s. The collection represents a wide range of products such as cough and cold remedies, laxatives and indigestion aids, and vitamins and tonics, among others. The majority of images in MMA are from the "Competitive Advertisements Collection" (Pre-1955 files) within the J. Walter Thompson Company Archives.

Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.

Over 490,000 works from around the world and all time periods. Features categories from Fashion to Images in the Public Domain.

Famous speeches made by influential leaders of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Images from the History of Medicine (IHM) in NLM Digital Collections provides online access to images from the historical collections of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. IHM includes image files of a wide variety of visual media including fine art, photographs, engravings, and posters that illustrate the social and historical aspects of medicine dating from the 15th to 21st century.

Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.

Explore 924,043 items digitized from The New York Public Library's collections. This site is a living database with new materials added every day, featuring prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more.

The Portal to Texas History is a gateway to rare, historical, and primary source materials from or about Texas. Created and maintained by the University of North Texas Libraries, the Portal leverages the power of hundreds of content partners across the state to provide a vibrant, growing collection of resources.

This collection contains cultural heritage materials gathered during the World Digital Library (WDL) project, including thousands of items contributed by partner organizations worldwide as well as content from Library of Congress collections. The original World Digital Library site (preserved in LC’s Web Archives here) and all descriptive metadata were translated from English and made available in six additional languages: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Arabic, Russian, and Chinese. All item records include narrative descriptions submitted by the contributing partners and enhanced by WDL researchers to contextualize the item and its cultural and historical importance. Books, manuscripts, maps, and other primary materials in the WDL collection are presented in their original languages; more than 100 languages are represented, including many lesser known and endangered languages.

The Library of Congress' Digital Collections offer a wide variety of audiovisual collections and resources.

Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection presents traditional fiddle tunes performed by Henry Reed of Glen Lyn, Virginia. Recorded by folklorist Alan Jabbour in 1966-67, when Reed was over eighty years old, the tunes represent the music and evoke the history and spirit of Virginia's Appalachian frontier. Many of the tunes have passed back into circulation during the fiddling revival of the later twentieth century. Documentation includes184 sound recordings, 19 pages of fieldnotes, and 69 musical transcriptions

The official library and archives for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Here you can search through collections and finding aids to decide which collections are of interest for you and your research.

The Oral History Center of The Bancroft Library provides over 4,000 interviews on a variety of topics, the majority of which have been transcribed and placed online.

USC's collection of oral interviews and photographs from Korean-Americans documenting their experiences.

Contains over 6,000 interviews on topics of California history and beyond.

A project by the NYPL to document the stories of the city's unique population.

The Historical Archives of the European Union is the repository for various oral history programmes, launched to preserve the voices of European politicians and officials. The Archives preserves the original recordings and written transcripts and makes these materials available for research.

A special project of the Texas Tech University Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive. Interviews are listed alphabetically and include links to audio and transcripts (when available).

Over 6,000 interviews with people from all walks of life meant to record and preserve the history of the South.

The Veterans History Project of the American Folklife Center collects, preserves, and makes accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans so that future generations may hear directly from veterans and better understand the realities of war.

In 1946 by Dr. David P. Boder, a psychology professor from Chicago's Institute of Technology, spent three months interviewing Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in refugee camps in Germany, France, Switzerland, and Italy, recording their voices on a wire recorder and 200 spools of steel wire. These 90 hours of audio are the first known oral histories of the Holocaust.

Hear the story of the Japanese American incarceration experience from those who lived it, and find thousands of historic photographs, documents, newspapers, letters and other primary source materials from immigration to the WWII incarceration and its aftermath.

A collection of oral history interviews conducted by Rice University in Houston, TX.