Research Guides: Primary Sources: Archives by Subject

Anthropology

National Anthropological Archives (NAA)
Collections and preserves historical and contemporary anthropological materials documenting the world's cultures and the history of anthropology. The four fields of anthropology - archaeology, biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, and linguistics - are represented through field-notes, manuscripts, papers, journals, photographs, and maps, and other materials.
American Museum of Natural History Archives, Anthropology Collections
Search through finding aids and digital collections of materials including Frederick Starr's field notebooks from his Congo Expedition (1905-1906) and the collection of Peruvian archaeologist Victoria de la Jara.
Anthropology Division Archives (Yale)
The archives of the Yale Division of Anthropology, includes the finding aid of the collection and repository details.
American Memory--Library of Congress
The Library of Congress has compiled digital online collections in multiple topics from its vast holdings. This site links directly to online collections on African Americans, the Civil War, environmentalism, baseball, presidential politics, New Deal programs, national lawmaking, women's suffrage, and more.
National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian)
Works from the Department of Anthropology spans from the emergence of our earliest ancestors to the global societies of today.
Anthropology Resources: Archives & Museums
An excellent listing of Archives and Museums useful for students and researchers of anthropology.

African American Studies

16th-Early 20th Century Maps of Africa
From Northwestern University, this site features digital copies of 113 antique maps of Africa and accompanying text dating from the mid 16th Century to the early 20th Century.
African American Historical Serials Collection
Now compiled and accessible to researchers in one digital collection, this unique resource documents the history of African American life and religious organizations from materials published between 1829 and 1922
Black Past, Digital Archives in African American History
List includes links to major digitized archival holdings in African American history. Click on the name of the archive and you will be taken to the opening page of the collection. The archives are grouped by state.
Civil Rights Digital Library
The University of Georgia's grant-funded project to deliver comprehensive educational content on the Civil Rights Era via the Web.
The Civil Rights History Project: Survey of Collections and Repositories
A listing of all collections within the Library of Congress' American Folklife Center relating to Violence, Crime, and Law Enforcement.
Colored Conventions Project (Penn State)
From 1830 until well after the Civil War, African Americans gathered across the United States and Canada to participate in political meetings held at the state and national levels. A cornerstone of Black organizing in the nineteenth century, these “Colored Conventions” brought Black men and women together in a decades-long campaign for civil and human rights.
Slave Voyages (The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database)
The SlaveVoyages website is a collaborative digital initiative that compiles and makes publicly accessible records of the largest slave trades in history. Search these records to learn about the broad origins and forced relocations of more than 12 million African people who were sent across the Atlantic in slave ships, and hundreds of thousands more who were trafficked within the Americas. Explore where they were taken, the numerous rebellions that occurred, the horrific loss of life during the voyages, the identities and nationalities of the perpetrators, and much more.

Black History (Fold3)
Throughout U.S. History, African Americans have played an integral part in the development and achievement of this country. Fold3 is now revealing a side of the African American story that few have seen before. View more than a million rare photos and documents.
Categories include Slavery, The Civil War, Reconstruction & Jim Crow Laws, World Wars, and Civil Rights Movement.
African American Historical Serials Collection
Now compiled and accessible to researchers in one digital collection, this unique resource documents the history of African American life and religious organizations from materials published between 1829 and 1922
Handbook of African American Texas
A handbook of information about African American history in Texas.

Asian American Studies

Chao Center for Asian Studies, Rice University
The Chao Center supports a model of Asian Studies that looks carefully and critically at the complex ways people in ‘Asia’ have been involved with one another and with the rest of the world, not only today, but also in the past.
Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project
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.
Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection Japanese Diaspora Initiative
The Hoover Institution Library and Archives' initiative focuses on Japan’s modern diaspora, with particular attention to both Japanese Americans and other overseas Japanese communities, especially during the rise and fall of the Empire of Japan.
Korean American Museum Oral History Series
USC's collection of oral interviews and photographs from Korean-Americans documenting their experiences.
Pioneering Punjabis Digital Archives
This archive offers a window into the story of South Asian immigrants from the Punjab region in north India to California since the turn of the twentieth century. Explore over 700 video interviews, speeches, diaries, photographs, articles, and letters in which Punjabi Americans share their life stories, values, and contributions to California’s history over the last hundred and twenty years.
South Asian American Digital Archives (SAADA)
SAADA is a community-based culture change organization ensuring that South Asian Americans are included in the American story: past, present, and future.
Welga Archives: Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies
The Welga Digital Archive - Bulosan Center for Filipino American Studies focuses on preserving and presenting the broad aspects of the Filipino American experience.

Business and Marketing

Work Projects Administration Posters
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.
John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History
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.

Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, and the Life Sciences

Gallica (Bibliotheque Nationale de France)
Classics of the natural sciences, scientific and medical press, and literary works.
Guide to Library and Archival Collections of African Americans in Medicine and Biomedical Research
The collections in this Guide are to assist in identifying useful medical history collections for researchers and scholars interested in African Americans in Medicine and Biomedical Research. While the Guide is by no means exhaustive, it serves to draw attention to collections that are available.
Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library
The Historical Library contains a large and unique collection of rare medical books, medical journals to 1920, pamphlets, prints, and photographs, as well as current works on the history of medicine.
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a private, non-profit society of distinguished scholars. Established by an Act of Congress, signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, the NAS is charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology. Scientists are elected by their peers to membership in the NAS for outstanding contributions to research. The NAS is committed to furthering science in America, and its members are active contributors to the international scientific community.
National Archives, Science and Technology Collections
A short list of collections held by the National Archives.
Science History Institute Archives
The Science History Institute Archives actively collects and preserves the papers of organizations and individuals whose work has significantly advanced our scientific understanding of chemistry, chemical engineering, and the life sciences and its allied fields.
Science History Institute Digital Collections
12,922 digitized items from the Science History Institute's Archives including artifacts, photographs, advertisements, letters, rare books, oral histories, and more.

Education

National Archives Educator Resources
A collection of resources designed to help educators integrate primary sources into their curriculum as a way to promote civic literacy and engagement and to introduce students to the importance of primary sources to understanding the world around them.
National Archives Records of the Office of Education
Finding aid for the official documents for the Office of Education from 1870-1983.
History of American Education (University of Kansas)
Aimed to support the study of the history of education in America, collections include the Children's Books Collection, the Charles and E. Jennifer Monaghan Collection on the history of reading, and the Carl N. and Dorothy H. Shull Collection of Hymnals and Music Books.
Gutman's Special Collections (Harvard)
Two centuries worth of materials for studying the history of education in America.

English / Literature

First Folios Compared
To mark the 400th anniversary of the publication of Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories & Tragedies (otherwise known as the First Folio), this website brings together dozens of digitized copies of this literary masterpiece. For the first time in history, you will be able to compare them, side by side, from the comfort of your own home.
Harry Ransom Center, UT of Austin
Digital Collections available through the University of Texas' Harry Ransom Center.
Princeton Special Collections
Princeton's literature collections include the papers of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll, Toni Morrison, and T.S. Eliot, among others.
Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
The world's largest publicly accessible archive devoted to William Shakespeare. While many of the collection is documented and inventoried, digital access is limited although researchers are welcomed and encouraged to contact the Trust for assistance.
Special Collections: Literary Archives and Manuscripts
A descriptive list of collections held by the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England.
The Walt Whitman Archive
Drawing on the resources of libraries and collections from around the world, the Whitman Archive is the most comprehensive record of works by and about Whitman—and continues to grow.
Writer's and Artists' Papers (University of Reading)
Many of the archives held in the Special Collections relate to creative practice. The greatest quantity of correspondence by authors, editors, translators, illustrators, typographers, printers, and designers may be found in the Archive of British Publishing and Printing. Files within each publishing archive are often arranged or indexed by author. See also the Art Collections for individual artworks and Rare Books for published works.
Yale Collection of American Literature
The Yale Collection of American Literature documents the creative lives, the artistic communities, and the literary achievements of American writers. The collectionis noted for its strength in nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first-century poetry, fiction, and dramatic writings. The archives of writers of diverse backgrounds underscore the collection’s interest in the indigenous and immigrant cultures that shape American literature.

Engineering

Materials Science and Engineering Collection
The Materials Science & Engineering Database includes the renowned METADEX, Copper and Polymer Library databases and provides full-text titles from around the world, including scholarly journals, trade and industry journals, magazines, technical reports, conference proceedings and government publications. For those researchers who need to conduct comprehensive literature reviews, this database includes specialized, editorially-curated A&I resources for discovery of relevant scholarly research and technical literature critical to the discipline.

Berry Engineering Archives (Harvard Forest)
Berry Engineering, Inc. was started in 1971 by William L. Berry, sons William Berry, Jr., Edward Berry, and nephew William Leaders. The company performed operations of land surveying and civil engineering in the Central Massachusetts, North Quabbin Area.
Records of the Bureau of Public Records (National Archives)
State of Oregon Engineering Archives
The engineering archive is intended to be a permanent repository of engineering data. Data is not limited to MicroStation design files, but may include narratives, tab sheets, reports, and design notes.

Nursing

Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library
The Historical Library contains a large and unique collection of rare medical books, medical journals to 1920, pamphlets, prints, and photographs, as well as current works on the history of medicine.
Images from the History of Medicine
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.
Joan E. Lynaugh Archives & Special Collections
One of the largest collections in the country of documents and images focused on the history of nursing.
Royal College of Nursing Special Collections
Includes the Florence Nightingale Collections, Historical Nursing Journals, a Postcard Collection, and a collection of personal journals and papers from nurses and other healthcare providers, to name a few.

Gale OneFile: Health and Medicine
Created specifically for students, knowledgeable consumer health researchers, and health care professionals, Health Reference Center Academic is the perfect resource for up-to-date information on the complete range of health care topics. With more than 2,500 embargo-free, full-text periodicals, reference books, pamphlets, and hundreds of videos demonstrating medical procedures and live surgeries, Health Reference Center Academic ensures that researchers get current, scholarly, comprehensive answers to health-related questions.

Mathematics

AMS Digital Mathematics Registry
he aim of the AMS-DMR is to provide centralized access to certain collections of digitized publications in the mathematical sciences. The registry is primarily focused on older material from journals and journal-like book series that originally appeared in print but now is available in digital form.
Digital Mathematics Archive (The University of British Columbia)
The Digital Mathematics Archive is a digital collection of mathematical sources, with a primary focus on documents from the late 19th century through today.
DML: Digital Mathematics Library
Retrodigitized Mathematics Journals and Monographs
EuDML
EuDML makes the mathematics literature available online in the form of an enduring digital collection, developed and maintained by a network of institutions.
Historical Math Monographs
The Cornell University Library Historical Mathematics Monographs is a collection of selected monographs with expired copyrights chosen from the mathematics field. These were monographs that were brittle and decaying and in need of rescue.
Mathematics, Pure and Applied: Digital Archives (University of Washington)
A resource to mathematics digital archives provided by the University of Washington Library.
Numdam, the French digital library of mathematics
On this site you will find the full text of research publications in mathematics: journal articles, proceedings of seminars and conferences, books, theses (State doctorate). A large part of the collections has been digitized since the first issue until around the year 2000 from paper originals.
The University of Michigan Historical Mathematics Collection
The University of Michigan Historical Mathematics Collection contains selected books from the University of Michigan mathematics collection that have been digitized to improve access and to preserve the content of these books. All of the books in this collection were published in the 19th or early 20th century.

Criminal Justice

Borowitz Collection (Kent State University)
A collection of manuscripts, ephemera, and artifacts related to true crime, crime in literature, and crime themes.
Lloyd Sealy Library: Digital Special Collections (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY)
Digital collections including the Justice in New York: An Oral History Collection (interviews with major criminal justice figures in New York City), Records of the International Association of Women Police (IAWP), and the Lewis E Lawes Papers (Sing Sing prisoner mug shots and photographs from 1920-1941).
The Civil Rights History Project: Survey of Collections and Repositories
A listing of all collections within the Library of Congress' American Folklife Center relating to Violence, Crime, and Law Enforcement.

Performing Arts

Historic American Sheet Music Project
Provides access to digital images for over 3,000 pieces from the collection, published in the United States between 1850 and 1920.
Live Music Archive (Internet Archive)
A community driven collection of live concerts available for live-streaming or download. All music is from trade-friendly artists who have opted to have their music included for strictly NON-COMMERCIAL use.
Classical Archives: The Largest Classical Music Site in the World
A collection of 18,405 composers, 83,940 performers, and over 1.2 million files from classical artists around the world.
American Society for Theatre Research - Resources to Assist You
The Society provides an excellent source of resources for those in or interested in the theatrical profession, including a category of Libraries and Archives.
Resources for Performing Arts Archivists and Archives
A listing provided by the Society of American Archivists (SAA) of Archives, Special Collections, and other organizations of interest to those in or interested in the performing arts.

Political Science

Archives Unbound Collections
Archives Unbound presents topically-focused digital collections of historical documents that support the research and study needs of scholars and students at the college and university level. Collections in Archives Unbound cover a broad range of topics from the Middle Ages forward-from Witchcraft to World War II to twentieth-century political history. Collections are chosen for Archives Unbound based on requests from scholars, archivists, and students.
Our Collections include:
*Allied Propaganda in World War II and the British Political Warfare Executive
*FBI File: American POWs/MIAs in Southeast Asia
*Indochina, France, and the Viet Minh War, 1945-1954: Records of the U.S. State Department, Part 1: 1945-1949
*Intelligence Reports from the National Security Council's Vietnam Information Group, 1967-1975
*Psychological Warfare and Propaganda in World War II: Air Dropped and Shelled Leaflets and Periodicals
*U.S. Civilian Advisory Effort in Vietnam: U.S. Operations Mission, 1950-1954
Gale in Context: Opposing Viewpoints
Explore Both Sides of an Issue

Gale's Opposing Viewpoints In Context is the premier online resource covering today's hottest social issues, from capital punishment to immigration to marijuana. This cross-curricular research database supports science, social studies, current events, and language arts classes. Informed, differing views help learners develop critical-thinking skills and draw their own conclusions.

Opposing Viewpoints In Context is a rich resource for debaters and includes pro/con viewpoints, reference articles, interactive maps, infographics, and more. A category on the National Debate Topic provides quick and easy access to content on frequently studied and discussed issues. Periodical content covers current events, news and commentary, economics, environmental issues, political science, and more.

Specific titles include The New York Times, Newsweek, Foreign Policy, American Scientist, and Education Week.

Allied Propaganda in World War II and the British Political Warfare Executive
This collection presents the complete files of the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) kept at the U.K. National Archives as FO 898 from its instigation to closure in 1946, along with the secret minutes of the special 1944 War Cabinet Committee "Breaking the German Will to Resist."
C-Span
Provides video coverage of Congressional proceedings, presidential coverage, interviews with political figures, and more.
Congress.gov
Data.gov
Here you will find data, tools, and resources to conduct research, develop web and mobile applications, design data visualizations, and more.
Guide to Law Online: Nations of the World (LOC)
Library of Congress' guide to resources for law as practiced in the different nations of the world.
HathiTrust Digital Library
Founded in 2008, HathiTrust is a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving 17+ million digitized items. HathiTrust offers reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. copyright law, computational access to the entire corpus for scholarly research, and other emerging services based on the combined collection. HathiTrust members steward the collection — the largest set of digitized books managed by academic and research libraries — under the aims of scholarly, not corporate, interests.
Library of Congress: Digital Collections
The Library of Congress provides a great source for primary source material for American military history. Items that can be found here include an electronic version of The Stars and Stripes, The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I; extensive maps from both sides of the Civil war; and Ansel Adams photographs of Japanese-American interment camps
The WWW Virtual Library: International Affairs Resources
An internet based directory of over 2000 annotated links to sources for international studies and global topics.

Social Work

Social Welfare History Archives (University of Minnesota)
Documents the history of the social work profession, human services, and social issues.
California Social Welfare Archives (USC)
A collection chronicling the history of social welfare in the state of California.
International Federation of Social Workers Archives
Containing information dating back to 1846, the archives aims to make their resources available to social workers and researchers worldwide.
VCU Libraries Social Welfare History Project
A library dedicated to providing resources and references to libraries, archives, websites, and reliable information related to the social work profession to assist students and researchers alike.

Computer Information Systems

Computer History Museum Collections
CHM stewards the world’s leading collection and archive chronicling the history and impact of computing and technological innovation on the human experience. From machines to source code, lab notebooks to business plans, our collecting scope is expansive with unique perspectives into the online world, entrepreneurship, and software.
The National Museum of Computing
Located in Bletchley Circle, the Computing Museum is the world's largest collection of functional historic computers and WW2 machines, including, Enigma, Lorenz the working Turing-Welchman Bombe, the rebuilt Colossus, the world’s first electronic computer, and the WITCH, the world's oldest working digital computer.
List of Computer Museums (Wikipedia)
A list of computer museums from around the world.

Counseling & Psychology

American Psychological Association
Information for visiting and accessing the APA archives.
Humanistic Psychology Archives (UC Santa Barbara)
The archives collects, organizes, preserves and makes available to researchers primary resources relating to humanistic psychology, its antecedents and its development.
The University of Akron Cummings Center for the History of Human Psychology
Established in 1965, the Archives of the History of American Psychology (AHAP) is the world’s largest repository of manuscripts, books, media, and artifacts relevant to the history of psychology and related human sciences.
Living Atlanta Oral History Recordings
The Living Atlanta oral history recordings contain 540 audio recordings, 249 of which are digitized and available on this database. The interviews in this collection cover a broad array of topics relevant to the history of Atlanta between World War I and World War II. Prominent subjects include race relations, segregation, popular music, baseball, neighborhoods, the Jewish community, police, healthcare, and education. Major events that are covered include the Great Fire of 1917, the 1906 Race Riot, and the 1916 Streetcar Strike. The Atlantans interviewed represent a broad cross section of society, including streetcar workers, musicians, professors, politicians, police chiefs, school teachers, railroad executives, and sports figures.
Sigmund Freud Archives
An independent, non-profit group dedicated to preserving and advancing the study of Sigmund Freud.
Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia
One of the world's finest medical museums.

Primary Sources: Archives by Subject

A Note about this Page

Anthropology

African American Studies

Asian American Studies

Business and Marketing

Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, and the Life Sciences

Education

English / Literature

Engineering

Nursing

Mathematics

Criminal Justice

Performing Arts

Political Science

Social Work

Computer Information Systems

Counseling & Psychology