Education Department

These websites will lead you to primary sources from a variety of institutions. Many are large consortiums that have digitized their materials collectively. 

Internet Archive: Non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.

Christopher Newport University Primary Source LibGuides: CNU has a plethora of LibGuides with links to primary sources in hundreds of subject matters. Below is a only a sampling of primary source guides. For the main page of their LibGuides, click here. 

• American Revolution
• American Sports
• Civil Rights in America
• Major Events in American History
• Post-War America, 1945-1974
• Saxons and Danes
• 1920's Primary Sources
• 1960's Primary Sources

American Presidency Project: Non-profit and non-partisan, the APP is the source of presidential documents on the internet. 

Digital Public Library of America(DPLA): Make millions of materials from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions across the country available to all in a one-stop discovery experience.

DocsTeach: An online tool for teaching with documents from the National Archives.

The Federalist Papers: A series of 85 essays written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison between October 1787 and May 1788. The essays were published anonymously, under the pen name "Publius," in various New York state newspapers of the time and are often used today to help interpret the intentions of those drafting the Constitution.

Hathi Trust: 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.

Library of Congress Digital Collections: The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts in its collections. This site can be searched by collection or topic. 

Black Freedom Struggle in the United States: Challenges and Triumphs in the Pursuit of Equality (Proquest): This website focused on Black Freedom, featuring select primary source documents related to critical people and events in African American history. Our intention is to support a wide range of students (see examples for using in teaching and learning), as well independent researchers and anyone interested in learning more about the foundation of ongoing racial injustice in the U.S. – and the fights against it.

LIFE Picture Collection: The LIFE Picture Collection is the visual chronicle of the 20^th century and one of the most important photographic archives in the United States. From 1936 to 2000, LIFE commissioned more than 10 million photographs across 120,000 stories.

Moving Image Archive: This library contains digital movies uploaded by Archive users which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. Many of these videos are available for free download.

Paley Center for Media: The Paley Center's permanent media collection contains over 160,000 television and radio programs and advertisements. The online database offers synopses, along with production credits for the programs.

Public Papers of the Presidents: The Public Papers of the Presidents, which is compiled and published by the Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration, began in 1957. Not all volumes have been digitized. However, many older volumes can be found in Hathi Trust or Internet Archive. 

Sports Illustrated Archives: Has older issues of Sports Illustrated in full-text. Can only access 4 articles for free then must subscribe. 

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.

Vietnam Primary Sources: This LibGuide compiled by Sam Houston State University links to libraries, archives and other websites that hold resources related to Vietnam. 

World Digital Library through the Library of Congress is a collection of print and visual resources. Use limiters on the left column to limit to specific type of geography, date range, topic or type of resource.

WWII Posters online exhibition through the National Archives has text, audio and film about this topic.

ArchiveGrid: Allows you to find repositories that have archival resources.

National Archives: Holds records of the federal government. 

Virtual Vietnam Archive: Holds over 7 million pages of scanned materials including documents, photographs, slides, negatives, oral histories, artifacts, moving images, sound recordings, maps, and collection finding aids. All non-copyrighted and digitized materials are available for users to download.

There can be many resources found within government information. For a full list of government information websites and how to find information, please see the Government Documents LibGuide.

• Govinfo: https://www.govinfo.gov/

• USA.gov: https://www.usa.gov/

• Catalog of Govt Publications: https://catalog.gpo.gov/F?RN=676892892

• East Stroudsburg University Archives and Special Collections contains records related to the history of ESU since its inception in 1893. The University Archives holds publications, office records, photographs, manuscripts, scrapbooks, rare books, artifacts, and special collections as they relate to ESU.

• Monroe County Historical Association holds records related to Monroe County and regional history from the area. 

• Philadelphia Congregations Early Records has records from some of the earliest churches in the city of Philadelphia. 

Listed are resources to help in finding European archives and primary sources. Below are just a few links. Harvard University has an excellent LibGuide that goes into more details if you are pursuing European research. 

• Archives Portal Europe is a Europe-wide search engine for archival collections.
• Archives autobiographiques en Europe lists autobiographies and diaries by country.
• British History Online is a digital library containing some of the core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles.
• Cabinet Papers, 1915-1984 (UK) are records of the senior ministers of the British government.
• EuroDocs  are open access resources with facsimilies, transcriptions, and translations of documents. Includes documents from Prehistoric, Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance Europe as well as Holocaust documents and Europe as a Supranational Region. 
• Europeana works with thousands of European archives, libraries and museums to share cultural heritage for enjoyment, education and research. This website gives you access to millions of books, music, artworks and more – with sophisticated search and filter tools to help you find what you’re looking for.
• Federal Archives of Germany have the legal mandate to secure the archives of the federal government in the long term and to make them available for use. These are documents (including files, maps, pictures, posters, films and sound recordings in analogue and digital form) that have been produced by central offices of the Holy Roman Empire (1495-1806), the German Confederation (1815-1866), of the German Reich (1867/71-1945), the Occupation Zones (1945-1949), the German Democratic Republic (1949-1990) and the Federal Republic of Germany (since 1949).
• National Archives (UK) allows you to search for British government records. Searching is free but there may be charges to download records. 
• Swedish National Archives: Hold records of the Swedish National Government.
• CENDARI Transnational Archive Directory is a large database of archival descriptions from over 1,000 institutions, European and worldwide. The Directory allows historians to view sources in a rarely seen transnational and comparative view. It is focused on resources on the medieval era and the First World War.

These links will lead to resources that are freely available on the internet on topics about African history. 

• Genocide Archive of Rwanda holds digital collections of items related to the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, pre-genocide history and post-genocide reconstruction processes.
• Africana Posters contains over 2200 images of posters on topics such as politics, health, religion, liberation struggles, art exhibitions, and social issues. 
• Primary Sources for African History Libguide created by Christopher Newport University and has links to many resources for African history. Some may be unavailable to users due to permissions.  

These links will lead to resources that are freely available on the internet on topics about Asian history. 

• Japanese Resources LibGuide links to resources such as maps, books, and digital collections about Japanese history.  

These links will be useful in finding K-12 primary sources along with lesson plans and other resources for teaching.

• PBS Learning Media for Teachers has Inquiry Kits designed with teachers and students in mind. Funded by a grant from the Library of Congress, Maryland Humanities and Maryland Public Television developed the TPS Inquiry Kits and related Research Learning Modules to support K-12 educators and students.
• Teaching History.org has a list of primary sources on the web that address multiple topics in U.S. History. Many of the sites provide sources that have been prepared for the classroom, from excerpting lengthy documents to providing clear headnotes and source information.