Primary Sources: Finding Primary Sources

The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. Far more than a search engine, the portal provides innovative ways to search and scan through the united collection of millions of items, including by timeline, map, virtual bookshelf, format, subject, and partner.

HathiTrust is a partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future. Through their Digital Library, you can search the digitized collection of items from over 90 partner institutions.

The Princeton University Digital Library (PUDL) is a collection of high-resolution digital images of selected materials from Princeton University Library. Included are digital collections on topics, including the Columbus Letters, Civil War in Guatemala, the Fitzgerald Collection, George Frideric Handel Collection, Japanese and Chinese Prints and Drawings, Latin American Posters, Mesoamerican Manuscripts, 15th century Printing, 19th century Sheet Music, Islamic Manuscripts, and more.

The New York Public Library holds nearly 10,000 archival and manuscript collections comprising over 50,000 linear feet of material in nearly every format imaginable. They preserve evidence (often unique and unpublished) of human activity and achievement that forms a basis for the study of political, social, economic, and cultural history. Each year, these collections inform and inspire the work of scholars, writers, artists, filmmakers, family historians, and other advanced researchers who seek and then share the new knowledge and perspectives revealed to them through these resources.

The IISH collections comprise archive, library and audio-visual material with a thematic emphasis on social and emancipatory movements. The Institute holds over 4,000 archives, more than 1,000,000 printed volumes, and an equivalent number of audio-visual items including posters.

The Visual History Archive is USC Shoah Foundation’s online portal that allows users to search through and view more than 52,000 video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of genocide. Initially a repository of Holocaust testimony, the Archive expanded in April of 2013 to include 64 testimonies from the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi Genocide and again in April 2014 to include 12 testimonies from the 1937 Nanjing Massacre in China. All told, the testimonies have been conducted in 62 countries and 39 languages.

AP Images gives you access to the world’s largest collections of historical and contemporary photographs, so you have all the imagery you need, right when you need it. AP’s timely, powerful and informative images cover topics ranging from breaking news and sports to business, entertainment, weather, fashion, travel, royalty-free, rights-managed, microstock and more.

The New York Public Library Digital Collections contains 835,152 items and counting. The NYPL Digital Collections span a wide range of historical eras, geography, and media, and it offers drawings, illuminated manuscripts, maps, photographs, posters, prints, rare illustrated books, videos, audio, and more. Encompassing the subject strengths of the vast collections of The Library, these materials represent the applied sciences, fine and decorative arts, history, performing arts, and social sciences. You can start browse items by collections, divisions, and more.