Overview
In social and historical research, primary resources include historical documents (e.g. letters, pamphlets, political tracts, manifestos), archival images, and contemporaneous newspaper and periodical articles (offering the understanding or opinion of the time).
We have a number of excellent primary source resources. Selected below are several that are relevant to women's history or to historical research, generally.
Searching primary source databases takes patience, but it is often worth the effort!
Selected Primary Sources
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The Gerritsen collection of Aletta H. JacobsIn the late 1800's, Dutch physician and feminist Aletta Jacobs and her husband C.V. Gerritsen began collecting books, pamphlets and periodicals reflecting the revolution of a feminist consciousness and the movement for women's rights. By the time their successors finished their work in 1945, the Gerritsen Collection was the greatest single source for the study of women's history in the world, with materials spanning four centuries and 15 languages. The Gerritsen curators gathered more than 4,700 publications from continental Europe, the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand, dating from 1543-1945. The anti-feminist case is presented as well as the pro-feminist; many other titles present a purely objective record of the condition of women at a given time. The online resource delivers two million page images exactly as they appeared in the original printed works.
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Nineteenth Century Collections OnlineNote the Archive Collections. You can restrict your search to Science, Technology, and Medicine: 1780-1925, Science, Technology, and Medicine: 1780-1925, Part II, and, possibly, Women: Transnational Networks. Then, enter a simple keyword search.
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HEARTH: Home Economics Archive: Research, Tradition and HistoryBrowse under the Subjects tab to get a sense for what is there.
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Women and Social Movements in the United StatesBrowse under subjects to find entries on science and technology topics.
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Everyday Life & Women in AmericaThis digital collection provides access to rare primary source material on American social, cultural, and popular history from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History, Duke University and The New York Public Library. It comprises thousands of fully searchable images (alongside transcriptions) of monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes, emphasizing conduct of life and domestic management literature, the daily lives of women and men, and contrasts in regional, urban and rural cultures.
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Vogue ArchiveA complete searchable archive of American Vogue, from the first issue in 1892 to the current month. Every article, cover, photo shoot, illustration and advertisement has been digitized to the highest standard, with rich indexing enabling you to find images by designer and brand names.
Historical Newspapers & Periodicals
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Proquest Historical NewspapersSelect the Advanced Search;
Add your search terms
Scroll down to choose Document types.For examples, articles, ads, editorials, etc.
If you wish, use the date limits on the right to restrict your results to a particular date range. -
American PeriodicalsThis database contains periodicals published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals.
Select the Advanced Search;
Add your search terms;
Scroll down to choose Document type(s);
Adjust date ranges, if desired.