HIST 2462: Personal Histories of Global Events: Microhistorical Approaches to the Writing of Global History (Spring 2024)

What makes a source primary?

It depends on the topic and the time period; it can be complicated. 

Talk specifics with your professor.

Very basic, simplistic definition: What is a primary source?

Confidential print: Middle East

This digital collection covers Middle Eastern history from 1839-1969; countries included are: Afghanistan, Egypt, Sudan, Persia, Suez Canal, Turkey, Jordan, Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Syria. The series originated out of a need for the British Government to preserve all of the most important papers generated by the Foreign and Colonial Offices. Some of these were one page letters or telegrams -- others were large volumes or texts of treaties. All items marked ’Confidential Print’ were circulated to leading officials in the Foreign Office, to the Cabinet, and to heads of British missions abroad.

Cambridge Archive Editions Online:

More collections in English:

• Nineteenth Century Collections Online A broad range of primary sources including a variety of material types: monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, statistics, and more.  Mostly Western languages.
• Eighteenth Century Collections Online Aims to include every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas, between 1701 and 1800. Consists of books, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera. Subject categories include history and geography; fine arts and social sciences; medicine, science, and technology; literature and language; religion and philosophy; law; general reference.

Even more primary source collections

Primary Source Newspapers

English Language International

The Times digital archive, 1785-2006 Full-text and full-image articles from the Times of London for the years 1785-2006.

Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports
Created by the U.S. intelligence community to benefit policy makers and analysts, FBIS Daily Reports offer foreign views and perspectives on historical events from thousands of monitored broadcasts and publications. Translated into English from more than 50 languages, these comprehensive media reports from around the globe include news, interviews, speeches and editorial commentary. This comprehensive, fully searchable edition of the FBIS Daily Reports covers such topics as political, military and social issues, economics, science and technology for eight world regions from 1941-1996.

Paper of record. Historical archive of full-page newspaper images dating from the 1700's. Included are newspapers from Australia, Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom and United States of America. Many of these titles date from the early 1800s to the mid 1900s.

More international newspapers...

Selected United States

American Historical Newspapers Online

ProQuest historical newspapers. Major newspapers, mostly American, starting from the end of the 19th century until a few years ago. 

Accessible archives: primary source material from 18th and 19th century periodicals.

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers In development. Newspaper pages from 1880-1910

Poole's Plus: Indices to Nineteenth-Century Newspapers, Periodicals, Books and Government Documents 

More American newspapers...

Official Collections

United States

Foreign relations of the United States: electronic facsimile. Some years may not be available. Also available through the Department of State

U.S. Congressional serial set (Online) 1817-1980 Full text of all the reports, documents, and journals of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Still in progress.

A century of lawmaking for a new nation: U.S. Congressional documents and debates, 1774-1873 Presents records and acts of Congress from the Journals of the Continental Congress through The Congressional Globe, which ceased publication with the Forty-second Congress in 1873.

International

House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (1688-to present) Full text with detailed subject indexing.

British Records on the Atlantic World Consists of 12 collections of manuscript material found in England.  Includes materials such as journals, correspondence, official records, personal papers, and printed books from over a two hundred year period, all related to British involvement in the Atlantic region, including both Africa and the Americas.  It has a wealth of information about Britain’s colonization, commercial, missionary and even literary relations with Africa and the Americas. Alongside the records of Liverpool merchants involved in the infamous Triangular Trade, there are those of slave plantation owners, of early Anglican missionaries, and of naval and customs officials.

British History Online is the digital library containing some of the core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles.  Included are the House of Commons Journal and House of Lords Journal

Primary Source Periodicals
 

Periodicals Index Online (formerly PCI) Covers 1770-1993. Index. The scope is international, including journals in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and other languages.

Readers' guide retrospective.  Comprehensive index of the most popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States 1890 through 1982.

Internationale Bibliographie der geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Zeitschriftenliteratur: IBZ. (in print in Olin Reference)  A German index of a significant proportion of the periodicals published on the European continent. 19th century.

American Periodical Series/APS online.  1740-1900. Indexes special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children’s and women’s magazines. Useful for historical advertising.

Source collections printed in Europe

• Early English books online (EEBO) Includes printed books 1450-1661.
• Eighteenth century collections online (ECCO) English-language and foreign-language books, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera printed in the UK and the Americas, between 1701 and 1800.
• Nineteenth Century Collections Online. Covers the entire world. Not everything in English.
• U.K. parliamentary papers  1715 to the present. Material from House of Commons and House of Lords.

Source collections printed in America

• Evans digital edition (American Imprints) Books printed in the US during the 17th and 18th centuries.
• ProQuest congressional publications. 1789 to the present. Congress discusses events worldwide.

Browse footnotes and bibliographies of books, encyclopedias, and articles for information about primary sources. 

Search the Library Catalog for primary sources--both unpublished manuscripts and modern editions in print and online, sometimes in translation, of original primary medieval sources. Use the guided keyword search with terms like:

sources
diaries
personal narrative
interview
letters

Archives

Kroch Rare and Manuscript Collections
The Rare and Manuscript Division is located in an underground addition attached to Olin Library. It houses manuscripts from a variety of periods and several special collections.

With the exception of the collections listed here, newspapers are generally not available full text before 1980, especially non-US papers.

But older newspapers are often available on microfilm and can be interlibrary loaned. There will be no index and using newspapers on microfilm is hard, time-consuming work.

To locate newspapers on microfilm, use  Worldcat: 

country = subject
newspaper* = keyword,
limit = serial publications
format = microfilm. 
Do NOT specify dates.