Primary Sources

A joint collaboration between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities, Chronicling America is a collection of more than 12 million searchable digitized pages of newspapers published between 1789 and 1963.

DPLA brings together more than 20 million sources from partners across the U.S. Browse by topic or by partner, or do a traditional search. Check out more than 100 sets of primary sources grouped by topic, as well as dozens of exhibitions. Some primary source sets contain both primary and secondary sources.

Access thousands of primary sources — letters, photographs, speeches, posters, maps, videos, and other document types — spanning the course of American history. This site is run by the National Archives.

Google and Life Magazine have a search engine that lets users search millions of images from the Life Magazine Photo Archive. You can type in key terms to guide your searches. You can also look through images organized by decade (1860s through 1970s) or significant people, places, events or sports topics.

This area of the National Archives website offers a jumping-off point for several collections of resources. Users can visit two related sites: DocsTeach.org, to refine searches by historical era to target results, and OurDocuments.gov, to view a list of 100 milestone documents in U.S. history. Students can also search for artifacts related to the U.S. government and political figures at the National Archives catalogue.

The World Digital Library (WDL) is an international digital library operated by UNESCO and the United States Library of Congress. Explore almost 20,000 artifacts from almost 200 countries. Search or browse by time period, place, or topic, or type of item.