Primary Sources

Resources Across All Disciplines

• Using Primary Sources
  • Library of Congress
• Primary Source Sets - LOC
  • Library of Congress
• Primary Source Lesson Plans - LOC
  • Library of Congress
• Presentations and Materials -LOC
  • Presentations look across the American Memory collections to investigate curricular themes. They include historical background, helping to tell the story behind the theme.
• Themed Resources - LOC
  • Exhibitions, special presentations, lesson plans and other materials gathered from throughout the Library of Congress for selected curricular themes.
• Collection Connections - LOC
  • Historical context and ideas for teaching with specific Library of Congress primary source collections.
• Primary Source - Global Learning Matters
  • With over 35 classroom-ready activities and more than 60 online resource guides, we offer educators creative and engaging ideas for making their teaching more globally inclusive.
• Digital Public Library of America - Primary Source Sets
• The New York Public Library Digital Collections
• NPR Story Corps
  • Sharing and preserving the stories of our lives.

History Primary Sources

• History Matters - Making Sense of Evidence
  • “Making Sense of Documents” provide strategies for analyzing online primary materials, with interactive exercises and a guide to traditional and online sources. “Scholars in Action” segments show how scholars puzzle out the meaning of different kinds of primary sources, allowing you to try to make sense of a document yourself then providing audio clips in which leading scholars interpret the document and discuss strategies for overall analysis.
• Docs Teach - The National Archives
  • Bringing history to life for your students with thousands of primary documents and tools for using them with your students.
• Teaching History
  • Teaching materials, history content, best practices.
• List of Resources for the American Revolution
• List of Resources for the Civil War
• List of Resources- Reconstruction to WWI
• List of Resources - World War I
• List of Resources - World War II
• List of Resources - Post World War II

Smart History

Smarthistory is a collaboration of more than 200 art historians, archaeologists, curators and other specialists who want to make the highest-quality art history learning content freely available to a global audience. Contributing editors oversee specific content areas.