Primary Sources

Search America's historic newspapers from 1836-1922.

Provides access to historical collections from libraries, museums, and archives across Massachusetts.

Students are introduced to a historical scene and are then presented with an engaging question.  Links are provided to digital primary resources to help students solve the case.

In addition to providing access to web resources, History Matters has a collection of teaching materials, primary source documents, and guides to analyzing historical evidence.

Making of America provides a digital library of primary sources from the American antebellum period through reconstruction.

The Digital Vault uses images of documents, photographs, and popular media to tell a story.  Visitors shuffle records and choose a starting point.  Records are attached together through metadata.  Visitors to the site are able to create their own collections, use data to create posters and movies, and use clues to travel through connected records.

New Deal Network has a database of photographs, political cartoons, speeches, letters, and other historic documents from the New Deal Period.  The site also has a features section that explores New Deal topics.  Many features have curriculum ideas for middle and high school students. 

The World Digital Library has primary materials from all countries and cultures and includes books, manuscripts, maps, newspapers, journals, prints and photographs, sound recordings, and films.  Users can browse by place, time, topic, type of item, language, and contributing institution.  Each item in the collection has a description associated with it that details its significance and historical context.  There are also timelines and interactive maps.  All navigation tools and content descriptions are provided in seven languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

The G. Robert Vincent Voice Library is a collection of over 100,000 hours of spoken word recordings, dating back to 1888.