Research Guides: United States History Resources: Find Primary Sources: Introduction

Historic American Newspapers - Try these first!

America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
America's Historical Newspapers provides reproductions of pages from historical American newspapers. It contains Early American Newspapers, Series 1-5. Covers 1690-1922
New York Times Full-Text / Full-Image (1851-2020) [via ProQuest Historical Newspapers] This link opens in a new window
Incorporates the New York Times Index
Philadelphia Inquirer (1829-1922) This link opens in a new window
Full-text of the Philadelphia Inquirer via Readex from 1829 to 1922.
Philadelphia Inquirer (1860-2001) [via ProQuest Historical Newspapers] This link opens in a new window
The Philadelphia Inquirer from 1860-2001. When digitization is complete (August 2017), the complete run will include 1829-2009
ProQuest Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Proquest Historical Newspapers Includes the following newspaper runs: Atlanta Daily World, Baltimore Afro-American, Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe, Chicago Defender, Chicago Tribune, Guardian, Observer, Irish Times, Jewish Exponent, Los Angeles Times, New York, Amsterdam News, New York Times, Philadelphia Tribune, Pittsburgh Courier, Scotsman, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post.
Content from approx. 1800-2000, exact coverage varies by title.
US Newsstream (formerly ProQuest Newsstand) This link opens in a new window
U.S. Newsstream features newspapers, newswires, blogs, and news sites dating back to 1980. Some titles include: Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers This link opens in a new window
The Library of Congress provides digitized newspapers from 1777-1963 and information about all American newspapers published between 1690-present. Explore an interactive map and timeline of digitized collections.

Historical Magazines

American Periodicals Series Online This link opens in a new window
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.
Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature Retrospective, 1890-1982 [via EbscoHost] This link opens in a new window
Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature Retrospective provides bibliographic information for articles from periodicals in the popular press. Coverage from 1890 to 1982.

Free E-book Collections (public domain content)

HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new window
Concurrent user limit: unlimited
Hathi Trust Digital Library is a digital preservation repository and access platform. It provides long-term preservation and access services for public domain and in copyright content from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and in-house partner institution initiatives. Temple users have access to HathiTrust items that are in the public domain.
Google Books This link opens in a new window
Google Books provides online access to full text of public domain and out-of-copyright books, reproduced either from text provided by publishers or by the libraries.

Explore Primary Source Databases

These databases aggregate many different primary source collections, especially from the United States and Great Britain. Contact me for help with the resources.

AM Explorer This link opens in a new window
AMExplorer allows users to search across multiple Adam Matthew collections that include millions of pages of social sciences and humanities primary sources spanning the 15th – 21st centuries.
Gale Primary Sources (formerly Artemis) This link opens in a new window
Gale Primary Sources cross searches all Gale digital archives. These primary source collections provide pages of newspapers, books, manuscripts, maps, and photographs.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Can limit to "Primary Source Content" after you enter your search terms. Note that not everything that appears will be a primary source depending on the context of your research.

Find Printed & Online Primary Sources in the Library Catalog

Many primary-source documents have been reproduced in books commonly held in research libraries. You can use Library Search to retrieve this material.

Enter your search terms and then select the Books & Media box.
Try adding keywords such as Correspondence, Diaries, Interviews, Personal Narratives, and Sources along with your research topic to identify printed primary sources.
You can also filter for these terms under "Genre" to the left of your search results.
When you find a title of interest, such as personal narratives from the first World War, select the hyper-linked subjects in the item record to find additional titles. For example, the heading: World War, 1914-1918--Personal Narratives.

Free Digital Primary Source Collections

Library of Congress Digital Collections
Digitized primary source content from the Library of Congress
Digital Public Library of America
Brings together the digitized riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world.

Temple University

University Libraries

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Need help? Email us at asktulibrary@temple.edu