Library: HIST 217: Historical Methods: Primary Sources

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Subjects: Anthropology, Communication, Criminal Justice, English & Linguistics, Government Information, History, International Language & Culture Studies, Literature, Philosophy & Religion, Political Science, Public Administration, Sociology, Women & Gender Studies

Primary Sources

Newspapers

ProQuest Historical Newspapers: U.S. Major Dailies
Historical coverage of major U.S. newspapers, including Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. Dates vary, covering roughly 1850-2000.

Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Search across a large number of historical U.S. and world newspapers, including major U.S. newspapers and important ethnic and cultural newspapers, such as Communist newspapers, African American newspapers and more. You can click on "Databases" (top of page) to view date coverage and adjust your database selection.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers: African American Newspapers
Includes Atlanta Daily World (1931-2003), Baltimore Afro-American (1893-1988), Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005), New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993), Norfolk Journal and Guide (1921-2003), Philadelphia Tribune (1912-2001) and Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2002). See also the Black Studies Center Newspapers.

19th Century U.S. Newspapers This link opens in a new window
A collection of 500 U.S. newspapers from the 19th century. Full-text content and images from numerous newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S.
NewsBank Access World News Collection This link opens in a new window
Features credible information from a wide variety of international, national, and local news sources, including Fort Wayne's Journal Gazette, in all subject areas including political science, English, sociology, humanities, business, international studies, current events, science, and more.
NewsVault This link opens in a new window
Cross-searches Gale’s (British and U.S.) historical newspaper and periodical collections owned by the library. Provides access to more than 2,000 titles and over 10 million digitized facsimile pages.
Associated Press Collections Online This link opens in a new window
The collections make available the Associated Press Corporate Archives and AP Images providing the history and back story of the Associated Press with decades' of wire copy, correspondence, memos, and internal publications. Date coverage is roughly 1900 to the beginning of the 21st Century.

Magazines and Periodicals

Readers' Guide Retrospective with Current Coverage, 1890-current
Find popular magazine articles, 1890-current, with this well-known index to periodical literature. Use the Find It button to access additional full text options or to make a Document Delivery request.
News, Policy & Politics Magazine Archive (feat. Newsweek)‎
An archival collection of 15 major magazines (including the Newsweek archive) including current events, international relations, and public policy. Date coverage varies and includes 1918-2015.

Women's Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
Consists of the full backfiles of leading women’s interest consumer magazines, including Better Homes and Gardens, Chatelaine, Cosmopolitan, Essence, Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal, Parents, Redbook, Seventeen, WIN News, and Woman's Day.
British Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Provides access to the searchable full text of hundreds of periodicals from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth for a record of more than two centuries of British history and culture. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the fine arts music, drama, archaeology, architecture and the social sciences.
American Periodicals This link opens in a new window
This collection contains digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals that originated between 1740-1900. Titles range from America's first scientific journal, Medical Repository, to popular magazines like Vanity Fair and Ladies' Home Journal.

ProQuest Periodicals
Includes three ProQuest periodical databases: 1) Periodicals Index Online, with Maclean's, the New Statesman, Harper's, Vanity Fair, Atlantic Monthly and the New Republic, etc. with from roughly the late 1800s to 2000; 2) American Periodicals, with full text magazines first published between 1740-1900; and 3) Periodicals Archive Online, with over 500 full text publications.
Magazines and Periodicals: Selected U.S. Titles
Date coverage varies. Follow the links and look for "Search within this publication" or other related options.
E-Journal Finder
If you want to search a specific journal, such as Ladies Home Journal, Ejournal Finder will provide links to the full text and date coverage.
Document Delivery (Interlibrary Loan)
Request items not owned by Helmke Library. This free service is an easy way to access almost any published book or article of interest. See also WorldCat and FirstSearch.

Selected Databases

HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
Full text searching and PDFs of U.S. official documents, including the Pentagon Papers, U.S. Statutes at Large, Presidential Library, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), as well as a Supreme Court Library, Treaties and Agreements Library, Women and the Law, Legal Classics and World Constitutions Illustrated, among others.

HathiTrust
A large-scale digital archive created in collaboration with a consortium of university. Useful for finding government documents and pre-1923 items, such as books and journals.
Finding Print Government Publications
Visit Helmke Library 4th Floor to browse print government publications. Then, also do keyword searching for documents in the resources listed on this guide.

U.S. Declassified Documents Online This link opens in a new window
Provides online access to over 500,000 pages of previously classified government documents. Covers major international events from the Cold War to the Vietnam War and beyond.
Digital National Security Archive This link opens in a new window
Includes declassified documents regarding critical U.S. foreign and military policy decisions since 1945

Guide to Government Information
The Helmke Library guide to federal, state, local and international government information.

Primary Source Databases

Many of the items included within these collections can also be found via the library catalog.

Archives Unbound This link opens in a new window
Presents topically-focused digital collections of primary, unpublished historical documents.
C19, The Nineteenth Century Index This link opens in a new window
This resource is a comprehensive source for discovering nineteenth-century books, periodicals, official documents, newspapers and archives. C19 Index provides integrated access to 13 bibliographic indexes.
World Newsreels Online, 1929-1966 This link opens in a new window
The collection captures full runs of many of the key international newsreels produced during the early twentieth century. Key collections include: Universal Newsreels, Universal Studios, Les Actualites Francaises, Nippon News and The March of Time.
Primary Sources (Gale) This link opens in a new window
Gale Primary Sources combines Gale's digital archives in a single cross-search interface that provides access to millions of pages of content spanning many centuries and geographic regions. Users can explore a wide range of content including monographs, manuscripts, newspapers, photographs, maps, and more.
Slavery & Anti-Slavery: a Transnational Archive This link opens in a new window
An historical archive that embraces the scholarly study of slavery in a comprehensive, conceptual, and global way.
Indigenous Peoples: North America This link opens in a new window
Includes extensive monograph, manuscript, newspaper, periodical and photograph collections focusing on Indigenous Peoples in the United States and Canada.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text searching of electronic facsimiles of over 180,000 titles published in Great Britain and North America in the eighteenth century.
Colonial State Papers This link opens in a new window
Access to over 7,000 hand-written documents and more than 40,000 bibliographic records covering colonial history from 1574 to 1757, including the American colonies, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic world. Covers early American history, British colonial history, Caribbean history, maritime history, Atlantic trade, plantations, and slavery.