The Library of Congress, the world's largest library, holds millions of books, films, audio recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps, and manuscripts. It serves as the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and houses the U.S. Copyright Office. Its digital collections include books, newspapers, manuscripts, prints, photos, maps, musical scores, films, and sound recordings.
The NYC Municipal Archives Online Gallery offers free access to over 870,000 digitized items from its collections, including photographs, maps, motion pictures, and audio recordings. Browse by collection or use advanced search criteria to explore all content.
Oral history provides some of the best primary material you can use for your research. First hand accounts by the people who were there when significant events happened, or who were the event makers themselves, give an important glimpse into a time and place. Sample some of the oral histories below which highlight events shaping PRLS, or try a search in Google with a person's name or the name of an event along with the term "oral history" and see what you find.
Like oral history, speeches and interviews give us a chance to hear from people in their own words, unedited. Listen to the important words of these Latinx history makers and search for others on your own using Google. You can also go straight into YouTube and find many examples of speakers addressing issues of the day.
Comedians are often the spokes people of their time, bringing to the surface important social issues that reflect their own experiences or the experiences of their people. Although a good comedian will work hard on the material, testing it and perfecting it, what they say will give the listener a first hand look at a life as it has been lived, exaggerated, or not, for the cause of humor.
A multi-disciplinary resource, with collections that cover a broad range of topics from the Middle Ages forward-from Witchcraft to World War II to twentieth-century political history. Particular strengths include U.S. foreign policy; U.S. civil rights; global affairs and colonial studies; and modern history.
Search all available Gale Primary Source Databases at once.
U.S. History In Context is for those seeking contextual information on hundreds of the most significant people, events and topics in U.S. History. Content includes reference works, millions of news and periodical articles, and more than 5,000 rare and vital primary source documents that range from slave journals to presidential papers.
World History In Context delivers a chronicle of the great cultures and societies that have formed the history of the human race. Rare primary sources, reliable reference and multi-media content put this vast topic into context for students. Content is aligned with state and national curriculum standards and is cross searchable with U.S. History In Context.
This database offers direct access to Harper's Weekly, America's leading 19th-century illustrated newspaper, covering 1857-1912. It provides a comprehensive week-to-week record of global events from the Civil War to the end of the Gilded Age. Users can browse by volume/issue, search full-text using a thesaurus, and utilize indexed finding aids.
This database provides digital facsimiles of 61,000+ works on economics, business, and trade history (1450-1914), with full-text search across 11 million pages in multiple languages, offering insights into the development of the modern Western world.
This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online is a global digitization program focusing on primary sources from the long nineteenth century, including monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, maps, photographs, and more in diverse languages.