Primary Sources

Provides access to a diverse selection of the Ransom Center's diverse holdings in literature, photography, film, art, and the performing arts.

This website is organized thoughtfully, and it’s worth a close look. If you’re interested in legal history, the material from the Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. papers is excellent, and the Working Women collection is highly recommended. Other special collections focus on themes such as immigration to the United States, 1789-1930, islamic heritage and more!

It provides access to acollection of digitized posters, photographs, manuscripts, moving images, sound recordings, and other historical materials housed at this Institution. Its largest collection is the poster collection. Many of its items document the wartime viewpoints and diverse political sentiments of the twentieth century from around the world.

It specializes in the fields of British and American history, literature and the history of science spanning the 11th century to the present.

Specialized in primary historical sources pertaining to the Americas, both North and South, before ca. 1825. "Extensive holdings in the literature of European exploration and travel in the Western Hemisphere, from the first Latin edition of the Columbus letter of 1493, through nearly all of the contemporary narratives of Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and English discovery, exploration, and settlement."

An independent research library specializing in American history and culture from the 17th through the 19th centuries.

Chicago's independent research library since 1887. It provides access to items in some of its core collections focusing on topics such as American history and culture and Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern studies.

Provides access to its digital collections such as the Arabic Collections Online, the Ancient World Digital Library and the Afghanistan Digital Library.

Princeton has digitized parts of its public policy collection. Its collection focus on many areas/cultures of the word such as East Asia, Near East and Islamic and Slavic cultures.

Provides access to its digital collections focusing on a great variety of topics such as activism and social reform, plastics and broadcasting history. The Gerri Smith papers, for example, shed light on the efforts to end slavery before the Civil War.

Michigan’s collection is especially strong on women’s movements and gender. There are good oral histories here, plus publications and photographs.

The Wisconsin Historical Association has the country’s second largest North American Heritage collection—after the Library of Congress. There’s great material on lots of topics, including the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War.

Yale has lots of online material about Christian missionaries, and some of the Henry Kissinger material is accessible too. Also, some of the material in Manuscripts and Archives will travel via interlibrary loan—and the Beinecke Library has an extensive collection of digitized documents.