Primary Sources in VW Databases - Finding Primary Sources - the Definitive (and growing) Guide

RUSA Guide to Using Primary Sources

Follow this link to a thorough guide - with good links - to intelligent searching for and use of primary sources. It was produced by the Reference and User Services section of the American Library Association.

Primary Source Guide

Useful Databases - Primary and Secondary Sources

America: History and Life
This is a vital tool for doing research on North American history (mostly U.S. and Canada). Options for searches include various primary source types, e.g. diaries; you can also limit your search to materials produced during a specific time period, e.g. 1890 - 1920.

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 (scholar's edition) This link opens in a new window
This database is a rich trove of primary documents, academic articles, and ongoing/evolving projects based on original source materials. You can search by person, idea, movement, and many other facets. The collection currently includes 110 document projects and archives with almost 4,200 documents and more than 150,000 pages of additional full-text documents, written by more than 2,200 primary authors.

New York Times - Historical
This is a searchable full-text archive of NYT issues stretching back to 1851, which can provide useful source material.
Chicago Tribune - Historical
Spans the publication from 1849 - 1985, in full text.
JSTOR
You're familiar with JSTOR as a deep archive of scholarly publications. Because it's holdings reach far back into scholarly discourse, you can also use the database to explore how scholar's thought and wrote about the topics prominent during their lifetimes. It can be a source of then-contemporary perspective on issues we study as historians today.
19th-century Collections Online
Nineteenth Century Collections Online is a multi-year global digitization and publishing program focusing on primary source collections of the long nineteenth century, with archives releasing incrementally beginning in spring 2012.

London Times Digital Archive (Gale) [1785-2019] This link opens in a new window
Scour the full text of the Times, limit your search to specific dates and subjects, and check out quality scans of this important paper over more than 2 centuries.

Primary Source Search Engines

Try some of these instead of plain old Google to do a focused search in selected educational and non-profit domains.

Google Primary Source Search

Finding Primary Sources - the Definitive (and growing) Guide: Primary Sources in VW Databases

RUSA Guide to Using Primary Sources

Useful Databases - Primary and Secondary Sources

Primary Source Search Engines