HIST 3100 Historian's Craft: Primary Source Databases
General Information
Primary sources are documents, artifacts, and other items created during the time period being studied. Common primary sources include diaries, photographs, interviews, and newspaper articles. However, what counts as a primary source depends on the research question you're asking: while textbooks are largely considered to be secondary sources, an American history textbook published in the 1950s could be a primary source used to investigate what American children were taught about slavery during the Jim Crow era.
Marriott Library Digital Library
The Marriott Library offers access to primary sources in a variety of ways. While students and other researchers are usually encouraged to visit Special Collections to access archival collections, rare books, and other resources in person, the coronavirus pandemic has made that difficult or impossible in many cases. Luckily, many resources have been digitized and are available to view in the Digital Library, including books and pamphlets advocating for and against the American Revolution, pioneer diaries, photographs, and oral histories.
You can search for keywords, authors, titles, and other terms in the Digital Library on your own, or you can contact a member of Special Collections for help locating digitized materials. Note that the Digital Library search engine doesn't work like Google! If you type in "dog" but the resource only mentions "canines," you won't find what you're looking for. Try out synonyms and alternate phrasings to be sure you're finding all the relevant results.
Newspapers
Newspapers can show us how people reacted to historical events, artistic works, and other things in real time. Many newspapers, both from Utah and across the country, have been digitized and are available online.
- Utah Digital Newspapers (https://digitalnewspapers.org/) currently contains over 3.5 million pages from almost 200 Utah newspapers. You can perform a keyword search of the database or browse for specific newspapers by county and title.
- Chronicling America (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/) is a Library of Congress program that has digitized over 17 million pages from over 3,000 American newspapers published between 1789 and 1963. You can perform a keyword search of the entire repository or browse papers by state, language, or ethnic group.
Librarian Robert Behra has an excellent guide on locating and using newspapers for research. Other newspaper databases, including ones that index and digitize international papers, can be found here.
Other Primary Source Databases
The Marriott Library subscribes to many primary source databases. Here are some you might find particularly useful.
- Accessible Archives This link opens in a new windowThis database contains all the materials the library provides access to through Accessible Archives. Some of the materials in this database (African American Newspapers, Pennsylvania Gazette, etc.) are owned outright by the library and have their own listings elsewhere in the database listings, but this entry will give you access to the content we subscribe to on a temporary basis as well. Accessible Archives is made up of a number of digitized historical newspapers which cover a range of topics, but which generally focus on early American history.
- Adam Matthew Primary Source Collections This link opens in a new windowAdam Matthew publishes unique primary source collections from archives around the world.
- African American newspapers, series 1 and 2, 1827-1998 This link opens in a new windowAfrican American Newspapers, Series 1 and 2, 1827-1998, provides online access to more than 350 U.S. newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African-American experience. This unique collection, which includes historically significant papers from more than 35 states, features many rare 19th-century titles.
- American Indian Movement and Native American Radicalism This link opens in a new windowFormed in 1968, the American Indian Movement (AIM) expanded from its roots in Minnesota and broadened its political agenda to include a searching analysis of the nature of social injustice in America. These FBI files provide detailed information on the evolution of AIM as an organization of social protest and the development of Native American radicalism.
- American West This link opens in a new windowFrom early topographical sketches and pioneers’ accounts, to photographs of Buffalo Bill and his ‘Wild West’ stars, explore the fact and the fiction of westward expansion in America from the early eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Browse a wide range of rare and original documents including printed books, journals, historic maps, broadsides, periodicals, advertisements, photographs, artwork and more. To search across all of The University of Utah's Adam Matthew collections go to Adam Matthew collections
- Archives of Human Sexuality and Identity LGBTQ History and Culture (Part I & II) This link opens in a new windowThe Archives of Human Sexuality and Identity: LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940 consists of 20 individual collections, with a total page count of nearly one and a half million pages. Documents span from 1940 to 2014, with the bulk from 1950 to 1990. Although most materials are in English, the archive contains periodicals in German, Polish, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, French, Italian, Hebrew, Indonesian, and other languages. Four collections are sourced from the Lesbian Herstory Archives, the largest lesbian-focused archives in the world; two are sourced from the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society. Others are sourced from the New York Public Library; the London School of Economics; and from the National Institutes of Health.
- Colonial America Modules 1,4 & 5 This link opens in a new windowColonial America makes available all 1,450 volumes of the CO 5 series from The National Archives, UK, covering the period 1606 to 1822. CO 5 consists of the original correspondence between the British government and the governments of the American colonies, making it a uniquely rich resource for all historians of the period.
- Mass Observation Online This link opens in a new windowMass Observation Online provides integrated access to almost 400,000 digital images of material from the Mass Observation Archive (MOA), a collection of papers and documents related to the social and cultural history of Britain. In addition, it searches all material held on Adam Matthew Publications microfilm, and in the Mass Observation Archive. The Archive holds all the material generated by Mass Observation (MO) between 1937 and 1949, with a few later additions from the 1950s and 1960s.
- Overland Journeys: Travels in the West / 1800-1880 This link opens in a new windowComprised of selections from the microfilm collections Travels in the West and Southwest and the Plains & Rockies, this digital collection provides a unique window on Western History. Selections are based on the bibliographies, The Plains and Rockies: A Critical Bibliography of Exploration, Adventure, and Travel in the American West, 1800-1865, and The Trail West: A Bibliography-Index to Western American Trails, 1841-1869.
- Women's Studies Archive This link opens in a new windowMuch of history is one-sided, focusing mainly on the male perspective and leaving women's voices unheard. Bringing women's stories to light, the Women's Studies Archive connects archival collections concerning women's history from across the globe and from a wide range of sources. Focusing on the evolution of feminism throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the archive provides materials on women's political activism, such as suffrage, birth control, pacifism, civil rights, and socialism, and on women's voices, from female-authored literature to women's periodicals. By providing the opportunity to witness female perspectives, Gale's Women's Studies Archive is an essential source for researchers working in Women's History, Gender Studies and Social History.
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