Primary Sources - U.S. History Digital Collections

Background context with curated document archives and guiding questions to help students analyze primary evidence and explore key historical issues in U.S. history.

Millions of photographs, manuscripts, books, sound recordings, and other materials from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States.

Curated U.S. primary sources with annotations.

Explore thousands of digital collections containing photographs, maps, manuscripts, books, recordings, and newspapers.

Compiles 71 digital gateways to state and regional history to find primary sources such as photographs, letters, newspapers, maps, and government records.

A full text digital library of nineteenth century American social history featuring about 10,000 books and a large run of journals in fields such as education, history, sociology, religion, psychology, and science and technology, with searchable pages and clear public domain rights.

Contains thousands of digitized letters, photographs, maps, videos, and other documents from the National Archives.

Hundreds of thousands of digitized primary sources including photographs, maps, manuscripts, books, audio, and video, with many items in the public domain for unrestricted reuse.

Access to more than 35,000 digitized books and manuscripts along with image galleries, ephemera, seed catalogs, and links to tools for searching additional library and archives holdings.

The Library of Congress U.S. History Primary Source Timeline organizes primary sources by historical era with brief context and links to documents, images, maps, and more.

The World Digital Library hosts rare books, maps, photos, and manuscripts from libraries and archives worldwide.