LibGuides: Primary Sources at Drew: Online Primary Resources

Online Primary Resources

World Scholar: Latin America And The Caribbean This link opens in a new window World Scholar: Latin America & the Caribbean serves the needs of students and researchers by bringing together in a single place a rich collection of primary source documents about Latin America and the Caribbean; academic journals and news feeds covering the region; reference articles and commentary; maps and statistics; audio and video; and more.
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Women's Studies Archive: Women's Issues and Identities This link opens in a new window Much 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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Slavery And Anti-Slavery This link opens in a new window The archive is divided into four sections: part I: Debates over Slavery and Abolition, part II: Slave Trade in the Atlantic World, part III: The Institution of Slavery, and part IV: The Age of Emancipation. Slavery and Anti-Slavery includes collections on the transatlantic slave trade, the global movement for the abolition of slavery, the legal, personal, and economic aspects of the slavery system, and the dynamics of emancipation in the U.S. as well as in Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions. Includes 5.4 million cross-searchable pages: 12,049 books, 170 serials, 71 manuscript collections, 377 supreme court records and briefs and 194 reference articles from Macmillan, Charles Scribner's Sons and Gale encyclopedias. Links to websites, biographies, chronology, bibliographies, and information on key collections, to give users background and context for further research. Collections published through partnerships with the Amistad Research Center, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the British Library, the National Archives in Kew, Oberlin College, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the University of Miami, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and many other institutions.
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Nineteenth Century US Newspapers Digital Archive This link opens in a new window As a new American nation emerged in the 1800s, the first draft of history was written by those who experienced it and recorded it in newspaper pages from coast to coast. Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers provides an as-it-happened window on events, culture, and daily life in nineteenth-century America that is of interest to both professional and general researchers. With 1.8 million pages available, the collection features publications of all kinds, from the political party newspapers at the beginning of the nineteenth century to the mammoth dailies that shaped the nation at the century's end. Major newspapers stand alongside those published by African Americans, Native Americans, women’s rights groups, labor groups, and the Confederacy. Titles were selected by leading scholars of the nineteenth-century American press, and headnotes have been included for the individual titles.
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Archives of Sexuality & Gender: LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940 - Part I This link opens in a new window The Archives of Sexuality and Gender program provides a robust and significant collection of primary sources for the historical study of sex, sexuality, and gender. With material dating back to the sixteenth century, researchers and scholars can examine how sexual norms have changed over time, health and hygiene, the development of sex education, the rise of sexology, changing gender roles, social movements and activism, erotica, and many other interesting topical areas. This growing archival program offers rich research opportunities across a wide span of human history. The Archives of Sexuality and Gender program consists of four archives: LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940, Part I; LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940, Part II; Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century; and International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture
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Part I presents important aspects of LGBTQ life in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond.
American Historical Periodicals Series 1-5 This link opens in a new window American Historical Periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society provides a history of the American people and a testament to the growth of the nation from the colonial period through to the twentieth century. The periodicals focused on American concerns and were predominantly published in the United States or Canada, though some were published overseas by Americans living abroad. The collection offers multiple perspectives on the thought, culture, and society of North America through the eyes of those who lived it, showing how history affected citizens from all walks of life. While major issues are covered, the periodicals included in this collection go beyond politics, economics and general history. Alongside titles dedicated to arts and literature, there is coverage ranging from entertainment to agriculture, building a comprehensive and expansive record of the era. The collection includes unusual and short-lived magazines as well as better-known titles with long runs. Early periodicals in the collection focus on colonial life and the growing tensions between colonists and their oversea rulers leading up to the American Revolution. Common themes depicted in antebellum periodicals reveal a rapidly growing young nation where industrialization, western expansion, and regional political differences were a daily reality for many Americans. The Civil War and Reconstruction eras are well represented, documenting the conflict and its aftermath from a variety of perspectives and allowing readers to bear witness to this pivotal period in American history. Early twentieth century titles document the second Industrial Revolution, immigration, women’s rights, World War I, as well as fashion and music during the Roaring Twenties.
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Oxford African American Studies Center This link opens in a new window The Oxford African American Studies Center combines the authority of carefully edited reference works with sophisticated technology to create the most comprehensive collection of scholarship available online to focus on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture. The Oxford African American Studies Center provides students, scholars and librarians with more than 10,000 articles by top scholars in the field. The site includes a carefully selected editorial program of supplementary material. This includes over 700 primary source documents with commentaries, approximately 2,500 images with an ongoing image research program, over 300 charts, tables and graphs, maps, timelines, and learning resources for students and teachers.
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Chronicling America - Historic American Newspapers, from Library of Congress This link opens in a new window Chronicling America is a website providing access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages, and is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). NDNP, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages. Supported by NEH, this rich digital resource will be developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress.
Routledge Historical Resources: History of Feminism This link opens in a new window History of Feminism is an exciting new online platform that brings together the best and most relevant scholarship from Taylor & Francis, its imprints, and its authors. It is the first part of the new Routledge Historical Resources online programme that will provide both academics and students with an in depth research tool for studying the long Nineteenth Century through thematic collections in areas such as Feminism, the History of Economic Thought, Romanticism and Empire. This resource covers the fascinating subject of feminism over the long nineteenth century (1776–1928). It contains an extensive range of primary and secondary resources, including full books, selected chapters, and journal articles, as well as new thematic essays, and subject introductions on its structural themes: Politics and Law, Religion and Belief, Education, Literature and Writings, Women at Home, Society and Culture, Empire, and Movements and Ideologies
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And don't forget these tried and true resources:

Digital Public Library of America
HathiTrust
Good for finding scanned books published before the 20th century.
Internet Archive

Atla Digital Library - Think Internet Archive with a theological focus. Contains nearly 100,000 items digitized (including items from Drew) and freely available for research. “The Atla Digital Library is designed to provide Atla members and other organizations with a standards compliant, sustainable, and inter-operable hub that will promote visibility and access to their valuable digital collections. Atla and Atla Digital Library Program participants are committed to the following principles: open access to and free use and re-use of metadata, free online access to digital content to the extent possible given existing rights to the content, [and] collaboration and collectively developing and maintaining best practices among program participants”

Library Guides

Primary Sources at Drew

Intro to online primary resources at Drew

Online Primary Resources