All states:
Western states:
The full text of letters and diary entries, often from works that have been previously published as books containing collections of letters or diaries. Use the Browse indexes to find works about specific historical or life events.
Good for: Exploring women’s letters and diaries to learn about historical events and details of daily life in the past.
Contains: Handwritten letters and diaries with a detailed index
Dates covered: 1770s-1970s
The letters and diaries reveal, in each woman’s own hand, the details of the authors’ daily lives, their activities and concerns, and their attitudes towards the people and world around them. The collection is drawn entirely from the extensive holdings of the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Use the date range limit to narrow your search to a relevant time period.
1690-1923
Historical newspapers from every state in the U.S.
Good for: Researching historical events through American newspapers, including Nevada newspapers.
Contains: Historical newspapers.
Dates covered: 1789-1963.
Good for: Reading newspaper reports of major events of the U.S. Civil War.
Contains: Clippings from Union and Confederate sources.
Dates covered: 1860-1865.
1909-2010
African American newspaper from Chicago, Illinois.
1849-2014
Major daily newspaper from Chicago.
1881-2015
Historical California newspaper.
1851-2020
Historical New York newspaper.
1877-2007
Daily newspaper from Washington, DC.
Newspapers including Reno Gazette-Journal (1876-2008), San Francisco Examiner (1889-2007), and Spokane Statesman-Review (1894-2009); also includes selected 20th century newspapers from St. George, UT, and Tulare County and Salinas, CA.
1800-1900
American newspapers including the New York Herald, Lynchburg Virginian, The Hawaiian Gazette, Rocky Mountain News, Southern Illustrated News (VA), Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago), the Milwaukee Sentinel, and many more.
Search for articles published in popular magazines and journals from different times in history.
Good for: Researching fashion and culture, including specific garments, accessories or brands.
Contains: Images and text from Vogue Magazine.
Dates covered: 1892-present.
Collections of several types of primary sources curated around a topic or theme.
1850-1990s
Search three archival collections representing 20th century advertising and marketing from Adam Matthew Publishers.
1493-1945
Primary sources from the Gilder Lehrman collection about American history from the earliest settlers to the mid-twentieth century.
1400-1950s
Primary sources for American Indian history in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Manuscripts, artwork and rare printed books from pre-contact through the mid-20th century.
1820-1922
Pamphlets with advice and opinions about all kinds of 19th century controversies.
Part of America's Historical Imprints combined search portal
1830-1939
Pamphlets, maps, books, ephemeral material and rare printed sources related to the history of the American West.
Part of Americana combined search portal
Good for: Exploring the socio-cultural history of the United States in the 19th century through children's literature.
Contains: Rare books, games, ephemera, and artwork.
Dates covered: 1790s-1930s.
Good for: Primary source evidence of the British administration of the American colonies.
Contains: British government documents from the Colonial Office (CO 5).
Dates covered: 1606-1822.
Part of Americana combined search portal
Good for: Primary sources generated by the British Foreign and Colonial Offices about events in the United States, Canada, and the English-speaking Caribbean.
Contains: Government and agency records.
Dates covered: 1824-1961.
Good for: Evidence of changing views about gender, themed around conduct, domesticity, consumption and leisure, education, and the body.
Contains: Primary sources like correspondence, advice literature, periodicals, ephemera and government documents.
Dates covered: 1500s-1920.
Good for: Exploring colonial history, politics, culture and society from British and European perspectives.
Contains: Primary sources from archival collections.
Dates covered: 1492-1969.
Good for: Studying American social, cultural, and popular history in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Contains: Primary sources like periodicals, pamphlets and books.
Dates covered: 1800-1920.
1880s-1990s
The J. Walter Thompson Company advertising agency archives include brand case studies and account files about campaigns for Kellogg’s, Kodak, Kraft, Oscar Mayer, Pan Am, the US Marine Corps, and more.
Part of the American Consumer Culture combined search portal.
1490-2007
Case studies documenting slavery in America, the Caribbean, Brazil and Cuba, along with material examining European, Islamic and African involvement in the slave trade.
1850-1950
Primary sources like catalogs, price lists, and brochures reflecting the history of consumer advertising and marketing and life and leisure in America. Includes department store catalogs, cosmetic advertisements, real estate brochures and much more.
Part of the American Consumer Culture combined search portal.
Good for: Finding primary sources related to popular entertainment in America, Britain, and Europe.
Contains: Books, posters, scrapbooks, and optical toys.
Dates covered: 1779-1930.
1903-1962
Original documents from the National Archives on the suffrage question in Britain, the Empire and colonial territories.
Part of the Archives Direct combined search portal.
Digitized collections of books published during different time periods.
1749-1900
Printed menus, advertisements, cards, playbills, poems and other printed items never intended to last.
1820-1922
Pamphlets with advice and opinions about all kinds of 19th century controversies.
Part of America's Historical Imprints combined search portal
1801-1819
Complete books, pamphlets and broadsides published in North America between 1801 and 1819.
Part of America's Historical Imprints combined search portal
Good for: Searching books and periodicals, including full text access to those in the public domain and limited search for those still under copyright.
Contains: Scanned books and periodicals
1600-1926
Cross-search five Making of Modern Law databases: Making of Modern Law: Foreign, Comparative and International Law 1600-1926, Making of Modern Law: Foreign Primary Sources, Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources 1620-1926, Making of Modern Law: Treatises, 1800-1926, and Making of Modern Law: Trials 1600-1926.
Good for: Finding primary source materials on exploration, trade, colonialism, slavery and abolition, the western movement, Native Americans, military actions and more.
Contains: Historical books, pamphlets, serials and other documents about North America, South America, Central America and the Caribbean.
Dates covered: 1500-1926
Official government publications, including laws, treaties, and records of legislative proceedings.
United States
Good for: Researching U.S. legislative information.
Contains: Congressional publications, bills, laws, regulations, committee information, and more.
Dates covered: 1789-present.
1789-present
Contains searchable full text of all U.S. bills and resolutions from 1789 to the present.
Individual bills may be directly accessed or searched via a composite bill profile page that links out to its various versions.
1751-present
Government reports, laws, legislative histories, ebooks and selected scholarly articles related to branches of the United States armed forces.
Research government administration of the armed forces along with issues confronting the military on and off the battlefield with access to primary source documents including committee prints, government reports, congressional hearings, legislative hearings, etc. The database also includes books, serials, periodicals and scholarly articles.
Good for: Primary sources generated by the British Foreign and Colonial Offices about events in the United States, Canada, and the English-speaking Caribbean.
Contains: Government and agency records.
Dates covered: 1824-1961.
Digitized photos and art images.
Good for: Texts on the invention and early history of photography, collections of photographs, photograph albums, and early books illustrated with photos.
Contains: Books, photographs
Dates covered: 1800s-early 1900s
Art digital images and related data.
A repository of hundreds of thousands of digital images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, social sciences and related data; the tools to actively use those images; and a restricted usage environment that seeks to balance the rights of content providers with the needs and interests of content user.
These links allow you to search across multiple databases at the same time.
Good for: Searching across all collections of historical primary sources from Adam Matthew Publishers.
Contains: Primary sources held in libraries, museums and archives around the world.
Includes 19th Century UK Periodicals, Archives of Sexuality & Gender (LGBTQ History), British Library Newspapers, The Economist (1843-2014), Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Nineteenth Century Collections Online, Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers, Sabin Americana (1500-1926), China and the Modern World, London Times Digital Archive, and London Times Literary Supplement.