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General History: Online Primary Documents

Free Online Primary Documents

The Girl Left Behind Me

The Girl Left Behind Me. This media is in the public domain (free of copyright restrictions). You can copy, modify, and distribute this work without contacting the Smithsonian. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's Terms of Use page.

Selected online resources in alphabetical order:

American Journeys provides eyewitness accounts by explorers, native americans, missionaries, traders, settlers exploring North Americ, ca. AD 1000 to 1800 from the Wisconsin Historical Society.   


Library of Congress logo

Digitized colllections of the National Library of the United States and Congress (LOC). Prints, photographs, sound archives, and other e-resources) from all time periods and countries. 

American Memory: Digital archive of LOC historical documents, maps, sound recordings, and images.

Chronicling of America: Historic American newpapers from 1789-1963. 


Documenting the American South

Documenting the American South provides access to texts, images, audiofiles on history, literature and culture, colonial period to include the beginnings of the twentieth century.  From the University of North Carolina Library. 


Historical sources for Ancient History, Medieval Studies, and Modern History.


Making of America

Making of America is a digital library of 10,000 books and 50,000 journal articles in American social history, antebellum period through Reconstruction. From the University of Michigan.


Docs Teach

Search for primary sources in the U. S. National Archives.


New York Public Library Digital Collections

Archives, Digital collections and more from the New York Public Library:  Historical maps, illuminated manuscripts, prints and photographs.  Includes texts and images from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.


Smithsonian Libraries

The Digital Collections contain exhibitions, digitized books (many on the history of science and technology), papers from the Bureau of American Ethnology BULLETIN, photos and ephemera.

Online Databases (UF only)

Indexes to Primary Documents

U. S. National Archives--Archival Research Catalog

Features online primary source materials for educational program DocsTeach, and online exhibits.  Also guides to archival collections in regional depositories (Atlanta, Georgia, is NARA’s Southeast Regional Repository). For more information, see http://www.archives.gov/education/research/primary-sources.html

Special Topics

Temperance and Prohibition  (Ohio State University)

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire  (Cornell University)

University of Florida Home Page

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