History Research Guide

LOC's digital collection consists of over 9 million items that document U.S. history and culture. The collections provides free access to manuscripts, prints, photographs, posters, maps, sound recordings, motion pictures, books, pamphlets, and sheet music.

Central repository for millions of digitized archival, library, and museum collections across the United States. Resource has a faceted browsing system for easy exploration of material.

Run by the National Archives, this collection contains correspondence and other writings from George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams (and family), Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison.

Fordham University's History Sourcebook Project hosts a wide collection of primary sources. This sub-page on Modern History features primary sources on Global and United States topics.

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the nation's record keeper. Many of these records are preserved and are available to you, whether you want to see if they contain clues about your family's history, need to prove a veteran's military service, or are researching a historical topic that interests you.

Created by the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond, American Panorama is an historical atlas of the United States for the twenty-first century. It combines cutting-edge research with innovative interactive mapping techniques, designed to appeal to anyone with an interest in American history or a love of maps.

The Civil Rights Digital Library promotes an enhanced understanding of the Movement by helping users discover primary sources and other educational materials from libraries, archives, museums, public broadcasters, and others on a national scale.

From Hamilton College, this is a collection of 456 letters written during the American Civil war by members of regiments from Central New York. Each letter has been digitized and transcribed. The collection is browsable by person, place, and topic.

The Dartmouth Vietnam Project is an oral history project based at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The DVP is building an archive of oral testimony about the Vietnam War era (1950-1975) and its aftermath. The DVP trains current Dartmouth undergraduates to conduct oral history interviews with college alumni and other members of the Dartmouth and Upper Valley communities.

On May 12, 2009, the U. S. Congress authorized a national initiative by passing The Civil Rights History Project Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-19). The law directs the Library of Congress (LOC) and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) to conduct a survey of existing oral history collections with relevance to the Civil Rights movement to obtain justice, freedom and equality for African Americans and to record new interviews with people who participated in the struggle, over a five year period beginning in 2010.

A state by state list of the online records collections held by repositories in state.

The National Security Archive contains investigative journalism and a library and archive of declassified U.S. documents ("the world's largest nongovernmental collection" according to the Los Angeles Times). They are the leading non-profit user of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and an invaluable resource for research in U.S. History.

The Race Relations Institute was a pioneering social science organization at Fisk University. Documenting three pivotal decades in the fight for civil rights, this resource showcases the speeches, reports, surveys and analyses produced by the Department’s staff and Institute participants, including Charles S. Johnson and Thurgood Marshall.

The Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project from the University of Virginia consists of digitized primary source materials relating to the Salem witch trials of 1692 and a new transcription of the court records.

Calisphere provides free access to unique and historically important artifacts for research, teaching, and curious exploration. Discover over two million photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more. Calisphere hosts the digital collections of hundreds of California Universities, Public Libraries, Archives, and Museums. So instead of searching individual collections, save yourself some time and search Calisphere. Contributors include the UCLA, USC, CSUCI, Huntington Library, Oxnard Public Library, and hundreds more!

Provides free public access to detailed descriptions of primary resource collections maintained by more than 200 contributing institutions including libraries, special collections, archives, historical societies, and museums throughout California and collections maintained by the 10 University of California (UC) campuses.

California Cultures are a collection of digital exhibits on a variety of California subjects using primary sources from Calisphere. The California Cultures project was specially charged with correcting the historic lack of digitized primary source materials for four major ethnic groups: African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans. More than 20,000 photographs, documents, and other materials tell their stories, struggles, and contributions.

This digital collection includes oral histories and documents from local Braceros collected by CI students. Also included are images and documentation on the exhibit "Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program 1942-1964," hosted by CI in 2010.

This collection from the CSUCI Archives, is an on-going project tracing the historical, cultural, social, and political experiences of Chicanos. A large portion of the material focuses on Chicano and Latino art in various forms and formats. The collections also refer to major social, economic, and political changes and issues occurring in Central and South America, Mexico, the U.S. and Africa. Topics include unemployment, migrant farm workers, labor movements, communism, and socialism. The digital contents of these collections include articles, correspondence, documents, Chicano magazines, pamphlets, exhibition catalogs, art murals and photographs.

This collection from the CSUCI Archives, is an on-going project tracing the history of Ventura County. Many of the sub-collections depict life in Ventura County in the early 20th century, highlighting notable or memorable personalities and events of the time period.

This collection is an on-going project tracing the history of Ventura County. Many of the sub-collections depict life in Ventura County in the early 20th century, highlighting notable or memorable personalities and events of the time period. Included among these collections is the museum's large body of photographs documenting the history of Ventura County.

Oral history interviews are a unique primary source, documenting first-hand accounts of history as told by the individuals who lived it. Voices of the Golden State, interviews of Californians with different backgrounds and experiences will not just recount the state’s rich history, but will provide special insight into California’s great diversity.

The African Activist Archive is preserving and making available online the records of activism in the United States to support the struggles of African peoples against colonialism, apartheid, and social injustice from the 1950s through the 1990s. The website includes pamphlets, newsletters, leaflets, buttons, posters, T-shirts, photographs, audio and video recordings, interviews with activists, and an international directory of collections deposited in libraries and archives

The African American Freedom Trail Project is a city-wide network and community-based archive, housed at Tufts University. Inspired by the scholarship of the late Tufts Professor Gerald R. Gill (1948-2007) on civil rights and the history of Black Boston, and driven by faculty and student research, the project maps African American public history sites, while developing collaborative, community-based public history projects across greater Boston.

The USC Digital Library contains a wide range of primary sources: visual, textual, and oral. This links to their main page and you can scroll down to their African American Studies collection. This area includes the Dunbar Economic Development Corporation Collection, the First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles Collection, Gospel Music History Archive, Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles Webster Commission Records, Race Arts and Placemaking Oral History Archives, and the Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Archive.

A list of major digitized archival holdings in African American history. Click on the name of the archive and you will be taken to the opening page of the collection. The archives are grouped by state. Great resource for topic searching by primary source availability.

Calisphere includes photographs, documents, graphics, and lesson plans. Historic photographs and artwork show the changing lives of African Americans from the Gold Rush Era and Statehood, through years of struggle to claim their civil rights. Although these images cannot possibly encompass every aspect of African American life in America during this time, they offer a candid look into a number of important areas in California: black migration into the state, the effects of segregation and racial discrimination, the struggle for social equality, the Civil Rights Movement and its leaders, the Black Panthers, urban violence and community renewal, and the rise of the black middle class and black political leadership.

Hosted by the New York Public Library, this collection features digital exhibitions, photographs, audio and video streams, historical projects, and external links for research in the history and cultures of the peoples of Africa and the African Diaspora.

"The primary focus of Enslaved.org is people—individuals who were enslaved, owned slaves, were connected to the slave trade, and worked to emancipate slaves. In collaboration with numerous academic institutions, the Center for Digital Humanities & Social Sciences at Michigan State University hosts this robust, open-source architecture to discover, connect, and visualize 600,000 (and growing) people records and 5 million data points. From archival fragments and spreadsheet entries, we see the lives of the enslaved in richer detail."

The Gullah of South Carolina and Georgia have lived along the sea-islands of the the region for hundreds of years. The Kenyon Gullah Digital Archive collects the oral histories of Gullah people who live and work on St. Helena. This collection is a multimedia archive of Gullah culture on St. Helena and neighboring communities. The Image Gallery contains both current and historical images from St. Helena. The Project Documents section contains lesson plans about Gullah culture and oral history for a variety of grade levels. Finally, the Video Collection contains interviews from Gullah people and St. Helena residents, as well as downloadable PDF transcripts to accompany the interviews.

Slavery and Abolition Portal at Yale University is designed to help researchers and students find primary sources related to slavery, abolition, and resistance within the university's many libraries and galleries.

The USC Digital Library contains a wide range of primary sources: visual, textual, and oral. This links to their main page and you can scroll down to their Asian-American and Pacific Islander Studies collection. This area includes the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California Collection, Crystal City Collection, Filipino American Library Collection, Japanese American Incarceration Images Collection, the Korean American Digital Archive, and the Pedro Loureiro Collection.

California Cultures documents California's rich history of diversity and multicultural contributions. The Asian Americans collection includes materials on Cambodian Americans, Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, Hmong Americans, Japanese Americans, Korean Americans, Laotian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Vietnamese Americans

Documents the story of the Japanese American incarceration experience from those who lived it, and find thousands of historic photographs, documents, newspapers, letters and other primary source materials from immigration to the WWII incarceration and its aftermath.

This collection from the University of California Berkeley's Bancroft Library documents the Japanese American experience during World War II. It includes over 530,000 primary source materials drawn from an extensive collection of manuscripts and photographs.

Personal and official photographs, letters and diaries, transcribed oral histories, art, and more show the faces of people, places, daily life, and personal experiences.

Digital archive documenting the stories of South Asian Americas. Has an excellent browse function that supports searching by time period, language, states, and sources.

VOAHA enables you to access the full audio recordings of oral histories that have been deposited in Special Collections of the University Library. CSU Long Beach's oral history collections have been assembled from a number of sources and cover topics ranging from women's social history, labor and ethnic studies to Long Beach Area history and the musical developments in Southern California. Among the collections are oral histories from Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, and Indigenous peoples of Southern California. Presently, more than 1000 hours with 350 very diverse narrators are available online.

AILLA is a digital archive of recordings and texts in and about the indigenous languages of Latin America. The heart of the collection is the recordings, both audio and video, in a wide range of genres: narratives, chants, oratory, conversations, songs, and more. The archive also contains a wealth of language documentation materials: grammars, dictionaries, ethnographies, and field notes. The collection includes teaching materials for bilingual education and language revitalization programs.

The Archivo Mesoamericano is a digital archive of annotated historical and ethnographic video materials created in collaboration with the Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS) in Mexico, the Institute of History of Nicaragua and Central America (IHNCA) in Nicaragua, and the Museum of the Word and the Image (MUPI) in El Salvador.

California Cultures documents California's rich history of diversity and multicultural contributions. The Native Americans collection includes materials on pre-Columbian and modern art, history, and traditions of the Indigenous peoples of California.

"This digital collection from the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in New Mexico consists of the US National Archives' 374 treaties. The scans of treaties on this site come from the treaties with native nations from 1722 to 1869 in the holdings of the US National Archives (National Archives Identifier 299798)."

VOAHA enables you to access the full audio recordings of oral histories that have been deposited in Special Collections of the University Library. CSU Long Beach's oral history collections have been assembled from a number of sources and cover topics ranging from women's social history, labor and ethnic studies to Long Beach Area history and the musical developments in Southern California. Among the collections are oral histories from Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, and Indigenous peoples of Southern California. Presently, more than 1000 hours with 350 very diverse narrators are available online.

The Bracero History Archive collects and makes available the oral histories and artifacts pertaining to the Bracero program, a guest worker initiative that spanned the years 1942-1964. Millions of Mexican agricultural workers crossed the border under the program to work in more than half of the states in America.

Calisphere includes photographs, documents, graphics, and lesson plans. Images trace the history of Hispanic Americans in California from the Mission system and Californios into the 20th century: Mexican immigration into California, the farmworkers' labor struggles, and the Chicano Civil Rights movement and La Raza, which also resulted in an explosion of cultural art.

This collection from UCLA consists of oral histories from Mexican American social activists.

This collection from the CSUCI Archives, is an on-going project tracing the historical, cultural, social, and political experiences of Chicanos. A large portion of the material focuses on Chicano and Latino art in various forms and formats. The collections also refer to major social, economic, and political changes and issues occurring in Central and South America, Mexico, the U.S. and Africa. Topics include unemployment, migrant farm workers, labor movements, communism, and socialism. The digital contents of these collections include articles, correspondence, documents, Chicano magazines, pamphlets, exhibition catalogs, art murals and photographs.

VOAHA enables you to access the full audio recordings of oral histories that have been deposited in Special Collections of the University Library. CSU Long Beach's oral history collections have been assembled from a number of sources and cover topics ranging from women's social history, labor and ethnic studies to Long Beach Area history and the musical developments in Southern California. Among the collections are oral histories from Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, and Indigenous peoples of Southern California. Presently, more than 1000 hours with 350 very diverse narrators are available online.

The University of Texas' Voces Oral History Center is dedicated to recording, preserving and disseminating the stories of US Latinas and Latinos. This project seeks to document and create a better awareness of the contributions of Latinos of the WWII, Korean War, and Vietnam War generations.

The purpose of the Digital Transgender Archive (DTA) is to increase the accessibility of transgender history by providing an online hub for digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world. Hosted by Northeastern University, the collection consists of materials from over 50 other institutions. You can search or browse the archive by topic, genre, collection, or a map.

The GLBT Historical Society collects, preserves, exhibits and makes accessible to the public materials and knowledge to support and promote understanding of LGBTQ history, culture and arts in all their diversity. Their archives showcases digital collections, primary source sets, research guides, and exhibitions.

The USC Digital Library contains a wide range of primary sources: visual, textual, and oral. This links to their main page and you can scroll down to their LGBTQ+ Studies collection. This area includes the ONE National Gay (one of the oldest LGBT organizations in the United States) and Lesbian Archives and their 2003 Out West Collection.