Harry Crosby Photographs (Includes photographs of Baja California, 1967-1962 and Sonora, Mexico, 1958-1986).
Herman Baca (A selection of documents illustrating the work and activities of Chicano activist Herman Baca and the Committee on Chicano Rights, 1964-2006)
Marquis McDonald Photographs (Photographs by Marquis McDonald during a 1949-1950 overland trip down the Baja California Peninsula)
See the "Primary Sources" Tab on this Research Guide to learn more about what constitutes a Primary Source and to identify some strategies to find primary sources.
Subscription-Based Primary Source Databases Accessible at UCSD
The American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in 1968, at a time of social change and protest and the civil rights movement. AIM used the press and media to present its own unvarnished message to the American public. This collection includes the extensive FBI documentation on the evolution of AIM as an organization of social protest, documentation on the 1973 Wounded Knee Stand-off, materials collected by the Extremist Intelligence Section. These primary sources provide insight into the motives, actions, and leadership of AIM and the development of Native American radicalism, as well as the attitudes of the US government towards this organization.
Library of over 2.5 million digital images and their corresponding metadata. Covers many time periods and cultures, and documents the fields of architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, design, anthropology, ethnographic and women's studies, as well as many other forms of visual culture
This includes more than 12,000 books, pamphlets and broadsides spanning over 400 years, from the early 16th to the early 20th century. Critically important subjects covered include the West's discovery and exploitation of Africa; the rise of slavery in the New World along with the growth and success of abolitionist movements; the development of racial thought, including political protest and resistance to racism; descriptions of African American life throughout the Americans; and slavery and race in fiction and drama.
Over 300 newspapers covering the 19th and early-mid 20th centuries; some later. Many titles include only a few years; others much longer. Can be searched with America's Historical Newspapers, Hispanic American Newspapers.
alisphere is the University of California's free public gateway to a world of primary sources. More than 200,000 digitized items — including photographs, documents, newspaper pages, political cartoons, works of art, diaries, transcribed oral histories, advertising, and other unique cultural artifacts — reveal the diverse history and culture of California and its role in national and world history. Calisphere's content has been selected from the libraries and museums of the UC campuses, and from a variety of cultural heritage organizations across California.
Colonial America consists of all 1,450 volumes of the CO 5 series of Colonial Office files held at The National Archives in London, plus all extracted documents associated with them. This unique collection of largely manuscript material from the archives of the British government is an invaluable one for students and researchers of all aspects of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century American history and the early-modern Atlantic world.
Thematic areas:
American Indians
The American Revolution
Colonial Development
Community Organisation
The Dutch, French and Spanish
The Frontier and the Expansion of European Settlement
Tax and Finance
Legislation
Trade
War
Peace Negotiations
Digitization of The Eighteenth Century, a print library covering 150,000 titles and editions published in the United Kingdom 1701-1800. Search by keywords or browse individual books.
eHRAF ArchaeologyCross-cultural database containing information on the world's prehistory designed to facilitate comparative archaeological studies. Organized by archaeological traditions. The full-text sources are subject-indexed at the paragraph level.
Searchable and browsable database with access to correspondence between the greatest thinkers and writers of the 17th-19th centuries, and their families and friends, bankers and booksellers, patrons and publishers. Coverage includes letters and documents, manuscripts and early printed editions, scholarly annotations, and links to biographies, dictionaries, encyclopedias, newspapers, and other online resources. With 79,254 letters and documents and 10,232 correspondents (as of Winter 2018–2019) EE is the most wide-ranging online collection of edited correspondence of the early modern period, linking people across Europe, the Americas and Asia from the early 17th to the mid-19th century.
1960-present. Full text U.S. ethnic community newspapers, newsletters, magazines. Includes African-American, Arab/Middle Eastern, Asian-Pacific, European-American, Hispanic, Jewish, Native-American. Searchable in English and Spanish.
Database of anthropological documentary films, covering every region of the world, featuring the work of many influential documentary filmmakers of the 20th century. Includes transcripts, interviews, previously unreleased raw footage, field notes, study guides, etc. As of August 2015, has 1,844 videos (1,319 hours). Individual films are also cataloged in roger.ucsd.edu - search on title "Alexander Street Press. Ethnographic online videos"
This digital collection provides access to rare primary source material on American social, cultural, and popular history from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History, Duke University and The New York Public Library. It comprises thousands of fully searchable images (alongside transcriptions) of monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes, emphasizing conduct of life and domestic management literature, the daily lives of women and men, and contrasts in regional, urban and rural cultures.
These primary source documents collected here help understand existence and consequences on the various frontiers that arose from the movements of Europeans to Africa, Australasia and North America. Document types include correspondence, diaries, government papers, business records, land transactions, legal documents, speeches, books and pamphlets. The earliest documents are from the seventeenth century and the latest the mid-point of the twentieth century.
The earliest documents in this collection are from the seventeenth century but the majority of the material originates from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The material covering North America covers the varied frontier regions from fur trappers in Canada to cowboys in Texas and government in Baja California. It is divided into the frontier regions of the American East, the American Midwest, the American Southwest, California & Mexico and Canada. It covers the exploration of these regions followed by trade with native peoples, colonial rivalries, expansion of government and new nations and the final settlement and 'closing' of the frontier. These materials include a large number of manuscripts from the UC San Diego Library's Special Collections & Archives, including a collection of municipal and government documents from Baja California that are too fragile to be used in their original format in the library (Baja California government documents. MSS 778.)
Africa is mainly represented by its frontiers of the south with the British colonial expansion into modern day South Africa. There are also excellent clusters of material relating to the exploration of West Africa and the colonial administration of Lagos.
The beginnings of European Australia and New Zealand are covered by British government documents, starting with Arthur Phillip and the penal colony at Sydney. The frontiers of other parts of Australia are also covered by documents from the UK National Archives and some material from Australian archives.
Finally, there is some material relating to Central America, specifically British Honduras (Belize), in the form of the George Arthur Papers. George Arthur’s career here relates to the other regions featured here as he spent time on the Canadian and Australian frontiers.
Over 360 Spanish-language newspapers from 15 states (including California) published in the 19th and 20th centuries. Search, browse and view article and page images.
The videos come from leading producers such as the BBC, California Newsreel, Criterion Collection, First Run Features, Kino Lorber and PBS, with more content added each year. Many of the films are from independent and specialty producers, with a focus on documentary films.
Latin American Women Writers is an extensive searchable collection of prose, poetry, and drama composed by women writing in Mexico, Central America, and South America. Also included are essays by Latin American feminists and revolutionaries, who address both the universal concerns of women in every age and the distinctive issues of their struggles in the region.
Includes not only published trial transcripts, but also popular printed accounts of sensational trials for murder, adultery and other scandalous crimes.
Online primary sources that track the development of the modern, western world. Full-text searching across 12 million pages of works published 1450-1914. Great starting place for primary source material from this period.
Cover to cover article text and page images of the Chicago Tribune (1849-1986), Los Angeles Times (1881-1986), New York Times (1851-2005), San Francisco Chronicle (1865-1922), Washington Post (1877-1992), Wall Street Journal (1889-1991).
Also includes:
Civil War Era
Atlanta Daily World (1931 - 2003)
The American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger (1857 - 1922)
The American Israelite (1854 - 2000)
The Arizona Republican (1890 - 2007)
The Atlanta Constitution (1868-1984)
The Austin American Statesman (1871 - 1978)
The Baltimore Sun (1837 - 1992)
The Boston Globe (1872-1986)
Calgary Herald: (1883-2010)
Chicago Defender (1909-1995)
Chinese Newspaper Collection (1832 - 1953)
The Christian Science Monitor (1908 - 2004)
The Cincinnati Enquirer (1841 - 2009)
Cleveland Call & Post (1934 - 1991)
Communist Historical Newspaper Collection (1917 - 2013)
Dayton Daily News (1898 - 1922)
Detroit Free Press (1831 - 1999)
Edmonton Journal (1903-2010)
The Globe and Mail (1844 - 2014)
The Guardian and The Observer (1791 - 2003)
Hartford Courant (1764 - 1992)
Indianapolis Star (1903 - 2004)
The Irish Times and The Weekly Irish Times (1859 - 2016)
The Jerusalem Post (1932 - 2008)
The Jewish Advocate (1905 - 1990)
The Jewish Exponent (1887 - 1990)
The Korea Times (1956 - 2016)
Le Monde (1944 - 1995)
Leader-Post (Regina) (1883-2010)
Leftist Newspapers and Periodicals (1845 - 2015)
Los Angeles Sentinel (1934 - 2005)
Louisville Courier Journal
Michigan Chronicle (1936 - 2010)
Le Monde (1944 - 1995)
Montreal Gazette (1857 - 2010
Minneapolis Star Tribune (1867 - 2001)
The Nashville Tennessean (1812 - 2002)
Newsday (1940 - 1989)
New York Amsterdam News (1922 - 1993)
New York Tribune / Herald Tribune (1841 - 1962)
Norfolk Journal and Guide (1916 - 2003)
Ottawa Citizen (1846-2010)
The Philadelphia Inquirer (1860 - 2001)
Philadelphia Tribune (1912 - 2001)
Pittsburgh Courier (1911 - 2002)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazete (1786 - 2003)
The Province (Vancouver) (1898-2010)
Saskatoon Star Phoenix (1902-2009)
The Scotsman (1817 - 1950)
South China Morning Post
St. Louis Post Dispatch (1874 - 2003)
St. Petersburg Times / Tampa Bay Times (1901 - 2009)
Times Colonist (Victoria) (1884-2010)
The Times of India
Toronto Star (1894 - 2015)
Vancouver Sun (1912-2010)
Windsor Star (1893 - 2010)
Includes documents from the United States and Europe, as well as other parts of the world. In addition to newspaper collections and books published in the antebellum era, Slavery and Anti-Slavery contains documents from several archives originally available only on microfilm." Includes 10,761 books, 131 serials, 32 manuscript collections and 377 supreme court records and briefs.
An Emory University Digital Library Research Initiative funded by the NEH which constitutes the culmination of several decades of independent and collaborative research by scholars drawing upon data in libraries and archives around the Atlantic world. Includes maps and data on the slave trade and slaves transported across the Atlantic Ocean.
This database allows students and researchers to immerse themselves in the values and behaviors of Americans of the past. The collection provides a window into American social history by bringing together the instructional, prescriptive, behavioral, and etiquette literature that defined standards of personal conduct for millions of Americans and reflected the prevailing social mores across the twentieth century. When complete, the collection will contain 150,000 pages of fully searchable handbooks, manuals, textbooks, etiquette guides, self-help books, instructional pamphlets, and how-to books that illustrate both how Americans actually behaved and how they felt they ought to behave.
Database of digitized books, images, documents, essays and bibiographies documenting women's reform activities in the U.S., mostly from the 19th and 20th centuries.
Through the writings of women activists, their personal letters and diaries, and the proceedings of conferences at which pivotal decisions were made, this collection lets you see how women’s social movements shaped much of the events and attitudes that have defined modern life.