Business: Primary Sources

Use this guide as a first stop to finding and using the business and management related resources of the UC San Diego Library.

Frequently Used Resources

Making of the Modern World
Provides primary source documents on topics of banking, economics, finance, transportation and manufacturing. Provides full-text and full-page-image access to books from the 1460-1850 period, and pre-1906 serials.
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It focuses on economics interpreted in the widest sense, including political science, history, sociology, and special collections on banking, finance, transportation and manufacturing. It combines the strengths of two pre-eminent collections--the Goldsmiths' Library of Economic Literature at the University of London Library and the Kress Library of Business and Economics at the Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration--along with supplementary materials from the Seligman Collection in the Butler Library at Columbia University and from the libraries of Yale University.
Business & Finance History Resources (U.S. Library of Congress)
Research guides from the Library of Congress listing many resources for studying the history of business, including tracking old companies and old stocks.

What else is there?

Below is a selection of primary source databases. See our Guide to Primary Online Sources for a complete list. Checking the guide would be especially useful if you are focused on a particular event, era, geography or population. Contact a librarian for help deciding which could be most useful.

Market Research and American Business, 1935-1965
This digitized collection provides a unique insight into the American consumer boom of the mid-20th century through access to the complete market research reports of Ernest Dichter, the era’s foremost consumer analyst and market research pioneer. The collection is a treasure trove of information on some of America’s best known brands.

Adam Matthew Explorer
Adam Matthew publishes unique primary source collections from archives around the world. The categorized collections cover many contemporary subjects such as culture, war, lifestyles, business technology and sociopolitical development in the Americas, Asia and Europe. We also have text and data mining access to our licensed Adam Matthew databases.

Search across all of UC San Diego's Adam Matthew archival collections. We also have text and data mining access to our licensed Adam Matthew databases.

Collections include:

African American Communities
Age of Exploration
America in World War Two:Oral Histories and Personal Accounts
American History, 1493-1945
American Indian Histories and Cultures
American Indian Newspapers
American West
Apartheid South Africa,1948-1980
China, America and the Pacific
China: Culture and Society
China: Trade, Politics and Culture, 1793-1980
Church Missionary Society Periodicals
Colonial America
Colonial Caribbean
Confidential Print: Africa, 1834-1966
Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969
Confidential Print: Middle East
Confidential Print: North America
Defining Gender
East India Company
Eighteenth Century Drama
Eighteenth Century Journals
Empire Online
Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings
Everyday Life and Women in America
First World War Portal
Food and Drink in History
Foreign Office Files China 1919-1980
Foreign Office Files India, Pakistan and Afghanistan,1947-1980
Foreign Office Files Japan, 1919-1952
Foreign Office Files Middle East, 1971-1981
Foreign Office Files South East Asia, 1963-1980
Frontier Life
Gender: Identity and Social Change
Global Commodities
India, Raj and Empire
Interwar Culture
J. Walter Thompson:Advertising America
Jewish Life in America
Leisure Travel and Mass Culture
Life at Sea: Seafaring in the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1600-1900
Literary Manuscripts Berg
Literary Manuscripts Leeds
Literary Print Culture
London Low Life
Macmillan Cabinet Papers, 1957-1963
Market Research and American Business, 1935-1965
Mass Observation Online
Medical Services and Warfare
Medieval Family Life
Medieval Travel Writing
Meiji Japan
Migration to New Worlds
Perdita Manuscripts, 1500-1700
Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975
Popular Medicine in America, 1800-1900
Race Relations in America
Romanticism: Life, Literature and Landscape
Service Newspapers of World War Two
Sex and Sexuality
Shakespeare in Performance
Shakespeare's Globe Archive
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice
Socialism on Film
The Grand Tour
The Nixon Years, 1969-1974
Trade Catalogues and the American Home
Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History
Victorian Popular Culture
Victorians on Film. Entertainment, Innovation & Everyday Life
Virginia Company Archives
Women in the National Archives (UK)
World's Fairs
America's Historical Newspapers
Over 2000 papers from cities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, based on Early American Newspapers, Series 1, 2, 10, 11 (1690-1890). Also includes Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980, African-American Newspapers, 1827-1998, and California's Historical Newspapers, 1752-1922. Title coverage ranges from a few issues to many years.
American History in Video
Provides the largest and richest collection of video available online for the study of American history, with 2,000 hours and more than 5,000 titles on completion. The collection allows students and researchers to analyze historical events, and the presentation of historical events over time, through commercial and governmental newsreels, archival footage, public affairs footage, and important documentaries.
AP Newsroom
With millions of images dating back more than 150 years, this is one of the world's largest archives of historical & current imagery. Updated every minute. Includes news, entertainment, arts, business, and sports coverage from AP and selected partners. The content includes top news stories, photos, audio clips and print graphics.

Black Economic Empowerment: The National Negro Business League
Booker T. Washington, founder of the National Negro Business League, believed that solutions to the problem of racial discrimination were primarily economic, and that bringing African Americans into the middle class was the key. In 1900 he established the League "to promote the commercial and financial development of the Negro" and headed it until his death

California Digital Newspaper Collection
Coordinates preservation of California newspapers printed since 1846. Catalog shows publishing history and library locations for nearly 13,000 papers. Part of the state-by-state U.S. Newspaper Project. Based at UC Riverside.
East India Company
East India Company offers access to a unique collection of India Office Records from the British Library, London. Containing royal charters, correspondence, trading diaries, minutes of council meetings and reports of expeditions, among other document types, this resource charts the history of British trade and rule in the Indian subcontinent and beyond from 1599 to 1947
Modules:

India Office Records A-D (Trade, Governance and Empire)
India Office Records E (Correspondence: Early Voyages, Formation and Conflict; Correspondence: Domestic Life, Governance and Territorial Expansion)

Advertising America
The J. Walter Thompson Company Archive documents the history, operation, policies and accomplishments of one of the world's largest and oldest advertising firms. The papers here reveal many aspects of twentieth-century cultural, social, business, marketing, consumer and economic history while investigating the human psyche.
Japan-U.S. Economic Relations Group Records, 1979-1981
In 1979, President Carter and Prime Minister Ohira agreed to establish the Japan-U.S. Economic Relations Group. This group would submit recommendations to Carter and Ohira for maintaining a healthy bilateral economic relationship between the United States and Japan. Among the issues considered were the role of economic issues in the overall "political-security-cultural relationship," especially Japan’s emerging position as a world power.
Japan: Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to Commercial Relations, 1910-1949
The documents trace the commercial relations between the United States and Japan over the course of almost half a century in the years 1910-1929, 1930-1939, 1940-1944, and 1945-1949. The files are predominantly instructions to -- and dispatches from -- diplomatic and consular officials.
Japan: Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to Commercial Relations, 1950-1963
This archive reproduces Decimal File 494 and is based on the microfilm title Records Relating to U.S. Commercial Relations with Japan, for the years 1950-1954, 1955-1959, and 1960-1963. The documents in this collection are predominantly instructions to -- and dispatches from -- diplomatic and consular officials are often accompanied by enclosures. Correspondence between government departments private businesses and persons are also included.

Labor Unions in the U.S., 1862-1974: Knights of Labor, AFL, CIO, and AFL-CIO
This module offers unique and important documentation on the growth, transformation, successes and failures of one of the important American social movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the modern American labor movement. Four major national organizations are documented in substantial detail.
Workers, labor unions, and the American left in the 20th century: federal records
A wide range of collections documenting the American workers and labor unions in the 20th century, with a special emphasis on the interaction between workers and the U.S. federal government.
Thomas A. Edison Papers
Edison's work laid the foundation for the age of electricity, recorded sound, and motion pictures. The life, work, and vision of Thomas Edison are documented in the laboratory notebooks, diaries, business records, correspondence, and related papers that have survived since his death.
World History in Video
Online collection of streaming video, critically acclaimed documentaries from filmmakers worldwide. Upon completion the collection will include more than 1750 documentaries that offer a survey of human history from the earliest civilizations to the fall of the Berlin Wall. World history in video covers Africa and the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Oceania.

World Treaty Library
Brings together Rohn, Dumont, Bevans, Martens, League of Nations, United States, and United Nations treaties into one easy-to-use and fully searchable database. Includes Hein's U.S. Treaty Index (1776-present), United Nations Treaty Series (1948-present), League of Nations Treaty Series (1920-1946), Rohn's World Treaty Index (1900-2000), Historical Treaty Index (1648-1919), Multilateral Treaty Calendar (1648-1995), and Martens' Treaties (1761-1944)

Background/Reference

The 100 Most Important American Financial Crises by Quentin R. Skrabec
Call Number: ProQuest e-book
ISBN: 9781440830112
Publication Date: 2015
Covering events such as banking crises, economic bubbles, natural disasters, trade embargoes, and depressions, this single-volume encyclopedia of major U.S. financial downturns provides readers with an event-driven understanding of the evolution of the American economy. * Includes key primary documents, a chronology of key dates, an appendix of relevant sources, and an index organized by category, company names, and personal names.

San Diego Technology Archive

San Diego Technology Archive
The San Diego Technology Archive (SDTA) is a digital collection that documents the history, formation, and evolution of the companies that formed the San Diego region's high-tech cluster, from its beginning in 1965. Materials include interviews with key executives and resarchers, company profiles, corporate family trees, timelines, and links to additional library resources. The collection highlights three or San Diego’s prominent business sectors: life sciences, software/information technology and telecommunications.

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