"Primary sources are the raw materials of history — original documents and objects which were created at the time under study. They are different from secondary sources, accounts or interpretations of events created by someone without firsthand experience." ~Library of Congress
Comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes across the world, from 1900 to 2010. Includes primary and secondary source materials.
Includes 19th Century primary sources collections covering Europe and Africa, Mapping the World, Photography, and Women.
Europe and Africa: Commerce, Christianity, Civilization, and Conquest
Monographs, manuscripts, and newspapers covering key issues of economics, world politics, and international strategy.
Mapping the World: Maps and Travel Literature
Selections from map repositories of the British Library and the National Archives at Kew representing the nineteenth century.
Photography: The World Through the Lens
Collections of photographs, photograph albums, photographically-illustrated books and texts on the early history of photography from libraries and archives from across the globe. Some images are well-known while many have rarely been viewed.
Women: Transnational Networks
Focuses on issues at the intersection of gender and class from the late 18th century to the era of suffrage in the early 20th century, through a transnational perspective. The collection contains sources on European and North American movements and collections from other regions.
Explores protest movements, revolutions, and civil wars that have transformed societies and human experience from the 18th century through the present.
Revolutions, protests, resistance and social movements from the 18th century through the 21st century, documented through personal papers, organizations, government documents, journals, reports, monographs, images, video, and speeches.
Search multiple collections of letters, diaries, private writings and personal narratives, correspondence, autobiographies, and interviews from the 16th century - present.
Social and Cultural History: Letters and Diaries Online allows cross-searching of several Alexander Street primary source collections:
• North American Women’s Letters and Diaries
• Manuscript Women’s Letters and Diaries (from the American Antiquarian Society)
• British and Irish Women’s Letters and Diaries
• The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries
• North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories
• Black Thought and Culture
Conference proceedings, organization reports, publications, and websites of women's non-governmental organizations. Also includes letters, diaries, and memoirs of women active internationally since the mid-nineteenth century, as well as photographs and videos of major events and activists in the history of women’s international social movements.
Cultural heritage materials gathered during the World Digital Library (WDL) project, including thousands of items contributed by UNESCO partner organizations worldwide as well as content from Library of Congress collections.
US newsreel footage covering the years leading up to and during the Second World War, 1929-1946.
Over 35 hours of the American weekly newsreel produced by the U.S. Office of War Information from 1942 to 1946, complete with transcripts, from United Newsreel. Universal Newsreel provides over 200 hours of film with full transcripts from Universal Studios’ biweekly series that ran from 1929 to 1946.