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United States History: Primary Sources

What are Primary Sources?

Primary Sources are materials that are original records or first-hand accounts of a topic or event in history. Some examples of primary sources include, letters, speeches, art, photographs, and interviews.

Check out UCNJ Libraries' Subject Guide on Primary Sources for more information!

Other Resources

  • The Avalon Project - hosted by Yale Law School, is a digital archive of over 900 primary source documents on law, history, politics, and diplomacy. It includes materials from ancient times to the present, such as treaties, court opinions, and state papers.
  • Digital Public Library of America’s Primary Source Sets -  provide curated collections of primary sources and historical documents like photos, letters, and maps to support education and research. 
  • DocsTeach - a free interactive platform offering over 13,500 primary source documents for teaching U.S. history. These include photographs, documents, drawings, and more.
  • World History Encyclopedia - Primary Sources - provides a wide range of primary sources including articles, images, and videos to support history education. These resources cover diverse topics and time periods, making history accessible and engaging for students and educators.

Historical Newspapers

  • Chronicling America - a project by the Library of Congress and NEH, provides free access to over 21 million digitized newspaper pages from 1756 to 1963, covering all U.S. states, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The site is fully searchable by state, title, date, or keyword and features full-page images, OCR text, and detailed metadata.
  • Google News Archive - offers a searchable collection of digitized newspapers from around the world, with issues dating from the 1700s to the late 20th century. Users can search by title, date, and keyword to explore historical news articles and full-page scans.
  • New Jersey Digitized Historic Newspapers -  provides links to digitized newspapers from across New Jersey, with details on access (free or subscription) and searchability. It includes newspapers dating from the 1700s to the 2000s, depending on the publication.
  • New York State Historic Newspapers -  a free online archive of digitized newspapers from across New York State, searchable by county, title, date, and keyword. It provides scanned images with OCR text and metadata, covering publications from the late 1700s to the present.
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