The following databases, websites, and platforms facilitate online discovery of and access to a wide variety of primary source materials.
For more primary source databases, visit the Databases A-Z, and search by Types for Primary sources.
Access millions of pages of primary source collections spanning content from the 15th-21st centuries.
Topically focused collections of historical documents, including the American Civil Liberties Union Papers (1912-1990), Archives Unbound, Archives of Sexuality & Gender, British Library Newspapers, The Economist Historical Archive (1843-2014), 18th Century Collections Online, Indigenous Peoples: North America, 19th Century Collections Online, 19th Century U.S. Newspapers, Political Radicalism & Extremism in the 20th Century, Sabin Americana (1500-1926), and The London Times Digital Archive (1785-1985).
HathiTrust is a repository of digital content from 50 research libraries, including electronic versions of nearly 8 million books at the time of writing.
Note: As of May 2023, Oberlin is a HathiTrust member. Oberlin students, faculty, and staff can access member features by clicking on the “LOG IN” button, choosing “Oberlin College and Conservatory”, and using their ObieID to authenticate.
The following databases, websites, and platforms facilitate online discovery of and access to United States government documents.
For more government document databases, visit the Databases A-Z, and search by Types for U.S. government publications.
DiscoverGov provides simple, one-stop searching across multiple U.S. Federal Government databases including GPO's Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) and GovInfo. It will retrieve reports, articles, and citations while providing direct links to selected resources and publications available online.
Archives all over the world are working to make their collections discoverable online. The following tool(s) may be useful for identifying archive collections relevant to your research.