U.S. History Primary Sources Online
Note: For secondary/tertiary sources (that is, analysis and discussion of primary sources), please see the online databases page!
Newspapers and periodicals
American Periodical Series Online
“Over 1,100 periodicals that first began publishing between 1740 and 1900, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and many other historically-significant periodicals.”
Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982
Yes, the good old Readers' Guide going all the way back to its beginnings. Note that the articles are not full text. Find their location in the University Library by using the online catalog (and searching by “Start of Journal/Magazine Title”) or try your luck with the online research resources journal and newspaper search.
Proquest Historical Newspapers
Scroll to the bottom of the page to find the historical databases. Includes such gems as the New York Times (1851-2002), the Chicago Tribune (1849-1985)and the Wall Street Journal (1889-1988).
NewsBank Newspapers
This service includes both contemporary and historical databases. Click on Early American Newspapers (1690-1876), which features cover-to-cover reproductions of hundreds of historic newspapers, providing more than one million pages as fully text-searchable facsimile images.
Historical Newspapers Online
The History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library at UIUC has compiled an enormous list of newspapers available online, both subscription-based and free. They include major newspaper titles with dates of publication as well as local and international digital newspaper collections with descriptions and access information.
Link to the list of the 806 newspapers that are available online through the University of Illinois Library. Extensive backfiles are available for some titles.
U.S. News Archives on the Web. This site is maintained by volunteers from the Special Libraries Association. Entries are arranged by state. Many of these newspapers charge for access to back issues.
Online archives (a random smattering of)
American Memory: Historical Collections from the National Digital Library at the Library of Congress
This site offers more than 7 million digital items from more than 100 historical collections. Topics range from baseball to the Continental Congress, women's rights, folk culture, advertising, Sunday school books, and so on. You can't go wrong with this one.
Librarians' Internet Index
This venerable index to websites is especially useful in helping you find online archives in your area of interest. Many of these archives are not searchable by standard search engines because they are databases that must be searched individually. The trick is to start with the Advanced Search. In the pull-down menu, select LC Subject. In the box that's labeled “With all the words (And)” type the word archives and then a term for your subject (e.g., California).
Internet Scout Project
The Internet Scout Project is another great index to quality websites. Again, click on Advanced Search. This time, change the first drop down menu to Classification and type in archives. In the second search box, experiment with different search types. Best bets are description and keyword.
Ad*Access at Duke University
This marvelous collection includes 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines
between 1911 and 1955. The focus is on five main subject areas: Radio, Television, Transportation, Beauty and Hygiene, and World War II.
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration Archival Research Catalog
Not as user-friendly as American Memory, there is still a wealth of information to be found here concerning anything that has had U.S. government involvement. To find online archives, follow the link that says “See our checklist of places on this web site that provide records online.”
The New Deal Network
A database of more than 20,000 items relating to the New Deal includes documents, photographs, letters, advertisements, editorial cartoons, and so on.
History Matters: WWW.History, an annotated guide to web resources
The mother lode of links to online resources in U.S. history. Under the category called “Consumer Culture,” we found the following gem:
Phillip Morris U.S.A., Inc. Advertising Archive
More than 55,000 color images of tobacco advertisements from litigated cases, dating back to 1909, are now available on this site, created as a stipulation of the Master Settlement Agreement between the tobacco industry and various states’ attorneys general. More than 26 million pages of documents concerning “research, manufacturing, marketing, advertising and sales of cigarettes, among other topics” are provided in linked sites to the four tobacco companies involved and to two industry organizations, the Tobacco Institute and the Council for Tobacco Research.