Primary Resources

Finding Primary Sources

Just like you can use Library of Congress Subject Headings to find books and journals, you can also use them to find primary sources.

To make use of this system, remember to

Look at the records of your search results to get an idea about what Subject Headings might work.
Notice the patterns.
For example, if I wanted to see what primary source items on indigenous populations in North America the library might have in its collection, I could search for
- Choctaw Indians -- History -- Sources
- Creek Indians -- History -- Sources
- Cherokee -- Social life and Customs -- Sources.
But you can also ask for things like Interviews, Diaries, Letters, Correspondence and Personal Narratives if you want to get more specific.

Indigenous Histories and Cultures in North America
Explore manuscripts, artwork and rare printed books dating from early European colonization up to photographs and Indigenous newspapers from the mid-twentieth century. Browse through a wide range of rare and original documents from treaties, speeches and diaries, to historic maps and travel journals.
Indigenous Newspapers in North America
Discover North American Indigenous journalism spanning two centuries with this major digital resource. Featuring publications from a range of communities, with an extensive list of periodicals produced in the United States and Canada, including Alaska, Arizona, British Columbia, California, Nevada and Oklahoma, from 1828 to 2016.
African American Communities
Focusing predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, St Louis, Brooklyn, and towns and cities in North Carolina this collection presents multiple aspects of the African American community through personal diaries and scrapbooks, pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records and in-depth oral histories, revealing the prevalent challenges of racism, discrimination and integration, and a unique African American culture and identity.
Food and Drink in History
From feast to famine, explore primary source material documenting the story of food and drink throughout history. The materials in this collection illustrate the deep links between food and identity, politics and power, gender, race and socio-economic status, as well as charting key issues around agriculture, nutrition and food production
U.S. Congressional Documents -- HeinOnline
The complete Congressional Record Bound version, as well as the daily version back to 1980. Also includes the three predecessor titles, as well as congressional hearings, CRS Reports, and much more.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries
This collection includes the immediate experiences of 1,325 women and 150,000 pages of diaries and letters. Particular care has been taken to index this material so that it can be searched more thoroughly than ever before. The materials have been carefully chosen using leading bibliographies, supplemented by customer requests and more than 7,000 pages of previously unpublished material. The collection also includes biographical sketeches of people represented in this database.

American Periodicals, 1740 - 1940
Contains periodicals published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals.
Burney Newspapers
The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection represents the largest single collection of seventeenth and eighteenth century English news media available from the British Library and includes more than 1,000 pamphlets, proclamations, newsbooks and newspapers from the period.

Georgia Historic Newspapers
Free access to 478,838 issues of 1,111 newspapers spanning Georgia history from 1763 – 2025
Chronicling America
The Chronicling America Historic American Newspapers collection provides access to select digitized newspaper pages produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress.
Indigenous Studies -- LOC Research Guides
Includes collections on a selection of subjects, including, Bessie Coleman, The Dawes Act, Jim Thorpe, Maria Tallchief, and "indian schools."

American Memory @ the LOC
Stunning digital archive from the LOC including the collections Ancestral Voices, Living Nations/Living Words, Native American Constitutions and Legal Materials, and a collection of over 13,000 groups of photos, prints, drawings and other visual material, including those related to Native Americans.
AMDOCS: DOCUMENTS FOR THE STUDY OF AMERICAN HISTORY
Collection of miscellaneous documents, including maps of Native American tribal locations and languages.
Dakota Conflict Trials - UMKC School of Law
The mass hanging was the concluding scene in the opening chapter of a story of the American-Sioux conflict that would not end until the Seventh Cavalry completed its massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on December 29, 1890.
The American Presidency Project
Non-profit and non-partisan, the APP is devoted to the idea of Constitutional government. We are the source of presidential documents on the internet. We are hosted at the University of California, Santa Barbara.