Library Guides: Primary Sources: Home

About

A primary source is an artifact, document, or object that is an account or record of an event/phenomena from the time in which the event occurred. Examples include: diaries, letters, speeches, music, film clips, artwork, etc.

Below are select primary source search engines, subscription databases, and freely available e-collections.

Murphy Library's Special Collections and Area Research Center also offers on site access to primary sources relating to Wisconsin, La Crosse, and UWL history.

Letters & Diaries

North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories (Alexander Street Press)
This database includes 71 authors and approximately 10,000 pages of information intended to provide a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada between 1800 and 1950. It is composed of contemporaneous letters and diaries, oral histories, interviews, and other personal narratives, and some audio voices of the immigrants.

Online Collections of Primary Sources

Resources that include multiple types of primary sources (e.g. letters, manuscripts, images, movies, documents, etc.)

Accessible Archives Collection
Primary source collections including: African American Newspapers, African American Newspapers in the South, American county histories, The Civil War - Part I: A Newspaper Perspective, The Civil War - Part II: The Soldiers’ Perspective, The Civil War - Part III: The Generals’ Perspective, The Civil War - Part IV: A Midwestern Perspective, The Civil War - Part V: Iowa’s Perspective, The Civil War - Part VI: Northeast Regimental Histories, Frank Leslie’s Weekly (1855–1922), Godey’s Lady’s Book (1830-1898), The Virginia Gazette (1736–1780), The Woman’s Tribune (1883-1909), Women’s Suffrage Collection. Also includes several open access collections: Accessible Archives open access content, History of Woman Suffrage, The Pennsylvania Genealogical Catalogue, The Pennsylvania Newspaper Record: Delaware County, Reconstruction of Southern States: Pamphlets, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, Twelve Years A Slave

American Journeys
American Journeys contains more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later.
American Memory (Library of Congress)
American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity. These materials, from the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions, chronicle historical events, people, places, and ideas that continue to shape America, serving the public as a resource for education and lifelong learning.

Civil Rights and Social Justice (HeinOnline)
This database covers civil rights in the United States as its legal protections and definitions expand to include an increasing number of Americans.

Documenting the American South (UNC University Library)
Documenting the American South provides free access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes twelve thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.

Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, & the Environment (Alexander Street)
Assembled from hundreds of primary sources, this database documents the relationships among peoples and with the environment in North America from 1534 to 1850. The collection focuses on personal accounts and provides unique perspectives from all of the protagonists, including traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials, both men and women.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (Gale)
These collections contain every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom between the years 1701 and 1800. Materials include books, pamphlets, essays, broadsides and more. Includes Eighteenth Century Collections Online Parts I & II.

The Gerritsen Collection: Women's History Online, 1543-1945
Full-text primary resource books and periodicals that reflect the evolution of feminist consciousness and women's rights. International scope.
The Gilded Age (Alexander Street Press)
The Gilded Age brings primary documents and scholarly commentary together covering American history from 1865 to 1902. In addition to an extensive selection of key treatises that reflect the social and cultural ferment of the late nineteenth century, The Gilded Age offers a wealth of rare materials, including songs, letters, photographs, cartoons, government documents, and ephemera. This primary content is enhanced by video interviews with scholars and numerous topical critical documentary essays specially commissioned for the project by Alexander Street Press. Covering such themes as race, labor, immigration, commerce, western expansion, and women’s suffrage, these essays illuminate the rapidly changing cultural landscape of America during the decades between the end of the Civil War and the election of Theodore Roosevelt.

Gun Regulation and Legislation in America (HeinOnline)
This collection brings together more than 500 titles dealing with the regulation of firearms in the United States. Includes periodicals, key compiled federal legislative histories, relevant congressional hearings, CRS Reports, Supreme Court briefs, and more.
History Vault: Revolutionary War and Early America
26 manuscript collections from the holdings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, including: Hancock Family Papers 1728-1830, Revere Family Papers 1746-1964, Pre-Revolutionary Diaries 1635-1774, Benjamin Lincoln Papers 1635-1964, Elbridge Gerry Papers 1744-1895, Artemas Ward Papers 1721-1953

La Crosse History Unbound
A joint digital venture between UW-La Crosse’s Murphy Library and the La Crosse Public Library, La Crosse History Unbound is a portal site to digitized cultural assets of the La Crosse County, Wisconsin, area. Over 180 titles exist on the site arranged by subject category, with a separate author and title list.

LGBTQ+ Rights (HeinOnline)
LGBTQ+ Rights charts the gay rights movement in America, highlighting the civil rights enshrined in law during the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as the ongoing inequalities that persist today.

Murphy Library Digital Collections
The digital collections of Murphy Library makes materials of historical significance accessible to a wide range of people using online, digital formats. Collections include historical texts, such as the 1904 The Catholic History of La Crosse, Wis. : In Two Chapters. They include artistic and photographic works of historical significance, such as the 1899 work, Art Work of Valley of the Mississippi from La Crosse, Wisconsin to Keokuk, Iowa. You'll find digitized newspapers, such as the 1886-1887 Wisconsin Labor Advocate as well as many other resources.

Open Society Justice Initiative (HeinOnline)
Publish reports and advocate on human rights issues, represent individuals before human rights tribunals, and advance human rights and the rule of law.
Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law (HeinOnline)
This free HeinOnline collection brings together a multitude of essential legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world, including every statute and all reported state and federal cases on slavery.
Twentieth Century Advice Literature: North American Guides on Race, Gender, Sex, and the Family (Alexander Street Press)
The collection brings together the instructional, prescriptive, behavioral, and etiquette literature that defined standards of personal conduct for millions of Americans and reflected the prevailing social mores across the twentieth century. The collection contains 150,000 pages of fully searchable handbooks, manuals, textbooks, etiquette guides, self-help books, instructional pamphlets, and how-to books that illustrate both how Americans actually behaved and how they felt they ought to behave.
Vogue Archive (ProQuest)
Vogue provides a record of American and international popular culture; it is a unique primary source for the study of fashion, gender and modern social history. Marketing students can research the history of a brand identity by viewing every advertisement for a brand such as Revlon, Coty, Versace or Chanel between specified dates. Researchers in cultural studies and gender studies can explore themes such as body image, gender roles and social tastes from the 1890s to the present. The latest issue will be added each month with no embargo period. Users can search through all text, captions, and titles throughout the magazine, including advertisements, covers and fold-outs.
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600 to 2000 (Alexander Street)
Includes books, images, documents, scholarly essays, commentaries, and bibliographies, documenting the multiplicity of women’s reform activities. Resources added in 2008 include more than 72,000 pages from State Commissions on the Status of Women, as well as the first three volumes of Harvard University Press' Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary.

Research Help

Librarians can help you learn to make the most of the information resources, tools, and services of Murphy Library and beyond!

Weekdays & Sunday afternoons (fall/spring):

Visit us at the research help desk (1st floor)
Call us at 608.785.8508
Web Chat with us

Any time (year-round):

Email us -- we'll email you back asap
Schedule an appointment (in-person or online)

Local history and/or archives research? Special Collections / Area Research Center specialists are available!

Email us at specoll@uwlax.edu
Call us at 608.785.8511

Catalogs / Search Engines to Find Primary Sources

OAIster (OCLC)
OAIster is a union catalog of digital resources which means you can search for primary sources such as images, advertisements, movies, audio files, and manuscripts from multiple sources (e.g. Library of Congress American Memory project).

Literature

Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period (ProQuest)
This collection contains 60 volumes of Romantic poetry composed by Scottish women, along with extensive contemporary critical reviews and numerous scholarly essays specially commissioned for the project.

Oral Histories

Suffragists Oral History Project
from the Bancroft Library's Regional Oral History Office, collected interviews with twelve leaders and participants in the woman's suffrage movement.