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| Database | Description |
|---|---|
| America: History & Life | Covers Canadian and American history. Comprehensive index, with abstracts, for journal articles and book reviews. View Full Description |
| Cambridge Histories | The complete collection of this series covering history of Britain, science, art, politics and religion among others. View Full Description |
| Historical Abstracts | Index of journal articles, books, etc. on world history (NOT Canada or the U.S.) from 1450 to the present. View Full Description |
Course guides
| Course # | Title |
|---|---|
| DH100 | Digital Creativity |
| DH200 | Digital Narratives |
| HI124-BR | History Detectives |
| HI271 | Survey of European Women’s/Gender History |
| HI330 | Slavery in the United States, 1619-1877 |
| HI341 | Canadian Military History |
| HI445 | Reading Seminar on the Era of the US Civil War |
A primary source is a document produced within a particular historical context. Examples include manuscripts, memoirs, letters, diaries, speeches, official government records, and newspaper reports. The document may have published close to the time it was written, at a later time, or it may not be published at all, as is the case for many items in archival and manuscript collections.
Use subject headings for primary sources when searching the Primo catalogue.
Original documents in the Laurier Archives and Special Collections
The Archives and Special Collections Department contains original collections of primary material that are available for research. For online finding aids, or for more information, please contact the Archives.
Electronic Collections of Primary Resources
| Database | Description |
|---|---|
| 19th Century UK Periodicals | Scans of British newspapers published from 1800 to 1900. View Full Description |
| American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection | US periodicals from the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s, on a wide variety of topics. View Full Description |
| American Theological Library Association (Atla) Historical Monographs Collection | Monographs from 13th century to early 1900s on religious language, development, and relationships with other issues. View Full Description |
| Archive Explorer | Search tool for all Adam Matthew databases. View Full Description |
| Black Thought and Culture | Full-text non-fiction works by leading African-Americans. View Full Description |
| British Library Newspapers | All issues from 48 national, regional and local newspapers, from the British Library holdings. View Full Description |
| British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries | Full-text primary source material. View Full Description |
| Center for Research Libraries: Digital Collections | Primary source material, in digital format or available for request through Interlibrary Loan View Full Description |
| China: Trade, Politics & Culture 1793-1980 | Full-text papers, plus maps, paintings, photographs and archival materials. View Full Description |
| Daily Mail: Historical Archive 1896-2004 | Complete archive of the British newspaper content, including the Atlantic Editions. View Full Description |
| Defining Gender | Full-text manuscripts and printed works, plus illustrations. View Full Description |
| Digital National Security Archive | Full-text U.S. policy documents. View Full Description |
| Early Canadiana Online | Digitized texts published between the first European settlement of Canada and the early twentieth century. View Full Description |
| Early Encounters in North America | Full-text letters, diaries and memoirs. View Full Description |
| Early English Books Online | Full text, in facsimile, of more than 125,000 literary and historical texts as listed in the English Short Title Catalogue. View Full Description |
| East India Company | Primary source documents on British trade and rule in India, 1595-1947. View Full Description |
| Eighteenth Century Journals | Rare, full-text journals on a wide range of topics. View Full Description |
| Empire Online | Images of original manuscripts and printed materials produced between 1492 and 1962. Covers Africa, the Americas, Australasia, Oceana and South Asia. View Full Description |
| First World War | Letters, diaries, posters and other primary documents related to World War One. View Full Description |
| Frontier Life: Borderlands, Settlement & Colonial Encounters | Primary source documents on European and colonial frontier regions, 1650-1920. View Full Description |
| Globe and Mail | Full text searchable, page view of the Globe and Mail from 1844 to four years ago. View Full Description |
| Hansard Online | Full text of UK members’ debates, 1803 to the present. Includes both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. View Full Description |
| Historical Topographic Map Digitization Project: Full Collection | Maps of Ontario locations from early to mid-20th century. View Full Description |
| History of Feminism | Primary and secondary source material on feminism in the 19th century. View Full Description |
| Illustrated London News Historical Archive 1842-2003 | Searchable text plus page images of all issues of the "Illustrated London News". View Full Description |
| Indigenous Peoples: North America | Collection of primary source documents on the indigenous peoples of North America. View Full Description |
| LLMC Digital | An international collection of key historic legal texts and executive, legislative and judicial government documents. View Full Description |
| Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries | Collection of personal writings by American women of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. View Full Description |
| Mass Observation Online | Papers from the archive of a pioneering British social research organization. View Full Description |
| Medieval Family Life | Medieval documents on the topics of family, business, the law, violence, etc. View Full Description |
| Medieval Travel Writing | Important manuscripts by European travellers. View Full Description |
| New York Times | Full text searchable, page view of the Times from 1851 to three years ago. View Full Description |
| Nineteenth Century Collections Online - Women: Transnational Networks | Primary source collection focusing on the 19th century, gender, and class through a transnational perspective. View Full Description |
| North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories | Full-text personal narratives of immigrants to the United States and Canada. View Full Description |
| North American Indian Thought and Culture | Full-text biographies, autobiographies, diaries, letters, personal narratives and speeches. View Full Description |
| North American Women's Letters and Diaries | Thousands of pages of diaries and letters from hundreds of women in North America. View Full Description |
| Oral History Online | Full-text oral histories in English, including an index to freely available histories on the Web. View Full Description |
| Our Ontario: Newspapers | Over 200 years of community newspapers from across Ontario. View Full Description |
| Past Masters | Full-text authoritative works by seminal figures in the Humanities. View Full Description |
| Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975 | Primary source material concerning social, political and cultural changes from 1950-1975. View Full Description |
| Slavery, Abolition & Social Justice | Includes manuscripts, books, pamphlets, maps and images. View Full Description |
| Times : Digital Archive 1785-2010 | Searchable full-text images of every page of the London Times newspaper. View Full Description |
| Toronto Star | Full text searchable, page view of the Star from 1894 to two years ago. View Full Description |
| U.K. Parliamentary Papers | Digitally scanned Sessional Papers & supplementary material from Great Britain's House of Commons. (Some House of Lords papers, if presented to the House of Commons.) View Full Description |
| Vogue Archive | Complete archive of Vogue magazine. View Full Description |
| Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 | Full-text documents, plus scholarly essays, book reviews, commentaries and bibliographies. View Full Description |
Many Internet sites function as clearinghouses that identify and link to resources in particular subjects. The following sites focus on resources for History.
Comprehensive Sites
- WWW-VL History Central Catalogue. Extensive site of links to the history portion of the WWW Virtual Library. Coverage in 4 major divisions: Research (Methods and Materials); Topics; Countries and Regions; Eras. Maintained at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.
Repository Sites
- Archives - Repositories of Primary Sources. More than 3200 links to web sites, organised by region. Maintained at University of Idaho.
- Museums around the World. Virtual Library museums pages (VLmp), a comprehensive directory of on-line museums and museum-related resources. Maintained by Jonathan Bowen at Reading University (U.K.).
- National Libraries and Major Libraries of the World. This site is maintained by IFLA, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions.
Geographical Areas
- United Kingdom
- National Archives. The national archive (formerly known as the Public Record Office) of England, Wales and the United Kingdom; preserves the records of the central government and courts of law from the 11th century onwards.
- Historical Manuscripts Commission. Established in 1869, the HMC is a source of information on the existence, location and nature of records and manuscripts in the UK. It maintains the UK National Register of Archives, and ARCHON, the principal access point for identifying manuscript sources for British history both in the UK and other parts of the world.
- United States
- Comprehensive sites
- U.S. History. Yahoo site, with regional, subject and time-period arrangements.
- Comprehensive sites
- Selected Sites
- American Memory Collections: Topics: History. U.S. Library of Congress project, providing textual and photographic documentation on American history. For example, selections from The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1824-1909; Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers; Nineteenth-Century Periodicals, 1850-1877; Woman Suffrage (books, pamphlets, photographs and prints).
- National Archives and Records Administration
Specific Fields of History
- Labour History
- International Institute of Social History. Founded in 1935 and located in Amsterdam, the IISH is one of the largest documentary and research organizations in the world dealing with social history in general and the history of the labour movement in particular.
- Military History
- U.S. Army Center of Military History. Includes bibliographies of books and documents by major conflict, as well as list of CMH publications. Some full-text, as well.
- Women
- ViVa. Dutch acronym for Vrouwengeschiedenis in het Vaktijdschriff, which translates as Women's History in Professional Journals. It is the name for a bibliography of women's history in historical and women's studies journals. A 3-volume print bibliography (not available in the TUG libraries) has been published for the period 1975-1994. Since 1995, the project has been assumed by the International Institute of Social History, and is available electronically. Nearly 150 journals in English, Dutch, French, German, and the Scandinavian languages are indexed.
- Internet Women's History Sourcebook. A subset of the Internet History Sourcebooks Project, located at the History Department of Fordham University, and edited by Paul Halsall, History Department, University of North Florida. The sourcebooks are "collections of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts ... for educational use" (Intro.). Arranged by major time-periods - ancient, mediaeval, modern - and subarranged geographically.