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HIST 314: American Society and Culture

Newspapers and Periodicals

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1836-1922 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.

Proquest Historical Newspapers
Database of early twentieth century US newspapers including the Atlanta Constitution, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, New York Times, New York Tribune, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post.

African American Newspapers, 1827-1998
Digital collection of African American newspapers from the Wisconsin Historical Society, Kansas State Historical Society and the Library of Congress

19th Century Masterfile
Indexes Anglo-American literature: periodicals, books, newspapers, and government documents published before 1930.

Accessible Archives
Full text of colonial and Civil War-era newspapers, including Frank Leslie's Weekly (illustrated), the Lily, and the Virginia Gazette, as well as 19th century African-American newspapers

African American Periodicals, 1825-1995
Collection of rare African American periodicals from the 19th to the 20th century.

American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals Collection
Extensive collection of historical periodicals dating from 1693 to 1865

American Periodicals from CRL (Council of Research Libraries)
Digital collection of trade magazines, labor and trade publications

Humanities and Social Sciences Index Retrospective: 1907-1984

OpinionArchives
Digital collection of current issues and backfiles of a number of leading U.S. opinion publications including the New Yorker (1925-present), the Nation (1865-present), Commentary (1945-present), the American Spectator (1967-present), the National Review (1955-present), New Republic (1914-present), Commonweal (1924-present), the New York Review of Books (1965-present), and Harper's (1850-present)

Periodical Archives Online
PAO offers access to the international scholarly literature of the humanities and social science disciplines from 1802 to 1995.

Selected Web Collections

American Presidency Project
Contains the most comprehensive collection of resources pertaining to the study of the President of the United States. For example, see the Papers for James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams to name a few.

Digital Public Library of America

Documenting the American South  
Check the primary sources collections on specific topics, e.g. Immigration and Americanization, 1880-1930.

Emergence of Advertising in America; Ad Access; Ad Views
Series of digital collections from Duke University Libraries that chart the emergance of advertising in America.

Harvard University Open Collections
Includes collections such as "Women Working, 1800-1930" and "Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930".

Hathi Trust
This digital collection includes books and primary source documents from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, and libraries around the world.

History Matters
This site provides access to primary sources, as well as acts as a gateway to hundreds of American history web sites and information about historiography (from George Mason University).

Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930
This digital collection of historical materials from Harvard's libraries, archives, and museums documents voluntary immigration to the United States from the signing of the Constitution to the start of the Great Depression.

Library of Congress Digital Collections
Collections chronicling historical events, people, places, and ideas that continue to shape America plus American Memory Remaining Collections.

Voice of the Shuttle (U.S. History)
Contains miscellaneous primary source documents for US History (and more) 

Women Working, 1800-1930
The collection is an exploration of women's impact on the economic life of the United States between 1800 and the Great Depression, comprising over 650,000 individual pages from more than 3,100 books and trade catalogs, 900 archives and manuscript items, and 1,400 photographs.

Also check American History: Primary Sources for more collections.

Other Digital Collections

History: American: Primary Sources:19th C  20th C
Not all of the websites can be accessed as some are locked and only available to the University of Washington community

Primary Sources

Primary sources are original sources, in which its witnesses or first recorders describe a time, person or event.

Some types of primary sources include:

  • diaries and journals
  • speeches, interviews, letters
  • memoirs and autobiographies
  • government documents
  • published materials,  e.g. magazine and newspapers articles written at the particular time

For more information, check the Primary Sources page.

Subject Headings

Use the same subject headings you use to locate secondary resources, e.g. books, to locate primary ones by adding one of the special subject terms to your search. For example:

Abolitionists--United States--
     Correspondence
African Americans--History--1877-
     1964 --Sources.
Depressions--1929--United States--
    Personal narratives
United States--Politics and government--
     1933-1945--Sources
Vietnam War 1961-1975--Personal
     narratives, American   

Historical Figures

If you know ot a person involved in the event or from the time period, look under that person's name as an author for memoirs, diaries, correspondence, etc.

For example, search Martin Luther King as an Author in Advanced Search.