Librarian
Research/IT Desk
Contact:
Contact the Reference Librarians online
reference@carleton.edu
reference@carleton.edu
507-222-4264
Content Note
What is a primary source?
There is no one type of thing that is a primary source. Depending on your particular research a primary source might include...
autobiographies, published scholarly journals, newspapers, archival collections of letters, personal diaries, photographs, videos, interviews, pamphlets, or artwork
Be creative! Ask for help!
Newspapers
- African American Newspapers, Series 1, 1827-1998 This link opens in a new window
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Contains the full text of nearly 300 African-American newspapers from 35 states printed in the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries. Covers 1827 - 1998. - ProQuest Historical Black Newspapers This link opens in a new window
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Full-text and full-image articles from 15 African-American newspapers spanning the 20th century from their first issue until about 2010. Earliest papers go back to 1893. - America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
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Contains the full text and images from historical American newspapers, 1690 - 1922. Also includes sub-collections of African American Newspapers, Ethnic American Newspapers, and Hispanic Newspapers. Languages covered include English, Spanish, Yiddish, French, German, and Japanese.
- Freedmen's Record (1865-1874)Freedmen's Record is a historical journal published in United States by the New England Freedmen's Aid Society. This collection contains issues published between 1865 and 1874.
- Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers This link opens in a new window
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Search across fully digitized newspapers, including all articles, advertisements, and illustrations.
Black Studies Primary Source Databases
- ProQuest Black Studies This link opens in a new window
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Historical Black newspapers, archival documents and collections, key government materials, videos, writings by major Black intellectuals and leaders, scholarly journals, and essays by top scholars. - Oxford African American Studies Center This link opens in a new window
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A comprehensive collection of scholarship that focuses on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture. Contains scholarly articles, reference works, primary sources, timelines, biographies, images, maps, charts and tables, and film clips, among many other things. - ProQuest Black Abolitionist Papers This link opens in a new window
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Unique set of primary sources from African Americans actively involved in the movement to end slavery in the United States between 1830 and 1865. - Slavery, Abolition, and Social Justice This link opens in a new window
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Primary source documents dating from 1490 to the near present from across the Atlantic world relating to the complex subjects of slavery, abolition, and social justice.
History Primary Source Databases
- Accessible Archives Complete This link opens in a new window
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(Searches through citations and the full text) Full-text access to primary source materials and newspapers from 18th, 19th, and early 20th century America. The collection includes: letters, advertisements, editorials, sketches, county records, complete runs of important periodicals, military newsletters, public health documents, and much more. - AM Explorer This link opens in a new window
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Primary sources from the 15th-21st centuries, including the social sciences, humanities, global history, popular culture, history of media, gender and sexuality, trade history, borders and migrations, and war and conflict. - Readex AllSearch This link opens in a new window
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Search across all of Carleton's Readex collections at once. Includes historical newspapers, government documents, books, ephemera, history of science and artificial intelligence, and the like.
Digital Collections
- African American Collections at the Library of CongressFrom the Library's Digital Collections. Includes pamphlets, photographs, books, and miscellaneous papers relating to African-American History.
- African American Timeline (Library of Congress)From the Library of Congress "A timeline chronicling major events and notable people effecting African American History from the years 1852 through 1925."
- African American Women (Duke)Online Archival Collections, Duke University.
- Freedmen and Southern Society ProjectThe Freedmen and Southern Society Project was established in 1976 to capture the essence of that revolution by depicting the drama of emancipation in the words of the participants: liberated slaves and defeated slaveholders, soldiers and civilians, common folk and the elite, Northerners and Southerners.
- Images of Nineteenth Century African-Americans (Schomburg)Browse and search images from the Photographs and Prints Division of the Schomburg Center.
- Making of America (Cornell University)Ful-text archive of periodicals and books from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The two archives have different contents, so be sure to search both.
