Skip to Main Content

Primary Sources

Guide to finding sources for research in historical primary sources such as newspapers, archives, historic photographs, oral histories, and other sources.

Digitized Archival Documents

Not able to visit an archive in person? More and more primary source documents are digitized every year. Many good research projects can be done using digitized sources alone. 

Digital archives in the Pacific Northwest
  • Pacific University Archives Digital Exhibits
    About 10,000 items from Pacific's archives and art collections. 
  • Washington County Heritage
    Historic photographs from a dozen institutions across our county, covering roughly 1860-1970.
  • Oregon Digital
    Digitized archives & photographs from OSU and University of Oregon. Includes campus publications and archival collections on a wide variety of topics, mostly related in some way to the two universities. 
  • Oregon Historical Society Digital Collections
    Mostly digitized photographs, mostly about Oregon. Great if you need an historic photo of a particular place in Oregon or a famous Oregonian. 
  • Washington Rural Heritage
    Digitized collections (mostly photographs) from hundreds of small libraries and collections in Washington State, covering approximately the 1800s-1950s.
  • Territorial Papers of the United States - Oregon Territory (must be a Pacific student to get access)
    This database includes scanned government correspondence and other government papers from Oregon between 1824-1871. This is a good database to check if you are looking into Native American relations with the U.S. government in the Pacific Northwest during this time period. 
     
General Digital Repositories
 

These digital repositories give access to all types of primary sources -- archives, books, newspapers, etc. For many more options, see the tabs for specific formats: Newspapers & Magazines, Books, Images, etc. 

  • Chronicling America : Free, digitized newspapers from across the county. See also the Newspapers tab in this guide for more options.
  • Digital Public Library of America: 30 million+ documents and images from archives across the United States. This database compiles together digital sources from many smaller databases. 
  • Europeana: European history and culture. Huge database with over 2,000 European institutional contributors.
  • Gallica: French history and culture from the Bibliotheque National de France with 2.5 million+ items.
  • Google Books Advanced Search: Books & periodicals mostly published between 1800-1923. Excellent source for American and British history. Note: the date-based search can be unreliable.
  • HathiTrust: Books & periodicals published mostly published between 1700-1923. Similar to Google Books but has a superior interface and somewhat better coverage of non-English language material; however it has fewer titles overall. 
  • Library of Congress Digital Collections : very diverse set of collections from the L.o.C., organized by topic; great place to look for material on the Civil War, WWI, WWII, the Great Depression, African-American culture, and much more. Good mix of documents and photos.
  • Online Archive of California : Millions of documents from archives in California. Especially good for researching the American West.

 

Subject-Specific Digital Repositories