History
About Primary Sources
Finding Primary Sources
If you can access an original primary source in person, great! If you can’t, primary source materials of all kinds are available in reproduction. Primary sources are characterized by their content, regardless of whether they are available in the original format, in digital format, or published on paper. You can find them in books, journals, and magazines, as well as in online databases. Check out the list of databases below that feature digitized primary source materials:
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AM Explorer
Please note: access to AM Explorer expired on December 31, 2024. Access continues to the individual collections Leisure, Travel and Mass Culture, Sex & Sexuality, and Victorian Popular Culture.
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Digital Public Library of AmericaDPLA materials come from America’s libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions. All of these are freely available and include; photographs, books, maps, news footage, oral histories, personal letters, museum objects, artwork, government documents, etc.
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HathiTrust Digital Library
A digital preservation repository that provides access to millions of digitized materials from libraries around the world. For enhanced access to materials, log into HathiTrust using your Macalester email credentials.
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Library of Congress Digital CollectionsAccess to digital collections maintained by the Library of Congress. The LOC has millions of books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts in its collections.
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ArchiveGrid
ArchiveGrid helps researchers looking for primary source materials held in archives, libraries, museums and historical societies.
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Primary Sources (Gale)Search across our Gale primary source databases; find historical newspapers and primary documents, mainly from the United States and Great Britain. Includes the Times (London) and Economist historical archives, and a wide range of early modern/colonial British and American primary sources.
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Slavery and Anti-slavery: A Transnational ArchiveDigital archive devoted to study and understanding of the history of slavery. Access to primary source documents shedding light on the abolitionist movement and the conflicts within it, the anti- and pro-slavery arguments of the period, and the debates on the subject of colonization.
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Women and Social MovementsA resource for scholars of U.S. Women's history. The collection currently includes 123 document projects and archives with 5,100 documents and more than 170,000 pages of additional full-text documents, written by 2,700 primary authors. It also includes book, film, and website reviews, notes from the archives, and teaching tools.
Interested in finding primary sources related to Minnesota, the Twin Cities, or Macalester College? Visit the Local History Resources tab of this guide.
Newspapers and Periodicals
Recent Newspapers
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US Newsstream (ProQuest)
Current U.S. news content, as well as archives that stretch back into the 1980s. It features top newspapers, wires, broadcast transcripts, blogs, and news sites in full-text format. US Newsstream provides key national and regional news sources from the U.S. and includes exclusive and preferred access to top titles, including The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Newsday, and Chicago Tribune.
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Nexis Uni
Credible source for news, legal, and business sources that is updated daily. Includes access to print and online journals, television and radio broadcasts, newswires and blogs, as well as local, regional, national, and international newspapers, legal sources for federal and state cases and statutes, business information on U.S. and international companies and executives. For Business Nexis Uni covers company and industry news, detailed company financial data, and includes major accounting journals. In Law, the database provides texts of federal and state court decisions, federal and state agency regulations, and law journal articles.
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Access World News: Research Collection
International, national, regional, state, and local newspaper articles and video clips. Includes over a thousand international news sources from scores of countries on six continents, translated into English when written in other languages.
Historical Newspapers - International
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Center for Research Libraries' Newspaper Collections CRL's collection of rare, historical newspapers from across the globe, available on microfilm or digitized. Inquire with librarians for more information.
Historical US Newspapers and Periodicals
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Star Tribune Archive
Searchable full text of the newspaper from 1986 to the present. Text only.
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St. Paul Pioneer PressCurrent content as well as archives going back to 1948. Full-page digital images of the complete paper are available for the historical archive (1948 to 1987) as well as the most recent issues (2018 to present). Articles from 1988 to 2018 are available in full-text, but without page images.
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Newspapers.com Library EditionFull-text of local newspapers from the United States, including Minnesota, dating from the 1700s to the 2000s. Limited additional coverage of local newspapers from other countries.
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Minnesota Digital Newspaper HubThe Minnesota Digital Newspaper Hub is a searchable website from the Minnesota Historical Society that makes millions of pages of Minnesota newspapers available online. The Hub contains geographically and culturally diverse newspapers published between 1849 and today. Due to potential copyright restrictions most issues published less than 95 years ago can only be accessed from the Gale Family Library at the Minnesota History Center. --Website
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New York Times Archive
Searchable full text of the New York Times from the first issue in 1851 to 4 years ago. Includes full page and article images. Most recent years of the Times can be searched in US Newsstream or New York Times - Digital Microfilm.
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America's Historical Newspapers
Early American Newspapers from 1690-1922 and African American Newspapers from 1827-1998.
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American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collections
Digitized images from American magazines and journals held by the American Antiquarian Society, documenting the life of America's people from the Colonial Era through the Civil War and Reconstruction. Includes over 6,500 titles featuring more than 10 million pages of content. Also titles in more than two dozen languages including French, German, Norwegian, Spanish.
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Independent VoicesIndependent Voices is a digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.
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Chronicling AmericaA free, searchable database of historic United States newspapers pages from 1836-1922.
Historical British Newspapers and Periodicals
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The Times Historical Archive, 1785–2019 (Gale Primary Sources)
Full-text and full-image archive to the Times of London for the years 1785-2019.
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British Library Newspapers (Gale Primary Sources)Contains full runs of influential national and regional newspapers representing different political and cultural segments of British society. Coverage: 1800-1900.
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Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals (Gale Primary Sources)Access to resources covering the events, lives, values and themes that shaped the 19th century world.