Primary sources are documents created at the time of interest. They offer a firsthand or "primary" view of historical events, people and topics. Examples include:
The Mansfield Library owns thousands of books and microfilm reels that contain transcriptions or reproductions of personal papers, business records and government agency records. Search in OneSearch for keywords or title words such as sources, papers or papers of, documents or documents of, manuscripts, records, diary or diaries, journal or journals, narrative or narratives, reminiscences, letters and similar terms.
Some examples:
Use your NetID and password to access library databases off campus.
Full text digitized reproductions of more than 1,500 eighteenth and nineteenth century American newspapers and periodicals archived at the Center for Research Libraries (CRL). Titles include general interest, children's, women's, early scientific, and professional publications that chronicle the development of America across 150 years, published from 1740-1940.
Full text of over 15,000 digitized primary sources including correspondence; speeches, sermons, and lectures; articles, essays, and editorials from more than 200 newspapers; and poems and other miscellaneous documents from African Americans involved in the abolition movement between 1830-1865, with the majority of content coming from the U.S., Canada, and the British Isles.
Full text of over 136,000 English-language books, tracts, and printed ephemera published in the UK between 1701-1800, plus thousands from elsewhere. Primarily in English, also contains works in Dutch, French, German, Italian, Latin, Spanish, and Welsh. Access provided by the Mansfield Library and the UM Law School. **Note: Access the collection from Gale Primary Sources to cross-search a wider range of digital collections and for more textual analysis tools.
Full text of several million pages of digitized primary source materials drawn from the National Archives, presidential libraries, and the archival papers of key organizations and individuals, presented in six modules: (1) Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Federal Government Records, (2) Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Organizational Records and Personal Papers, Part 1, (3) NAACP Papers: Board of Directors, Annual Conferences, Major Speeches, and National Staff Files, (4) ?NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Education, Voting, Housing, Employment, Armed Forces, (5) Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantations Records, Part 1, (6) Vietnam War and American Foreign Policy, 1960-1975.
Full text of nearly 22,000 legal treatises on U.S. and British law including casebooks, local practice manuals, form books, works for lay readers, pamphlets, letters, speeches, and other works from the influential writers and legal scholars of the era. Access provided by the UM Law School. **Note: Access the collection from Gale Primary Sources to cross-search a wider range of digital collections and for more textual analysis tools.
Full text digitized newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S. Includes major newspapers as well as those published by African Americans, Native Americans, women's rights groups, labor groups, the Confederacy, and other groups and interests. Also included are illustrated papers that bring the nineteenth century to life through the drawings of many artists. **Note: Access the collection from Gale Primary Sources to cross-search a wider range of digital collections and for more textual analysis tools.
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