Primary Sources (A How-to Guide): Online Collections

Provides digitized maps for most cities and towns in Illinois. The large scale plans chart the growth and development of these communities.
Dates covered: 1867-1970.
Access note: Only available on-campus.

Database focusing on the study of the historical development of black culture. Includes monographs, essays, articles, speeches, and interviews written by leaders within the black community.
Dates Covered: 1841-present.

Provides access to primary source documents covering significant events starting in 1972. These documents range from presidential speeches, international agreements, and Supreme Court decisions to U.S. governmental reports, scientific findings, and cultural discussions.

The HistoryMakers Digital Archive is an extensive online database of over 9,000 hours of full-text and video interviews with African-Americans distinguished in the fields of science, culture, politics, the arts, and public life.

A growing collection of full-text government documents from the U.S. federal executive, judicial, and legislative branches, as well as British Canadian Common Law.

American and British legal history from 1800 through 1926, including casebooks, works for lay readers, pamplets, letters, and speeches.
Dates Covered: 1800-1926.

Collection of primary source documents focusing on immigrants to America and Canada between 1800 and 1950.
Dates Covered: 1800-1950.

Collection of letters and diaries that present the personal experiences of hundreds of women from Colonial times to 1950. Also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of the sources in the database.
Dates Covered: 1675-1950.

Primary source material pertaining to the civil rights movement and to U.S. foreign policy during the Vietnam War era consisting of the NAACP Papers and federal government records, organizational records, and personal papers regarding the Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century.

Collection of primary source documents focusing 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. Explores the various components of the debate with a focus on economic, gender, legal, religious, and government issues. Also includes bibliographies, biographies, chronologies and scholarly essays.

This collection includes papers promoting as well as those opposing white nationalism. It brings together for the first time local, regional, and national newspapers published by Klan organizations and by sympathetic publishers from across the U.S. It also includes key anti-Klan voices from newspapers published by ethnic, Catholic, and Jewish organizations.

A collection of declassified documents from various government agencies, including the White House, the CIA, the FBI, the State Department, and others covering events following World War II.

Contains visual, spatial, and research documentation of cultural heritage sites and landscapes in Africa.

EEBO allows users to view and search digital facsimiles of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and other works printed in English from 1473-1700. Containing 125,000 titles, this collection includes the first book printed in English by William Caxton, early quarto editions of Shakespeare's plays with the renowned First Folio edition of 1623 and the earliest editions of classics such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Malory's Morte d'Arthur.

Primary sources documenting the changing representations of gender roles and relations from the nineteenth century to the present. Offers sources for the study of women's suffrage, the feminist movement, the men’s movement, employment, education, the body, the family, and government and politics.

A growing collection of full-text government documents from the U.S. federal executive, judicial, and legislative branches, as well as British Canadian Common Law.

American and British legal history from 1800 through 1926, including casebooks, works for lay readers, pamplets, letters, and speeches.
Dates Covered: 1800-1926.

Collection of primary source documents focusing 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. Explores the various components of the debate with a focus on economic, gender, legal, religious, and government issues. Also includes bibliographies, biographies, chronologies and scholarly essays.

Includes UN and League of Nations Treaties, Multilateral Treaties deposited with the Secretary General, and other UN treaty information.
Access note: Freely available to the public.