Carnegie Mellon University Libraries
Primary Sources
Below are just some of the primary sources available for research. Many more are available at Carnegie Mellon and nearby libraries and archives. If you need help finding primary sources, see History: Databases and Indexes: Archival Resources or ask for assistance at the Hunt Library reference desk.
- African History: Primary Sources
- African American History: Primary Sources
- American History: Primary Sources
- Asian History: Primary Sources
- Atlantic World: Primary Sources
- Business and Industrial History: Corporate Records
- Environmental History: Primary Sources
- European History: Primary Sources
- Foreign Policy: Primary Sources
- History of Medicine: Primary Sources
- History of Technology and Science: Primary Sources
- General
- Labor and Economic History: Primary Sources
- Latin American and Caribbean History: Primary Sources
- Pittsburgh History: Oral Histories
- Pittsburgh History: Records of Businesses, Individuals, and Organizations
- Social History: Primary Sources
- Urban History: Primary Sources
- Women's History: Primary Sources
Other relevant primary sources may be found at History:
- Audio Resources
- Databases and Indexes: Journals and Magazines and Books
- Databases and Indexes: Newspapers
- Maps
- Pictorial Resources.
GeneralHistoryBack to top
- Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts
Browse or search public domain documents from American and English literature, including Western philosophy.
- AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History (George Laughead and Lynn Nelson)
Documents from the fifteenth century to the present, chronologically arranged.
- American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital Library (Library of Congress)
Search or browse collections on a wide variety of subjects and in a wide variety of media.
- Commager, Henry Steele and Milton Cantor, eds. Documents of American History. 2 vols. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1988.
HUNT REF-1 E173 .D59 1988
- Declassified Documents Reference Service (Carnegie Mellon users only)
Search and display over 78,000 previously classified documents from the U. S. government. These released documents are from Cabinet meeting minutes, National Security Council policy statements, CIA intelligence studies, Presidential conferences, State Department political analyses, and Joint Chiefs papers. The documents cover major international events from the Cold War to the Vietnam War and beyond
- Defining Gender: 1450-1910 (Carnegie Mellon uses only)
Search and display such primary sources as images, ephemera, pamphlets, college records and exam papers, books, diaries, periodicals, letters, ledgers, account books, education practice and pedagogy, government papers, illustrated writings on anatomy, midwifery, art and fashion, manuscripts, poetry, novels, ballads, drama, receipt books, travel writing, conduct, and advice literature. Five major themes are covered: Conduct and Politness, Domesticity and Family, Consumption and Leisure, Education and Sensibility, and the Body.
- Digital Library of Georgia (University System of Georgia)
Digital full text collections including diaries, photographs, maps, government documents, newspapers, books, etc. relating to the history and culture of state of Georgia.
- Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment (Carnegie Mellon users only)
1534-1850.
This database documents the relationships among peoples in North America from 1534 to 1850. The collection focuses on personal accounts and provides unique perspectives from traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials, both men and women. The database contains published and unpublished accounts, including narratives, diaries, journals, and letters, amounting to 100,000 pages of text with associated maps and images.
- Empire Online (Carnegie Mellon users only)
15th-20th Centuries
Provides full text access to rare primary sources that covers 5 aspects of the colonial experience. It has a thematic layout spanning Cultural Contracts, Literature of the Empire, Religion, Race, Class, and Imperialism. Materials cover Africa, North and South America, the Caribbean, India, Asia, the Middle East, Australasia and the Islands of Oceania. Materials included are: exploration and journals logs to travel logs, diaries, official government papers, missionary papers, maps, photographs, letter books and correspondence, etc.
- EuroDocs: Primary Historical Documents From Western Europe (Brigham Young University)
Geographically and chronologically arranged.
- Hanover Historical Texts Project (History Department, Hanover College)
Public domain texts, chronologically arranged by region.
- History and Historiography (The EServer, Department of Technical Communication, University of Washington)
Documents and articles from all periods in an alphabetical list.
- Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States (Bartleby.com)
- Internet Medieval Sourcebook: Full Text Sources (Paul Halsall, Fordham University)
Arranged by topic.
- Internet Modern History Sourcebook: Full Text Sources (Paul Halsall, Fordham University)
Arranged by topic.
- Levy, Peter B., ed. 100 Key Documents in American Democracy. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994.
HUNT REF-1 E173 .A15 1994
- Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries from the American Antiquarian Society (Carnegie Mellon users only)
100,000 pages of the personal writings of women of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
- Medieval Family Life (Carnegie Mellon users only)
ca. 15th century
Full colour images of the original medieval manuscripts that comprise these family letter collections along with full text searchable transcripts from the printed editions, where they are available. The original images and the transcriptions can be viewed side by side. Along with the letter collections themselves there are many additional features useful for teaching and research. These include: A chronology, a visual sources gallery, an interactive map, a glossary, family trees and links to other scholarly free to access digital resources useful for researching the medieval period.
- Medieval Travel Writing (Carnegie Mellon users only)
13th to the 16th centuries
Search and display manuscripts of some of the most important works of European travel writing from the later medieval period. The chief focus is on journeys to central Asia and the Far East, including accounts of travel to Mongolia, Persia, India, China and South-East Asia.
- Perdita Manuscripts (Carnegie Mellon users only)
ca. 16th-17th Centuries
Search and display manuscripts written or compiled by women in the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Culled from archives and libraries across the United Kingdom and the USA, they range in materials from account books, diaries, autobiographies, notebooks, medical writings, travel writing, speeches, etc.
- Slavery, Abolition, and Social Justice, 1490-2007 (Carnegie Mellon users only)
1490-2007
Search and browse the full text of original manuscripts, pamphlets, books, paintings, and maps. There is extensive coverage of topics such as the African Coast; the Middle Passage; the varieties of slave experience (urban, domestic, industrial, farm, ranch and plantation); Spiritualism and Religion; Resistance and Revolts; the Underground Railroad; the Abolition Movement; Legislation; Education; the Legacy of Slavery and Slavery Today. The database covers all geographic areas.
- Social and Cultural History: Letters and Diaries Online (Carnegie Mellon users only)
This full text database brings together, on a single cross-searchable platform, the entire family of letter and diary databases from Alexander Street Press:North American Women's Letters and Diaries British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries Black Thought and Culture: African Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
- Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History (Carnegie Mellon users only)
Early 19th century to the late 20th century
Search and display travel accounts by women. Sources cover a variety of topics including; architecture; art; the British Empire; climate; customs; exploration; family life; housing; industry; language; monuments; mountains; natural history; politics and diplomacy; race; religion; science; shopping; war. A wide variety of forms of travel writing are included, ranging from unique manuscripts, diaries and correspondence to drawings, guidebooks and photographs. The resource includes a slideshow with hundreds of items of visual material, including postcards, sketches and photographs.
- Texts (The American Revolution-an .HTML Project)
Chronologically arranged.
April 2011 -- http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/sc24/History/primary.html
Sue Collins, Senior Librarian, sc24@andrew.cmu.edu