Library Guides: History: Non-US Primary Sources

Primary Source Databases and Websites

Finding Primary Sources in the popular literature of the day: You may be able to find articles, speeches, and personal accounts that qualify as primary sources in the magazines, newspapers and popular literature of the day. Lehigh's library also makes available a significant number of online sources that provide the searchable full text of historic materials and publications. Some of these resources are for use by the Lehigh Community only. Be sure to look at the News Archives tab in this guide for other resources.

Early English Books Online This link opens in a new window
Contains images of nearly every work printed in the British Isles and North America from 1470-1700, as well as works in English printed elsewhere. Includes transcriptions of about 50% of texts.
Based on titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640), Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700), the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) and the Early English Books Tract Supplement.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
Digital access to nearly 150,000 items including books, broadsides, Bibles, tract books and sermons and printed ephemera and includes works by many well-known and lesser-known authors published between 1701 and 1800.
Full-text searching allows researchers access to information in many fields including history, literature, religion, law, fine arts, science and more. The basic and advanced search tools available allow the researcher a variety of search types including an advanced "fuzzy" search to help find the variant/approximate spelling found in documents of this era and the ability to search by ESTC numbers.

Europeana
(from the European Union) "Europeana offers a journey through time, across borders, and into new ideas of what our culture is. More than that, it will connect people to their history..."
Internet Library of Early Journals
A joint project by the Universities of Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Oxford, conducted under the auspices of the eLib (Electronic Libraries) Programme. Contains 20 year consecutive runs of 6 British journals, 3 from the 18th Century and 3 from the 19th Century.
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Journals included:
18th Century: Gentleman's Magazine; The Annual Register; Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
19th Century: Notes and Quieries; The Builder; Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine
MIDAS: Mexican Intelligence Digital Archives
The Mexican Intelligence Digital Archives (los Archivos del Autoritarismo Mexicano), is a crowd-sourced, public access digital archive of historical documents from Mexican intelligence agencies. The collection is drawn from Mexico’s two principal security services, the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS) and the Dirección General de Investigaciones Políticas y Sociales (DGIPS) and covers the period c.1940 to c.1985.

Women and Social Movements, International 1840 to Present This link opens in a new window
Digital primary source archive containing conference proceedings; reports of international women's organizations; publications of women's NGOs; and letters, diaries, and memoirs of women active internationally since the mid-1800s.
Also includes photographs and videos of major events and activists in the history of women’s international social movements.

World Digital Library
The World Digital Library (WDL) makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.

Featured Resource

EURO Docs
A directory of primary documents of Western European history

U.K. National Archives

The National Archives of the United Kingdom

France's National Digital Archive

Gallica
Gallica is the digital library product from the National Library of France

History

Primary Source Databases and Websites

Featured Resource

U.K. National Archives

France's National Digital Archive

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