Primary Sources: ...in Digital Collections

This guide will assist you in discerning what primary sources are and where they can be located.

Digital Collections

Many digital collections available online through open access digital repositories contain primary sources that are publicly available for free. Primary sources are also available through the library's subscription-based databases accessible via MyCoyote.

When searching for and using online primary sources it is important to evaluate the credibility of the source. A helpful guide on finding, evaluating, and using online primary sources can be found on the Reference and User Services Association's (RUSA) website, http://www.ala.org/rusa/sections/history/resources/primarysources.

Open Access Digital Repositories

California Digital Newspaper Collection
The California Digital Newspaper Collection is a growing repository of historical California newspapers published from 1846-present, including the first California newspaper, the Californian, and the first daily California newspaper, the Daily Alta California. It also contains issues of current California newspapers, collected as PDFs, that are part of a project to preserve and provide access to contemporary papers.
California Revealed
California Revealed provides online access to archival materials including books, newspapers, photographs, audiovisual recordings, and more that tell the incredible stories of the Golden State.
Calisphere
Calisphere provides online access to unique and historically important primary source materials from libraries, archives, and museums throughout California.
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
Chronicling America provides access to digitized historic newspapers from cities across the United States.
CSUSB Scholarworks
CSUSB ScholarWorks contains select digitized materials including newspapers, photographs, oral histories, and newsletters from the John M. Pfau Library Special Collections and University Archives.
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
DPLA connects people to photographs, books, maps, news footage, oral histories, personal letters, museum objects, artwork, government documents, and other materials held within America’s libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions.
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts in its collections. Select materials from their vast collection have been digitized and made publicly accessible online.
National Archives Catalog
The National Archives Catalog contains digital versions of the U.S. Government’s collection of documents that record important events in American history.

Subscription-based Databases

American Indian Histories and Cultures This link opens in a new window
Digital archival materials such as treaties, speeches, diaries, historic maps, and travel journals, covering interactions between Native Americans and Europeans from their earliest contact up to the civil rights movement of the 20th century.

American Indian Newspapers
Digital images of nearly 200 years of Indigenous print journalism from the US and Canada. With newspapers representing a huge variety in publisher, audience, and era, discover how events were reported by and for Indigenous communities.

AVON (Academic Video Online) This link opens in a new window
Streaming video: 68,000 video titles from producers such as California Newsreel, PBS, Bloomberg, Annenberg Learner, Sony Picture Classics, and others.
Japanese American Incarceration: Records of the War Relocation Authority, 1942-1946 This link opens in a new window
Archival records relating to the forced removal of Japanese American citizens and residents from their homes following Pearl Harbor. Documents the day-to-day running of the 10 concentration camps. Records include reports and correspondence on issues such as security, education, health, vocational training, agriculture, food, and family welfare.

Los Angeles Sentinel
Historical coverage of a Los Angeles newspaper produced by and for the Black community. Digital images available, fully searchable.

Race Relations in America This link opens in a new window
Digitized archival documents covering three pivotal decades (1943-1970) in the struggle for civil rights in America through the eyes and work of sociologists, activists, psychologists, teachers, ministers, students and housewives.

Last Updated: Feb 13, 2023 2:15 PM
URL: https://libguides.csusb.edu/primarydocuments
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Subjects: History, Research Skills, Special Collections & University Archives

Tags: primary documents