Primary Documents for Historical Research: Home

"As a retirement project, [John Adler] decided to have this uniquely important journal [Harper's Weekly] manually indexed. Harper’s Weekly never had a useful index, so until now there has been no way for students and researchers to access the illustrations, cartoons, news, literature, editorials, and ads that these volumes contain without spending hours poring over microfilm or locked-up original copies in rare book rooms of libraries. Harper’s Weekly is really the only consistent, comprehensive, week-to-week chronological record of what happened world-wide in the last half of the nineteenth century."

The Library of Congresss (LoC) Digital Collections provides online access to the LoC collections that document the American experience including: written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music.
Be sure to also visit the LoC guides:
Primary Documents in American History - http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/PrimDocsHome.html
Teaching resources - http://www.loc.gov/teachers/

"Making of America (MoA) is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The collection currently contains approximately 10,000 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints. For more details about the project, see About MoA. Making of America is made possible by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation."

The Presidential Library system is composed of fourteen Presidential Libraries. These facilities are overseen by the Office of Presidential Libraries, in the National Archives and Records Administration.
Presidential Libraries are archives and museums, bringing together the documents and artifacts of a President and his administration and presenting them to the public for study and discussion without regard for political considerations or affiliations. Presidential Libraries and Museums, like their holdings, belong to the American people.