Often, the best work arises from close engagement with a primary source. As you read, you'll think of questions or begin to shape an argument. The hard part is to find a primary source that addresses the broad general area of interest. Here are some strategies for finding primary sources:
Adam Matthew, Gale, Proquest, and Readex provide a large portion of our online primary source materials. Each company has created a consolidated search engine which allows you to search all of the materials they provide.
AM explorer (Adam Matthew)
Gale Primary Sources (Gale)
Proquest History (Proquest)
Readex AllSearch (Readex)
Steadily growing repository containing a previously unavailable subset of Princeton’s Latin American Ephemera Collection as well as newly acquired materials being digitized and added on an ongoing basis.
Digital collections of historical material on many topics. Includes manuscripts, printed books and periodicals, and government documents. The material comes from the U.S. National Archives, the U.K. National Archives, and many other libraries and archives.
Digital archive of U.S. history primary sources. Includes government documents, personal papers and organizational records.
Indexing and full-text access to a rich collection of declassified documents from various government agencies, including the White House, the CIA, the FBI, the State Department, and others covering events following Word War II. Some specialized collection is contained in Archives Unbound. 1914+
For items declassified prior to this index, see The Declassified Documents Reference System - Retrospective Collection (Firestone) Z1223.Z7D36.
Access to a wealth of significant primary documents central to U.S. foreign and military policy since 1945. Divided into various core collections; each contains a diverse range of policy documents including presidential directives, memos, diplomatic dispatches, meeting notes, independent reports, briefing papers, White House communications, email, confidential letters, and other secret material.
Declassified documentary records of the U.S. intelligence community in the Far East during the Cold War (1945-1991). With focus on People's Republic of China, North Korea and North Vietnam. Also covered are Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Australia.