LibGuides: Primary Sources: Online Collections & Resources

Digital Primary Sources: Open Access

American Memory
American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity.
Internet Archive
Online library includes digital forms of books, websites, music, games, and more. Also includes digital collections from many American and Canadian libraries and special collections
Avalon Project
Digital documents relevant to the fields of law, history, economics, politics, diplomacy and government from ancient times to the 21st century.
Digital Public Library of America
Portal to resources from U.S. libraries, archives, and museums. Browse by place, time, subject, or contributing partner.
Documenting the American South
Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes sixteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.
EuroDocs: Online Sources for European History
One of the best places to start for all time periods of European history. Extensive collection of primary sources and links to other sites. Browse by broad era (prehistory/ancient, medieval/renaissance, modern) or by country.
Europeana
Provides access to digital collections from archives, museums, and special collections across Europe. Also includes a rotating gallery and digital exhibitions.
Hanover Historical Texts Collection
Presents texts from ancient to modern times. Material touches on the Crusaders, Italian Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, French Revolution, and many other topics.
Internet History Sourcebooks Project
The Internet History Sourcebooks are collections of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts. Topics include Ancient, Medieval and Modern histories. Also presents material grouped by subject: Africa, East Asia, Global, Indian, Islamic, Jewish, Lesbian/Gay, Science and Women's history.
Library of Congress Digital Collections: South Carolina
The state resource guide for digital collections at the library of congress with South Carolina-specific content.
Lowcountry Digital Library
Digitized collections of local area repositories. Some collections of interest to those researching African American history.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
A living database with new materials added every day, featuring prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more from the holdings of the New York Public Library
Online Library of Liberty
Full texts of almost 1500 classic works on art, economics, history, law, literature, music, philosophy, political theory, religion, science, sociology, war and peace.
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg offers over 50,000 free ebooks: choose among free epub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online. We carry high quality ebooks: Our ebooks were previously published by bona fide publishers. We digitized and diligently proofread them with the help of thousands of volunteers.
Smithsonian Open Access
Smithsonian Open Access provides images of nearly three million objects in their collections, all of which are free to use. This includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.
Umbra Search African American History
Umbrasearch.org brings together hundreds of thousands digitized materials from over 1,000 libraries and archives across the country.
World Digital Library
Large, well-organized collection of print and visual primary sources from ancient to current times. Material may be browsed by place, time, topic, type of resource, or contributing institution. Operated by the Library of Congress.
National Archives: Research Records
Explore photographs, textual, and other records related to American government and history.
DocsTeach
The online tool for teaching with documents from the National Archives

Accessing the Lowcountry Digital Library

Lowcountry Digital Library
Use the Lowcountry Digital Library (LCDL) to access digital collections and projects that support research about the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and historically interconnected sites in the Atlantic World.
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LCDL is committed to a multifaceted approach that incorporates historical and anthropological scholarship, oral history, integrative archival practices, digital librarianship, and spatial, temporal, and environmental information. Together with its institutional partners, LCDL helps students, scholars, and a wide range of public audiences develop a better understanding of the history and culture of the South Carolina Lowcountry relative to the nation and the world.

Use the search bar at the top of the screen to narrow down search results. The collections are searchable by subject, title, page content, title, or simple search. Don't forget to properly cite each source and pay attention to which institution it belongs to.

Lowcountry Digital History Initiative

Lowcountry Digital History Initiative (LDHI)
LDHI is a digital public history project hosted by the Lowcountry Digital Library (LCDL) at the College of Charleston. LDHI launched in 2014 as a digital consultation service, scholarly editorial resource, and online platform for partner institutions and collaborative scholars to translate multi-institutional archival materials, historic landscape features and structures, and scholarly research into digital public history exhibition projects

Spotlight: South Carolina Digital Library

South Carolina Digital Library (SCDL)
The South Carolina Digital Library provides free access to historic materials, such as photographs, manuscripts, journals, books, oral histories, objects, etc. illustrating the history and culture of South Carolina from over 40 cultural heritage institutions across the state. Over 200,000 items have been added so far.