19th Century Newspapers & Magazines
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers This link opens in a new window
- Harper's Magazine ArchiveHarper's Magazine has been a popular American periodical since 1850. Selected articles are available full text at this web site.
Slavery & Anti-Slavery
- Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History Founded in 1994, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History is a nonprofit organization supporting the study and love of American history through a wide range of programs and resources for students, teachers, scholars, and history enthusiasts throughout the nation.
Civil War, Emancipation, & Reconstruction
- Library of Congress - Civil War & Reconstruction Includes documents, maps, timelines and classroom resources.
General 19th Century Digital Collections
- American MemoryProvides 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.
- Avalon ProjectThe Avalon Project will mount digital documents (Ancient to Modern/Present) relevant to the fields of law, history, economics, politics, diplomacy, and government.
- First Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 This compilation of printed texts documents the culture of the nineteenth-century American South from the viewpoint of Southerners; it includes diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives.
- National Park Service: GeologyThe National Park Service has organized all of the parks and their geological features on one Tour of Park Geology page. The Tour of Park Geology highlights fifteen geological features including fossils, caves, shorelines, and plate tectonics.
Finding Books
- Google Book Search This search tool can pull up some full text books, butt many of the results will just have excerpts and snippets.
- Hathi TrustHathiTrust Digital Library is a digital preservation repository and highly functional access platform. It provides long-term preservation and access services for public domain and in copyright content from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and in-house partner institution initiatives. Learn how to download ebooks to your device.
Advice on Searching for Published Primary Sources
You will get limited results if you try to search for "primary sources" in library databases since the Library of Congress does not use that subject heading. Try searching these subject headings instead:
sources
personal narratives
diaries
letters
documents
speeches
memoirs
You will get limited results searching for the word "autobiography" since the Library of Congress does not use that subject heading. Try searching for "biography" but then look to make sure that the author is also listed as a subject. That is your clue that the person is writing about him or herself, and that is a primary source.
Finding Scholarly Articles
History Research Help
Alan Witt (Geneseo's history librarian) is best reached by emailing him at witt@geneseo.edu. Ask for a research consultation, and he will work with you to set up a time that works for both of you, either in person or via Teams. He does have some limited offices hours from time to time, but email is the quickest way to get an appointment.
- Request a Research ConsultationIf you need help researching your topic, sign up for a one-on-one Research Consultation with a reference librarian who can help guide you through your research project.
