Research Guides: Writing 101: Writing American Citizenship: Primary Source Databases

Multi-format primary source databases

Archive of Americana
Historical collections that contain books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, government documents and ephemera printed in America over centuries.

Archive.org
A collection of digitized books. Books published from 1800 to 1923 are fully keyword-searchable and can be viewed and downloaded in a variety of formats.

Digital Public Library of America
Contains materials from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions across the United States.
Documenting the American South
A collection of primary sources on Southern history, culture, and literature from the colonial period through the early twentieth century. Includes diaries, first-person narratives, literary works, photographs, and other materials.
Gale Primary Sources
Search across all Gale primary source collections.
Includes:
• 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection
• 19th Century UK Periodicals
• American Fiction, 1774-1920
• Archives Unbound
• Archives of Sexuality & Gender
• Associated Press Collections Online
• Brazilian and Portuguese History and Culture
• British Library Newspapers
• China from Empire to Republic
• Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture 1790-1920
• Daily Mail Historical Archive, 1896-2004
• Eighteenth Century Collections Online
• Indigenous Peoples: North America
• Liberty Magazine Historical Archive, 1924-1950
• Nineteenth Century Collections Online
• Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers
• Picture Post Historical Archive, 1938-1957
• Punch Historical Archive, 1841-1992
• Sabin Americana, 1500-1926
• Smithsonian Collections Online
• The Economist Historical Archive, 1843-2012
• The Financial Times Historical Archive, 1888-2010
• The Illustrated London News Historical Archive, 1842-2003
• The Independent Digital Archive, 1986-2012
• The Listener Historical Archive 1929-1991
• The Making of Modern Law: Foreign Primary Sources
• The Making of Modern Law: Foreign, Comparative and International Law, 1600-1926
• The Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926
• The Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources
• The Making of Modern Law: Trials, 1600-1926
• The Making of the Modern World
• The Sunday Times Digital Archive, 1822-2006
• The Telegraph Historical Archive, 1855-2000
• The Times Digital Archive, 1822-2021
• Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive, 1902-2019
• U.S. Declassified Documents Online

HathiTrust DIgital Library
A collection of freely available digitized books from academic and research institutions. Be sure that "Full View Only" is checked before you search for a book.

Library of Congress Digital Collections
A rich collection of primary sources related to U.S. history and culture; materials are drawn from the Library of Congress and other research libraries.
This collection is public domain and are not protected by copyright.
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice
From a largely colonial and thus Western and Eurocentric perspective, the material included focuses on the varieties of slavery, the legacies of slavery, the social justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery in the twentieth century.
Note: This collection is owned in perpetuity by Davidson College.
Manuscript Women's Letters & Diaries from the American Antiquarian Society
Digital facsimiles of manuscript letters and diaries written by American women from New England families.
Indigenous Peoples: North America
Gain insight into the cultural, political, and social history of Native Peoples from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.
Indigenous Histories and Cultures in North America
Includes manuscripts, artwork and rare printed books dating from early European colonization up to photographs and Indigenous newspapers from the mid-twentieth century.

Note: This collection is owned in perpetuity by Davidson College.

Government and Legal Documents

American State Papers
(1789-1838) Digital facsimiles of early American Congressional and Executive Department documents.
This collection is part of the Archive of Americana.
Making of Modern Law: U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs, 1832-1978
(1832-1978) Digital facsimiles of over 350,000 official Court filings; covers 150,000 Supreme Court cases. Documents include briefs, petitions, transcripts, and more. Drawn from the collections of the Jenkins Memorial Law Library in Philadelphia and the Library of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.
Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources
Includes published records of the American colonies, documents published by state constitutional conventions, state and territorial codes, municipal codes, city charters, law dictionaries, digests, and more.
Davidson College has access to:
Part I, 1620-1926
Part II, 1763-1979
ProQuest Congressional
As the official record of the proceedings, debates, and activities of Congress, the Record is a substantially verbatim account of all discussion occurring on the floor of Congress.
Includes the full text of:
- The Congressional Record(1789 to present)
- Congressional Hearings (1824 to present), both published and unpublished
- Committee reports (1990 to present)
- Congressional Research Digital Collection (1830 to present), which contains over 26,000 committee prints and over 32,000 Congressional Research Service reports (1916 to present)
- House & Senate documents (1995 to present)
- Bills and resolutions, including profiles and tracking (1789 to present)
- Public laws (1988 to present)
- U.S. Code
- Code of Federal Regulations (1981 to present)
- Federal Register (1980 to present)
- Biographical information & voting records (1988 to present)
- Roll Call (1989 to present)
- Executive Orders and Presidential Proclamations 1789-Present
Only available to Davidson College faculty, staff, and students.

Newspapers and magazines

African American Newspapers, Series 1 and 2
Provides online access to U.S. newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African-American experience.
Part of the America’s Historical Newspapers collection.
America's Historical Newspapers
Database of newspapers including African American Newspapers (1827-1998), Caribbean Newspapers (1718-1876), Early American Newspapers (1690-1922), Hispanic American Newspapers (1808-1980).
Part of the Archive of Americana.
Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980
Includes many newspapers published bilingually in Spanish and English, including many long scattered and forgotten titles published in the 19th century.
This collection is based on the “Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project” directed by Professor Nicolás Kanellos at the University of Houston. It is a subset of America's Historical Newspapers and part of the Archive of Americana.
Historic North Carolina Newspapers on DigitalNC
Newspapers on DigitalNC date from the earliest known published newspaper in North Carolina. Coverage differs from the Historic North Carolina Digital Newspaper Collection.
Historical Newspapers
Includes full-text coverage of US newspapers listed below, with the earliest starting in the late 19th century and many continuing through the 20th century.
Davidson has purchased perpetual access to:
The Atlanta Constitution (1868-1945)
Atlanta Daily World (1931-2010)
The Baltimore Afro-American (1893-1988)
Chicago Defender (1909-2010)
Chinese Newspapers Collection (1832 - 1953)
Cleveland Call and Post (1934-1991)
Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005)
New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993)
The New York Times with Index (1851-2020)
Norfolk Journal and Guide (1916-2010)
Philadelphia Tribune (1912-2001)
Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2002)
The Wall Street Journal (1889-2013)
The Washington Post (1877-2008)
Independent Voices
Independent Voices comprises selections from alternative press collections of respected academic institutions across the country.
Davidson College Library is a funding library for Reveal Digital, Independent Voices.
Life Magazine Archive 1936-2000
The Life Magazine Archive consists of cover to cover processing dating back to issue number one in 1936 of the American variety magazine Life, published by Time Inc.
Time Magazine Archive 1923-2000
The Time Magazine Archive consists of cover to cover processing dating back to issue number one in 1923 of the American popular magazine Time, published by Time Inc. It includes full page images, with searchable text and indexing of all content (including advertisements).
Women's Magazine Archive
Additional Titles Added in 2024. Issues are scanned in high-resolution color and feature detailed article-level indexing.

Access to:
Better Homes and Gardens (1922-2005)
Chatelaine (1928-2005)
Cosmopolitan (1886-2005)
Essence (1970-2005)
Good Housekeeping (1885-2005)
Ladies' Home Journal (1885-2005)
Parents (1926-2005)
Redbook (1903-2005)
Seventeen (1944-2005)
Town and Country (1846-2005)
Women's Day (1937-2005)
Women's International Network news (1975-2003)