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History Research Guide

A guide to help you navigate the many history resources in the IU Libraries

Many of the resources in the massive A-Z List of databases contain primary source content of interest to historians, but the size of the list makes it difficult to navigate. This section is divided into three sections to help you find what you're looking for.

  1. "Best Bets" (below): large collections of various types of primary sources, best suited for those who want to rely on search functions to find what they are looking for.
  2. US History: organized chronologically and topically, with resources on early American history, the long nineteenth century (c. 1780-1920), post-World War I, African Americans, women, and American Indians.
  3. Global History: organized geographically, with resources on Africa, East Asia, Eastern Europe/Russia, the Islamic World, Latin America and the Caribbean, South/Southeast Asia, and Western Europe.

Note that a separate page lists historical newspapers, periodicals, and newsmedia.

Note also that this section is all about digitized primary sources. IU is home to many physical collections, including those at the Lilly Library and University Archives. To find other physical collections, try ArchiveGrid.

For more detailed information about Adam Matthew Collections, see the following guide:

If you are new to primary source research, you may want to look at the following instructional toolkit.

Best Bets

Several of the links below are portals to dozens of other primary source databases.

For a list of non-IU websites with digitized primary sources, see the following guide and link:

For additional help, please contact me