tips for finding Library primary sources
Congress.gov is the official website for U.S. federal legislative information and is developed and maintained by the Library of Congress using data originated and owned by the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. The site provides access to accurate, timely, and complete legislative information for Members of Congress, legislative agencies, and…
Colonial Settlement1600s – 1763 The American Revolution 1763 – 83 The New Nation1783-1815 National Expansion & Reform1815-80 Civil War & Reconstruction1861-77 Rise of Industrial America1876-1900 Progressive Era to New Era1900-29 Great Depression & WW II1929-45 The Post War United States1945-68 Congressional Documents1774-1873 U.S. History by Time Period primary source sets
Chronicling America, a searchable database of U.S. historical newspapers, includes close to 100 Spanish-language newspapers from several states and Puerto Rico that span the years from 1836-1963. You can use the previous link to browse through the list of papers or use this map view of Spanish-language papers. When you click on a newspaper title…
The Newspaper Navigator is an app that provides a way to search and browse visual content—photos, illustrations, maps, comics, editorial cartoons, headlines and advertisements—from Chronicling America between the years of 1900-1963. When using the search function, you are first searching headlines and captions related to the visual content. Type your search term(s) into the…
Did you know that poetry was a common feature in U.S. historical newspapers? Search the Chronicling America archives, which features newspapers from 1770 to 1963, for your favorite poets. Get more searching tips from a reference librarian in this Teaching with the Library post. Related resources
OVERVIEW The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) is a collaboration between the Library of Congress and WGBH Educational Foundation. It was founded in 2013 “to coordinate a national effort to identify, preserve, and make accessible as much as possible the historical record of publicly funded broadcasting in the U.S.” It now features contributors from…
From the Library of Congress Veterans History Project Research Guide: The Veterans History Project (VHP) of the Library of Congress American Folklife Center collects, preserves, and makes accessible the firsthand narratives of United States military veterans from World War I through the present. In addition to unedited audio- and video-recorded oral history interviews, VHP accepts memoirs and collections of…
Postcards: Greetings from the Prints & Photographs Division Research Guide Africana Historic Postcard Collection U.S. postcards variety pack Russian postcards Cuban postcards Palestine postcards Postcards to the Wright Brothers Library blog posts & articles Learning resources
The Teachers section of the Library of Congress website is chock full of ready-made classroom materials, free professional development and many more resources for educators. Below we describe the resources and provide links to get you what you need quickly. Teaching with Primary Sources Partner Program grantees, who comprise the TPS Consortium, deliver TPS professional…
Story Maps are immersive web applications that tell the incredible stories of the Library’s collections through narrative, multimedia, and interactive maps. The story maps are created within a Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-based software platform created by Esri. Story Maps are chock full of primary sources, including photographs, illustrations, texts, newspaper articles, and even maps. “I find story…
There are close to 800 Library of Congress Research Guides to the Library’s general collections of books and periodicals, as well as general subject guides prepared by reference librarians. You can browse or search the guides by subject (default), research center, or alphabetical list. Individual guides are included in curated primary source sets on the…
You’ll find nearly 100 primary source sets with Teacher Guides in the Teacher’s section of LOC.gov. Each set contains a carefully curated selection of diverse primary sources accompanied by information for teachers on how to use the set and help students analyze the sources within it. As you can see from the image above, there…