Typically, a primary source is a document produced within the historical environment that is the main focus of your study.

It could be a literary work; a magazine or newspaper article; a letter, diary, or autobiography; an advertisement or  business contract; a prayer book, poster, pamphlet, playbill, etc. Many different kinds of primary sources can be searched and accessed through the resources below.

Resources marked with this symbol   are restricted to Columbia affiliates.

• Archive of Americana
  Comprehensive historical collections, containing books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, government documents and ephemera. Collections include: American broadsides and ephemera, seriesI; Early American imprints, series I: Evans, 1639-1800; Early American imprints, series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819;  America's historical newspapers; and government publications including American state papers, 1789-1838; and U.S. Congressional serial set, 1817-1980.
• Black Drama 1850 to Present
  A collection of Black drama from Africa, North America, the Caribbean, and other African Diaspora countries. Includes selected playbills, production photographs, and ephemera.
• British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries
  "Includes approximately 100,000 pages of published letters and diaries from individuals writing from 1500 to 1900, including several thousand pages of previously unpublished materials. Drawn from 290 sources, including journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings, much of the material is in copyright. Represented are all age groups and life stages, all ethnicities, many geographical regions, the famous and the not so famous."
• Early American Imprints, Series I. Evans (1639-1800)
  A full-text digitization of the microform set Early American Imprints, Series I (1639-1800), which was itself based on the American Bibliography of Charles Evans (14 vols., 1903-34, 1955-59). Upon completion, Evans Digital Edition will include more than 36,000 works published in America from 1639-1800. Covers a wide range of printed genres, including advertisements, ballads, broadsides, cookbooks, grammars, maps, memoirs, novels, prayer books, prospectuses, sermons, songs, textbooks, trade catalogues, and travel literature.
• Early American Imprints, Series II. Shaw-Shoemaker (1801-1819)
  Provides full-text access to 36,000 American books pamphlets, broadsides, and other print genres published 1801-1819. This is a full digitization of the microform set Early American Imprints, Series II, 1801-1819, which was itself based on the American Bibliography of Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker.
• Early English Books Online (EEBO)
  A digitized version of the Early English Books microfilm collection, this database contains full text page images of over 96,000 titles listed in Pollard and Redgrave's Short Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection. A subset of more than 6,000 EEBO titles is now searchable as keyed full text.
• Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership (EEBO TCP)
  A marked-up, full-text subset of texts from Early English Books Online, created by a consortium of academic libraries. While the full text is eventually added to the main Proquest EEBO database, at any given time this database is likely to contain slightly more of that material.
• Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)
  A comprehensive digital edition of The Eighteenth Century microfilm set, which has aimed to include every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas, between 1701 and 1800.
• Electronic Text Center: English Online Resources (University of Virginia)
  A searchable full text library containing thousands of English-language texts. Many manuscript, book, and newspaper illustrations are also included.
• India, Raj & Empire   (Adam Matthew Digital)
  Drawing upon the manuscript collections of the National Library of Scotland, this searchable online resource provides access to digital facsimiles of diaries and journals, official and private papers, letters, sketches, paintings and original Indian documents containing histories and literary works. The collection documents the relationship between Britain and India in an empire where the Scots played a central role as traders, generals, missionaries, viceroys, governor-generals and East India Company officials. The dates of the documents range from 1710 to 1937.
  
• Literary manuscripts : 17th and 18th century poetry from the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds  (Adam Matthew Publications)
  Complete facsimile images of 190 manuscripts of 17th and 18th century verse held in the celebrated Brotherton Collection at the University of Leeds. These manuscripts can be read and explored in conjunction with the BCMSV database, which includes first lines, last lines, attribution, author, title, date, length, verse form, content and bibliographic references for over 6,600 poems within the collection. Additional features include interactive essays, biographies, a palaeography section with transcriptions and alphabets, and a large selection of colour images demonstrating over 320 examples of 17th and 18th century English handwriting.
• Literature Online: The Home of English and American Literature on the World Wide Web (LION)
  A fully searchable library of more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama, and prose.
• London low life : street culture, social reform and the Victorian underworld  (Adam Matthew Digital)
  Full-text searchable resource, containing colour digital images of rare books, ephemera, maps and other materials relating to 19th and early 20th century London; designed for both teaching and study, from undergraduate to research students and beyond. Will be of interest to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including literature, cultural studies, urban studies, social history and the study of leisure and tourism. There is a strong emphasis on rare or unique material, particularly in the range of ephemera and street literature available.There is also an emphasis on visual material. The documents are drawn from the holdings of the Lilly Library, the rare books, manuscripts, and special collections library of the Indiana University Libraries, Bloomington.
  
• Making of America (University of Michigan)
  “A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The collection currently contains approximately 8,500 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints.”
• Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online
  A collection of digitized editions of texts concerning economic, political, legal, and ecclesiastical history, such as treasury accounts, chronicles, papal registers, etc. Most are from England, Ireland, and Scotland, although some are from Milan and the New World.
• Nineteenth Century collections online (NCCO) (Gale Cengage Learning)
  A multi-year global digitization and publishing program focusing on primary source collections of nineteenth century materials. Includes a wide variety of material types--monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, statistics, and more--in one cross-searchable location. Currently includes four components: Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange; British Politics and Society; British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture; and European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection. Further components will be released and added over coming years.
  
• Past Masters
  Provides fully searchable authoritative editions of philosophical, literary, scientific, personal, political, and theological writings by a wide range of British, American, and continental authors. Included among the British and American texts are: collected editions of the letters of Thomas Becket, Thomas Hobbes, Jane Austen, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens and many others; the journals of Frances Burney, John Henry Newman and others; the works of Aphra Behn, Robert Boyle, Charles Darwin, John Dewey, Eliza Haywood, John Locke, Charles Sanders Pierce, Mary Shelley, Herbert Spencer, Mary Wollstonecraft, and others.
• Perdita manuscripts : women writers, 1500-1700  (Adam Matthew Digital)
  Complete facsimile images of over 230 manuscripts written or compiled by women living in the British Isle during the 16th and 17th centuries. Contents include account books, advice, culinary writing, meditation, travel writing, and verse. Perdita manuscripts can be indexed by name, place, genre, and first lines of both poetry and prose.
  
• The Shakespeare Collection : featuring the Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
  Shakespeare Collection brings together general reference information, full-text scholarly periodicals (including Shakespeare Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, and Early Modern Literary Studies), reprinted criticism, primary source material, and the full-text annotated works from The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works.
• Victorian popular culture   (Adam Matthew Digital)
  An essential resource for the study of popular entertainment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Consists of four components: Spiritualism, Sensation and Magic; Circuses, Sideshows and Freaks;  Music Hall, Theatre and Popular Entertainment; and Moving Pictures, Optical Entertainments & the Advent of Cinema. Includes full-text, full-color reproductions of books, ephemera, handbills, pamphlets, photos, posters, programs, scripts, and other types of materials. Coverage is most extensive for Great Britain; but there is also a fair range of materials for the U.S.A.
  
• Women Writers Online
  More than two hundred full-text works in English, or in English translation, by women, covering a period from 1400 to 1850.
• Wright American Fiction 1851-1875 (Indiana University)
  A searchable full-text collection of 19th-century American fiction, as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography American Fiction 1851-1875.