14 free online resources for primary source documents.
The national archives is a source of primary source documents. They have 14 free resources for students and teachers.
Primary sources are materials that were produced firsthand during a certain time period and have never been edited or distorted in any way. These resources are multimodal and available in a variety of formats. They may be artifacts, papers, photos, videos, articles, maps, and so forth. Primary materials are now available to everyone with an internet connection, thanks to the globalization of information and the widespread use of digital media. The quest for these items, however, is similar to a scavenger hunt, which emphasizes the value of keeping a handy list like the one below on hand for rainy days.
I’ve spent many hours searching the internet and have finally come up with this list. I’ve also came across a few other collections of primary materials collected by other instructors, but Edutopia’s list stands out the most to me.
Whether you teach social studies, history, literature, geography, or any other subject where original and primary source materials are required, the list below will serve as an excellent beginning point for locating and compiling primary sources.
1- The United States Library of Congress
The Library of Congress provides classroom resources and professional development to help instructors utilize primary sources from the Library’s extensive digital holdings successfully in their classrooms. Find lesson plans and more from the Library of Congress that satisfy Common Core requirements, state content standards, and national organization standards. 2- Nexus of Primary Sources
PSN is supported by a grant from the Library of Congress, and it offers no-cost teacher professional development to assist K-12 educators deliver high-quality classroom teaching by using the millions of digitized primary materials accessible at www.loc.gov.
3- The United States of America in Class
This website provides topically categorized collections of primary materials that are consistent with the Common Core State Standards – historical documents, literary texts, and works of art — as well as comments and discussion questions.
4- Documenting America
Use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to discover information on American newspapers produced between 1690 to the present, or search America’s historic newspaper pages from 1836 to 1922. The National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress collaborate on Chronicling America.
5-Doctors Educate
Docs Teach offers tens of thousands of original source documents throughout American history. from the billions kept at the National Archives, to bring the past to life as classroom teaching materials In our ever-growing collection that covers the course of American history, use the search box to discover textual documents, pictures, maps, charts, graphs, audio, and video.
6- Online Archive The Wilson Center is a non-profit organization that
The Digital Archive includes formerly classified papers from governments across the world, allowing researchers to discover new sources and get new perspectives on the history of international relations and diplomacy. The Avalon Project is number seven.
Yale University’s Avalon Project has a large collection of original source papers and materials on a variety of topics, including law, history, and diplomacy.
Persus Digital Library is number eight on the list.
Another excellent source for original source materials is the Persus Digital Library. Under the “collections and text” page, you may search through hundreds of digitally preserved materials.
9- Archive of Life Photographs
Life Photo Archive is an excellent place to look for millions of photos from from the 1750s to the present day. The majority were never published and are now accessible for the first time because to LIFE and Google’s collaboration. To search just the LIFE picture archive, use “source:life” into any Google image search. Consider the following scenario: life source:computer
Documents with 10 Milestones
Teachers may access a growing collection of original materials at Milestone Documents. You’ll discover resources from almost every era and place, as well as instructional assistance created by instructors for teachers. The Internet History Sourcebook Project is number eleven.
The Internet History Sourcebooks Project is a collection of neatly presented public domain and copy-permitted historical writings for educational use (no advertising or unnecessary formatting).
12-Euro Documents
This webpage contains European history resources for our European peers. It includes a variety of transcripts, facsimiles, and translations from various historical eras.
13- The Importance of History
History Matters is a website for high school and college instructors and students that provides as a portal to online resources as well as other teaching materials for US history. 14 – Digital Library of the World
The Globe Digital Library (WDL) makes important primary resources from nations and cultures across the world freely and in multilingual format accessible on the Internet.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an example of a primary source document?
A primary source document is a piece of written work that was created by the subject of the document.
Where can I find free primary sources?
You can find primary sources on the internet.
What are valuable primary source documents?
Primary source documents are any original writings, speeches, or other material created by someone at the time of an event. These are considered to be some of the most reliable sources for historical information on a particular topic because they are what people were thinking and doing at the time.
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