For US and state government documents, start with the resources on this guide.
Digital literary sources (novels, poetry databases, etc.) can be found here.
Visit the History guide "Digital Sources" page for more suggestions
Part of Nineteenth Century Index. Full-text of over 1,000 periodicals, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and other historically-significant periodicals.
A collection of sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century. The 1,165 books and manuscripts come primarily from its Southern holdings of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Click Menu and My Collections to see other collections of interest
The most comprehensive archive of social memory yet created, Social and Cultural History: Letters and Diaries Online allows students, scholars, and online researchers to experience the past through thousands of private writings and personal narratives. The resource is a unique forum that brings together the voices of ordinary men and women from all walks of life with the personal accounts of well-known historical figures. In their own words, people from diverse ethnic and social groups bring vividly to life hundreds of years of history through their perspectives on life, love, faith, politics, business, and countless personal events.--Publisher's website
More than 30,000 pages of text selected from a wide variety of sources, including some complete works. The full text can be searched by words and phrases, including subject terms, dates, characteristics of authors, etc.
Twentieth Century to present
Social media is a primary source too! Perhaps you want to search Twitter, TikTok, or YouTube.
ProQuest History Vault's coverage of the Black Freedom Struggle offers the opportunity to study the most well-known and also unheralded events of the Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century from the perspective of the men, women, and sometimes even children who waged one of the most inspiring social movements in American history. This category consists of the NAACP Papers and federal government records, organizational records, and personal papers regarding the Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century. The NAACP Papers collection consists of 6 modules. The NAACP Papers collections contains internal memos, legal briefings, and direct action summaries from national, legal, and branch offices throughout the country. It charts the NAACP's work and delivers a first-hand view into crucial issues. With a timeline that runs from 1909 to 1972, the NAACP Papers document the realities of segregation in the early 20th century to the triumphs of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and beyond.The Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century consists of four modules: two modules of Federal Government Records, and two modules of Organizational Records and Personal Papers, offering unique documentation and a variety of perspectives on the 20th century fight for freedom. Major collections in these modules include Civil Rights records from the Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush presidencies; the Martin Luther King FBI File and FBI Files on locations of major civil rights demonstrations like Montgomery and Selma, Alabama or St. Augustine, Florida; and the records of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
Provides online access to over 500,000 pages of previously classified government documents. Covering major international events from the Cold War to the Vietnam War and beyond. Page images are digitized; full text of documents can be searched.
This resource offers revolutionary access to one of the most important archives for the study of Social History in the modern era. Explore original manuscript and typescript papers created and collected by the Mass Observation organisation, as well as printed publications, photographs and interactive features.
The Vanderbilt Television News Archive is the world's most extensive and complete archive of television news. We have been recording, preserving and providing access to television news broadcasts of the national networks since August 5, 1968.
The collection spans the presidential administrations of Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The core collection includes evening news from ABC, CBS, and NBC (since 1968), an hour per day of CNN (since 1995) and Fox News (since 2004).
