Primary Sources: Websites

A large and growing directory of links to historical documents on the web, organized chronologically. Maintained by by George Laughead Jr., manager of the World Wide Web Virtual Library for United States History. (NOTE: It appears that this resource is not actively updated.)

A project of the Library of Congress, Chronicling America contains many newspapers printed from 1789-1925 in digital format for online viewing.

A guide to government documents and publications useful for primary source research. Arranged by decade.

Digital collections from the LOC covering a range of American history topics.

"NARA is an independent Federal agency that helps preserve U.S. history by overseeing the management of all Federal records." NARA is currently undertaking a number of major digitization projects, including the Archival Research Catalog (ARC), an online searchable database containing information about some of NARA's holdings across the country. NARA has already digitized copies of its most popular and significant manuscripts, photographs, sound recordings, maps, drawings and other documents. Approximately 124,000 digital copies are available for researchers to view online through ARC, and the items can be searched by title, subject, or other keywords.

Explore 861,599 items digitized from The New York Public Library's collections.
This site is a living database with new materials added every day, featuring prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more.

Annual reports that present detailed vital statistics data, including natality, mortality, marriage and divorce.