American Studies: Primary Sources

Primary Sources

This page contains a selective list of primary sources. For other lists see: Primary Sources subject guide, the Oxford and Local History guide the Government Documents guide or other subject guides.

American Periodicals
Full-text of American magazines published from 1741 into the 20th century. Database can be browsed by title, editor, or publisher, and searched using a sophisticated search menu.

The collection includes the first American magazines, early literary and cultural reviews, the first scholarly journals, and many popular magazines that continue to be published to this day, including Atlantic, Ladies'Home Journal, Vanity Fair, Puck, and Scientific American. This is a work-in-progress and is updated daily. For additional indexing use the 19th Century Index and Index to Early American Periodicals.
HarpWeek
Full-text page and article images of Harpers Weekly, an important 19th century political and social magazine. 1857-1871.

Early American Newspapers: Series 1-7
Full-text page and article images of selected American newspapers from roughly 1690-1922.

Alternative Press Index Archive
Subject index to over 700 alternative, radical and left periodicals, newspapers and magazines. The Alternative Press Index (API) was born with the New Left of the 1960's. It was launched in 1969 to provide access to the practices and theories of radical social change. Its central focus on the practice and theory of socialism, national liberation, labor, indigenous peoples, gays/lesbians, feminism, ecology, democracy, and anarchism.

Readers' Guide Retrospective
Oxford campus users only. Index only to popular magazines (primarily United States) in the 20th century. 1890-1982.

Library of Congress Digital Collections
Access to all of the Library of Congresses digital collections, including film, photographs, maps, newspapers, music, etc.
Internet Archive
Archival collections of texts, videos, websites, etc. that are out of copyright

Ancestry Library Edition
Index to many genealogical and public records for the United States, including census records, vital records, and other documents focusing on individuals.
HarpWeek
Full-text page and article images of Harpers Weekly, an important 19th century political and social magazine. 1857-1871.

Social Explorer
Use Social Explorer to visualize and interact with data, create maps, charts, reports and downloads. Explore the built-in data indicators related to demography, economy, health, politics, environment, crime and more. Easily add your own data for further impact. Access limited to 5 simultaneous users.

In addition to being a comprehensive data resource, Social Explorer also offers features and tools to meet the needs of both demography experts and novices. This interactive website includes the entire US census history from 1790 to 2010, the American Community Survey (ACS) from 2005 to 2012, the Religious Congregations and Membership Study (RCMS) from 1980 to 2010 (the most complete census available on religion in the US), InfoGroup data on religious congregations in the US for 2009 and 2010, and carbon emissions data for 2002 from the Vulcan Project.
Historical Statistics of the United States
Collected from governmental and non-governmental resources, this collection of data (also available in print) provides statistics on social, behavioral, humanistic, and natural sciences including history, economics, government, finance, sociology, demography, education, law, natural resources, climate, religion, international migration, trade and more

Ohio Memory
On this free website, you can explore digital content from over 390 cultural heritage institutions representing all 88 of Ohio’s counties covering a wide range of topics from prehistory to present day.

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps (OPLIN Interface)
Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps are large scale street plans produced by the Sanborn Fire Insurance company from 1867 to 1970. Sanborn maps show the outline of each building including the location of windows and doors together with street names, street and sidewalk widths, property boundaries, building use, and house and block numbers.

These maps are used by a wide range of researchers including local historians to locate and identify buildings and neighborhoods, urban historians to study the growth of towns and cities, and environmentalists concerned about impact of new developments.

David Rumsey Historical Maps
he collection focuses on rare 16th through 21st century maps of North and South America, as well as maps of the World, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. as well as atlases, globes, wall maps, school geographies, pocket maps,