Document Collections

General Digital Libraries

Instructions for using Google Advanced Search for finding primary sources.

HathiTrust Digital Library includes a searchable database of digitized books and periodicals contributed by numerous libraries. Includes items contributed by these libraries to Google Books and to Internet Archive but with some unique material. Each full text item is linked to a standard library catalog record, thus providing good metadata. The catalog can be searched separately. Globally full text searchable, like Google Books but unlike Internet Archive. Full text is fully viewable. Single page pdfs can be downloaded, but pdf downloads of a whole work are not currently available at Harvard.
There is now an Advanced Full Text search feature available in HathiTrust that allows a full text search of specified books or periodicals similar to that available in Google Books Advanced search. Described at: Advanced Search for HathiTrust full-text search.

Internet Archive also offers much digitized full text.

Digital Public Library of America offers textual, visual, and sound resources contributed by numerous libraries, archives, and museums.  Searches catalog records, not full text.

Digital Libraries by State

American Memory (Library of Congress)

Lists of Digital Collections

Finding Primary Sources on the Open Web

American Indian histories and cultures. [Manuscripts], 1524-1997 1770-1910 
Contains manuscript materials from the Edward E. Ayer Collection in the Newberry Library, Chicago. Includes correspondence, diaries, scrapbooks, travel journals, petitions, speeches, financial records, government records, tribe records and treaties. Military interactions from the early colonial period to the 19th century are particularly well represented through correspondence with heads of state and inter-army orders, reports and requests.
HOLLIS Record includes names represented

Major themes included

  • American Indians and the European Powers
  • American Indians and the US Government
  • Military Encounters: Conflicts, Rebellions and Alliances
  • Observation, Representation and Cultural Encounters
  • Indigenous Peoples of Mexico
  • First Nations of Canada
  • Missionaries and Education
  • Trade and Indian Economies
  • Civil Rights Movement

The Indian trade in the southeastern Spanish borderlands: papers of Panton, Leslie and Company (1763-1901)
--Panton, Leslie & Co. was a trading firm established in British East Florida during the American Revolution. It continued under the Spanish government established in 1783.

The Meriam Report on Indian Administration and the Survey of Conditions of the Indians in the U.S (1928-1943)
--Meriam Report of 1928 (titled The Problem of Indian Administration) surveyed conditions on Indian Reservations in 26 states
--Survey of Conditions of the Indians in the United States was a 41-part report to the US Senate

Native Northeast Portal.

ProQuest history vault. American Indians and the American West, 1809-1971 offers records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Major Council Meetings of American Indian Tribes, U.S. National Archives and the Chicago History Museum.

Indigenous Peoples: North America (17th-20th centuries) includes manuscript collections, rare books, newspapers, periodicals, census records, legal documents, maps, drawings and sketches, oral histories, photos and films.

Included subcollections listed here.

Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment (1534-1860) includes letters, diaries, memoirs, and accounts of early encounters between Native Americans, Europeans, Africans, and Americans in North America.

North American Indian Thought and Culture (1600-present) offers a fully Indexed collection of autobiographical, biographical, and oral history accounts covering most North American regions.

American Indians of the Pacific Northwest Collection offers photographs and documents about the Northwest Coast and Plateau Indian cultures,

Southeastern Native American Documents, 1730-1842

Mapping Indigenous Los Angeles "aims to uncover and highlight the multiple layers of indigenous Los Angeles through a storymapping project with youth, community leaders, and elders from indigenous communities throughout the city. "

The Columbia River Basin Ethnic History Archive  digital access to historical materials with a focus on ethnic groups whose stories were not always represented in previously published histories of the Columbia River Basin. The project includes digital collections, interpretative materials and lesson plans related to the topic of history of these ethnic groups. Many of these materials can illuminate intersections between the history of different ethnic groups and their experiences of health care, medicine, illness, etc. 

Simon Fraser University Digital Collections Indigenous Collections

Native Americans Petitions Database contains digitized copies of handwritten petitions from Native American groups or individuals, to Massachusetts government officials. 

The American West

Overland Journeys: Travels in the West, 1800-1880

The Native Americans reference collection: documents collected by the Office of Indian Affairs. 76 microfilm reels.
Tozzer | Microfilm | N.A.SOC. N 217.7
--Pt. 1. 1840-1900 -- pt. 2. 1901-1948.
Online Guide (Scroll down)

The Rupert Costo archive of the American Indian. 63 microfilm reels. (Native America, a primary record. Series one)
Microforms (Lamont) | Film A 1311.1
Microforms (Lamont) | INDEX Film A 1311.1 = guide
Online Guide (hit N)
--Reproduces correspondence, legal documents, newsletters, newspaper clippings, and other primary source materials produced and collected by Rupert and Jeannette Costo, dating between 1935 and 1980.

James R. Walker Collection on the Oglala Sioux. 4 microfilm reels + 1 guide. (Native America, a primary record. Series 4)
Tozzer  |  Microfilm TOZ-LC    |  E99.O3 N38 2008x
Online Guide (hit N)
--Reproduces correspondence, printed documents, clippings, and other primary source materials produced and collected by James R. Walker.