Primary sources are materials that provide first-hand accounts or evidence of an event or condition being studied. They are often created by eyewitnesses or chroniclers at a particular time, or they may include memoirs or oral histories recorded later. Typical primary sources include letters, speeches, diaries, newspaper articles, oral history interviews, photographs, archives, and artifacts.
Secondary sources discuss or relate information originally presented elsewhere. Scholarly books and articles tend to be secondary sources.
Census Data and Statistics
Cultural collections including images and texts
Historic Textbooks and Related Materials
Internet Archive/ Wayback machine
The Internet Archive is a huge, free archive of public-domain materials including government records, books, and motion pictures. It includes the Wayback Machine that captures webpages from the 1990s to the present.
Legal Documents
Searchable collection of declassified (but often, redacted) records of FBI investigations.
Information about finding digital and print court records for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
A searchable collection of case documents for the U.S. Supreme Court.
Motion Pictures and Audio
The Library of Congress free archive of historic films including vintage documentaries and popular titles.
Colonial Americas
University-related collections
National Libraries
Living History Museums
WSU students can use local libraries by getting an ARC card at WSU Library's Circulation Desk.