Research Guides: Primary Sources: Find Digitized Sources

Digital Repositories

The repositories below allow access to lots of primary materials that have been digitized. Remember many of the digital materials available within these repositories are secondary sources. Make sure to check that the materials in use are considered primary sources within the area research is being conducted in.

ARTstor This link opens in a new window
Millions of high-quality images and media. Also includes scholarly journals and book chapters. This database is an excellent resource for finding images of various paintings and other arts, such as textiles and costumes.

The Bancroft Library
The Bancroft digital collection features a diversity of materiel. These sources ranges from resources on Rock Art to the Japanese Internment Camps. Use the right hand column to navigate to the necessary collection.
Beinecke Library Digital Collection
The Bancroft digital collection features a diversity of materiel. These sources ranges from resources on Rock Art to the Japanese Internment Camps. Use the right hand column to navigate to the necessary collection.
British Library
Click on the "Discover" tab to explore the digitized sources. Digitized primary sources include the Gutenberg Bible, Caxton’s Chaucer and the Magna Carta for example. The collection is constantly expanding
Documenting the American South
Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently includes thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.
New York State Library Digital Images Collection
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The Digital Collections provide a gateway to a variety of rich primary source materials held by the State Archives, State Library, and State Museum. Through the collection, you can access photographs, textual materials, artifacts, government documents, manuscripts, and other materials.In addition, some of these resources have been developed as part of special projects or initiatives, thereby bringing together rich resources around a topical theme.
Ohio Memory Project
Ohio Memory is a collaborative digital library project of the Ohio Historical Society and the State Library of Ohio, which includes collections from more than 354 cultural heritage institutions from all of Ohio’s 88 counties.

Digitized Literature and Literature Materials

Folger's Shakespeare Library
The Folger's Digital Image Collection offers online access to over 40,000 images from the Folger Shakespeare Library collection, including books, theater memorabilia, manuscripts, art, and more. Some of the more exciting images are of original First Folios and 19th century pictures of Shakespeare plays.
Jane Austen's Fiction Manuscripts
The Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts Digital Edition gathers together in the virtual space of the web some 1100 pages of fiction written in Jane Austen’s own hand. Through digital reunification, it is now possible to access, read, and compare high quality images of original manuscripts whose material forms are scattered around the world in libraries and private collections.