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GEN: Great History Websites

General Purpose Guide

Milton Academic Integrity Pamphlet

General: Primary Sources

  • OpenTextbooks
    Free, digital history textbooks available in several areas such as environmental, local, general US history.
    Many Primary Source anthologies.
    • The American Yawp
      "A Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History Textbook" with primary sources organized by chapters.
  • Digital History Reader: US History
    Provides materials covering important themes and issues from the colonial era to the present. Click on the "evidence" link within each module to view primary source material.
  • Digital History
    Browse more than 600 annotated documents written by George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and many others dealing with American politics, diplomacy and social history.
  • Digital Public Library of America: primary source sets
    Wide range world history sources from ancient, medieval and modern time periods. The sets use letters, photographs, posters, oral histories, video clips, sheet music, and more.
  • Digital State Archives
    Access individual state archives. Includes (but not limited to) documents, photographs, videos, oral histories, music, deeds, artifacts, court records, slave emancipation records, newspapers, and military records.
  • Newspaper Navigator
    A tool for searching Chronicling America, the Library of Congress’s collection of 16 million newspaper pages.
  • Printed Ephemera: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera
    The collection includes proclamations, advertisements, blank forms, programs, election tickets, catalogs, clippings, timetables and menus. They capture the everyday activities of ordinary people who participated in the events of nation-building and experienced the growth of the nation from the American Revolution through the Industrial Revolution up to present day.

  • WHDH Local News from the 1960s
    Consists of some two million feet of film footage representing the entire WHDH library from 1961 until1972.
    It includes news coverage and special programming relating mainly to people, events, and scenes of the Boston area, including extensive coverage of school busing, local politics, peace demonstrations, fires, and gangland activities.