"A New Nation Votes is a searchable collection of election returns from the earliest years of American democracy. The data were compiled by Philip Lampi. The American Antiquarian Society and Tufts University Digital Collections and Archives have mounted it online for you with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities."
No search for primary-source materials is complete without a visit to American Memory, Library of Congress. This vast collection can be keyword searched or browsed by topic, time period, or media types that include manuscripts, maps, motion pictures, photos, video recordings, and more.
Highly Recommended
NARA provides one of the richest repositories for U.S. history, but only a relatively small portion of the collection is available online. Begin on NARA's Research page, which includes access to the [National] Archives Library Information Center (ALIC).
National Archives Experience: Digital Vaults contains 1,200 documents, photographs, drawings, maps, and other materials drawn from the vast holdings of the National Archives and covering all periods of U.S. history to about 2004.
"Making of America (MOA) is a digital library of primary sources in American social history primarily from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology" (University of Michigan).
Making of America Journals - Over 50,000 journal articles currently available.
"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 DocSouth includes ten thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs" (University of North Carolina).
The following database provides electronic reproductions of full-text primary-source documents including maps, letters, diaries, oral histories, memoirs and other personal narratives.
"In 1965, Robert Penn Warren wrote a book, now out of print, entitled Who Speaks for the Negro? To research this publication, he traveled the country and spoke with a variety of people who were involved in the Civil Rights Movement. He spoke with nationally-known figures as well as people working in the trenches of the Movement. The volume contains many of the transcripts from these conversations. The Who Speaks for the Negro? Archive [from Vanderbilt University Libraries] contains digitized versions of the original reel-to-reel recordings, as well as copies of the correspondence, transcripts, and other printed materials related to his research for the provocatively-titled book."
Visual materials such as drawings and paintings, still photographs and videos constitute an invaluable record of the past. The following Temple-only databases provide access to millions of such documents.
