This is a guide of Political Science resources available to students and faculty at the University of Minnesota. Use the "Getting Started" page for new researchers, and the other pages for more advanced content.
Finding primary source materials in the Libraries catalog
Additional resources can be found by searching the University of Minnesota Libraries' Catalog. Enter the term "sources" as a subject keyword and the keywords for the country, event or topic (e.g. "france" "revolution" su="sources"). More information
Primary source databases
Below is a list of some primary source databases. For databases covering historical news, see Find News.
- AM Primary Sources for Teaching and ResearchAM (formerly Adam Matthew) publishes unique primary source collections from archives around the world. Collections span the social sciences and humanities and cover a multitude of topics ranging from Medieval family life and Victorian medicine to 1960s pop culture and global politics.
- Age of ExplorationExplore five centuries of journeys across the globe, scientific discoveries, the expansion of European colonialism, conflict over territories and trade routes, and decades-long search and rescue attempts in this multi-archive collection dedicated to the history of exploration.
- British Online ArchivesContains a wide range of materials related to British history from the early 1600s onward, including the colonization of America, India, Africa, the West Indies, New Zealand, Australia and Melanesia. The collection contains sources that relate to both politics and history, including colonial missionary records, slavery in the Americas, World War One, and shipping records. Primary sources include journals, correspondence, official records and personal papers.
- C19, the nineteenth century indexThe most comprehensive and dynamic source for discovering nineteenth-century books, journals, official documents, newspapers, and archives. Includes the Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals.
- Eighteenth Century Collections OnlineSearch books from the Enlightenment period in Great Britain between 1701 and 1800 with over 180,000 English-language titles and editions printed in the United Kingdom and the Americas. It includes books, pamphlets, essays, broadsides and more.
- Electronic EnlightenmentEdited correspondence among the greatest thinkers and writers of early 17th to mid-19th century in Europe, the Americas, and Asia with their families and friends, bankers and booksellers, patrons and publishers. Coverage includes letters and documents, document sources such as manuscripts and early printed editions, scholarly annotations, and links to biographies, dictionaries, encyclopedias, newspapers, and other online resources.
- EuroDocs: Online Sources for European HistoryLinks to European primary historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. Video, sound files, maps, photographs and other imagery, databases, and other documentation are also available.
- EuropeanaSingle access point to millions of artworks, artefacts, books, films and music from European museums, galleries, libraries and archives.
- European Sources OnlineFrom the Cardiff European Documentation Centre, European Sources Online (ESO) features primary and official sources, commentary and analyses, summaries and media reports, journal articles, blog posts, monographs and textbooks on matters related to Europe.
- HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new windowHathiTrust provides access to millions of books and other materials. Full text searching of most books is available and books in the public domain (generally older books) can be freely viewed and/or downloaded. Books still in copyright have more limited access. Users with print-reading disabilities can apply for special access to digitized works by emailing wilsref@umn.edu.
- Nineteenth Century Collections OnlineSearch primary source collections of the nineteenth century (1800s) with books, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, statistics, and more. Topics include British politics, theater and music; European literature, Asian exploration, photography, and more.
- Socialism on Film: The Cold War and International PropagandaThis collection of films from the communist world reveals war, history, current affairs, culture and society as seen through the socialist lens. It spans most of the twentieth century and covers countries such as the USSR, Vietnam, China, Korea, much of Eastern Europe, the GDR, Britain and Cuba.
- UMediaDiscover 161,819 images, maps, manuscripts, video, audio, and more. UMedia provides open access to digitized materials from across the University of Minnesota.
- Visual History ArchiveA fully streaming video collection of more than 55,000 primary source testimonies from the USC Shoah Foundation of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides, including the Armenian Genocide, the Cambodian Genocide, the Central African Republic Conflict, contemporary antisemitism, the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda, the Guatemalan Genocide, and the Nanjing Massacre. Note: only available remotely to UMN users. See Visual History Archive Online (version for non-UMN users).
- All Primary Source DatabasesList of all primary source databases available to University of Minnesota students, faculty, and staff.
Last Updated: Nov 14, 2024 4:00 PM
URL: https://libguides.umn.edu/political-science