Using Primary Sources in the Classroom: Sources by
Media Type

Browse through more than 1,200 records drawn from more than 10 billion photographs, documents, maps and film clips in the holdings of the National Archives. Find unexpected connections among records and store them in your personal collection. Create your own games, posters, and movies.

DocsTeach combines primary source content with the latest interactive capabilities of the Internet.
Not only does the site invite educators to explore thousands of documents in a variety of media—items such as George Washington’s draft of the Constitution, the cancelled check for Alaska, and President Richard Nixon’s resignation letter—but it also allows teachers to combine these materials using tools to create engaging activities that students can access online.

"Footnote helps you find and share historic documents. We are able to bring you many never-before-seen historic documents through our unique partnerships with The National Archives, the Library of Congress and other institutions." The site has over 72 million items digitized and arranged into collections like the Civil War, Holocaust, and Black History.

"The Gilder Lehrman Collection, on deposit at the New-York Historical Society, contains more than 60,000 documents detailing the political and social history of the United States. The collection's holdings include manuscript letters, diaries, maps, photographs, printed books and pamphlets ranging from 1493 through modern times."

A collection of exhibits highlighting the variety of documents held at the National Archives from the Charters of Freedom, When Nixon Met Elvis, and many more.

This website explores 100 milestone documents of American history. The site provides historical context about each document, fully downloadable documents with transcripts, and tools for educators.

Provides unified online access to Texas' historical documents and images for use by teachers, students, historians, genealogists, and other researchers. The site makes accessible special collections of history and culture held by libraries, archives, museums, historical societies, and other institutions in Texas. You can search for specific items or browse and find items that meet your interest.

The Atlas features nearly 300,000 site records, including data on Official Texas Historical Markers and National Register of Historic Places properties in Texas. Also included are courthouses, museums, and sawmills across the state. You can search by Historic Designation, Keyword, County, Address, or Site Name to get instant access to detailed textual descriptions, historic photographs, and interactive maps to help you discover what makes Texas and your areas of interest unique.

The Portal offers students and lifelong learners online access to some of the rich collections held in Texas libraries, museums, archives, historical societies, and private collections.

"Our goal is to showcase digital collections of materials documenting the history of the University of Houston, City of Houston, and State of Texas, as well as other historically and culturally significant materials related to the University’s teaching and research mission.

The digital collections currently available for display are composed of unique images drawn from the collections of the University of Houston Libraries."

Thousands of images from American and Canadian advertising.

"Take your students to nineteenth-century Texas, Antarctica, the American West, and more without leaving your classroom! Visit the Carter’s online teaching resources for images, information on artworks and artists, discussion questions, and classroom activities for all grade levels tied to state and national standards."

"Interdisciplinary lessons that reference TEKS and primary source materials are available on our resources page. Also, you will find recommended readings listed to enhance study of the American West."

"Census of Population and Housing data present here ranges from our most recent census to the historical decennial census conducted throughout the decades. Some of the data were scanned as an effort to make historical census information available to the public. The display of data will continue as historical census records become available. For access to volumes not available through this project, please call your local Federal Depository Library."

"What can you do on this site?
Examine state and county topics for individual census years.
examine multiple topics within a census year
produce tables of data by state or county
sort data by selected categories
create ratios between any two data categories"

This site features historic maps of Texas and the Southwest, dating from the 1500s through the 1900s. Many maps have a TEKS-aligned lesson plan accompanying it.

Focuses primarily on cartography of the Americas from the 18th and 19th centuries, but also has maps of the World, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania.

Your one stop for federal, state, and local geographic data.

The focus of Map Collections is Americana and Cartographic Treasures of the Library of Congress. These images were created from maps and atlases and, in general, are restricted to items that are not covered by copyright protection.

"The OldMapsOnline Portal is an easy-to-use gateway to historical maps in libraries around the world. It allows the user to search for online digital historical maps across numerous different collections via a geographical search. Search by typing a place-name or by clicking in the map window, and narrow by date. The search results provide a direct link to the map image on the website of the host institution."

"The Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection (PCL 1.306) is a general collection of more than 250,000 maps covering all areas of the world. Many of the maps are included in our Library Catalog. More than 11,000 map images from our collection are also available online."

"The resources are culled from the University at Buffalo, digital collections from other institutions, and the Internet. The materials are organized into 14 thematic categories, such as Gazetteers, GIS Maps and Sites, and Satellite and Remote-Sensing Images. Visitors will note that each resource has a brief annotation along with a direct link to the resource."

"With approximately 35 million records dating back to 1720, including approximately 80,000 maps, sketches and plat maps, the present-day [GLO] Archives collection continues to serve as the repository for the history of Texas land."

"The Texas State Archives Map Collection contains original, photoreproduced, and compiled maps covering the period from the early seventeenth through the late twentieth centuries."

"A video instructional series on American history for college and high school classrooms and adult learners; 26 half-hour video programs, coordinated books, and Web site."

Website for the History Channel. Includes a section about using the History Channel in the classroom.

Sheet and band music of the Civil War era from the Library of Congress.

This site allows you to search and view newspaper pages from 1860-1922 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.

Founded in 1986, The Examiner is the most widely read African American weekly in the D/FW metroplex.

Covers 1885-1984. A unique digital image collection that is accessible by keyword and date searching. It documents major events in Texas, the United States, and the world. Classified and display advertising, photos and graphics are included.

The Library of Congress has digitized newspapers published by or dedicated to Indians of North America.

The Texas Digital Newspaper Program has digitized and preserved newspapers from over seventy Texas counties, ranging in date from 1829 to 2012. The map at this link http://tdnp.unt.edu/category/newspapers-online/ links to the TDNP newspapers available on the Portal To Texas History.

"Online researchers have access to more than 100 years of The Journal's accurate reporting, exclusive analysis, agenda setting, editorials, and controversial opinions. In addition to the printed stories, researchers also can study the charts, stock tables, graphics, and illustrations featured in the publication."

contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves.

Told through oral history interviews, memoirs, diaries, and correspondence, these heartfelt accounts make us laugh, cry and remember. These stories are not a formal history of war, but a treasure trove of individual feelings and personal recollections.

A three-year project to select, digitize and make available 500 oral history interviews gathered by the Southern Oral History Program (SOHP). These 500 are being selected from a collection of over 4,000 interviews, housed at the Southern Historical Collection, that cover a range of fascinating topics. This project is made possible by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The Tejano Voices Project focuses on seventy-seven oral history interviews with Tejano and Tejana leaders from across the state. These interviews were conducted in 1992-1999, and emphasize the personal stories and struggles of the interviewees.

Almost seven hours of recorded interviews that took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine Southern states. Twenty-three interviewees, born between 1823 and the early 1860s, discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, coercion of slaves, their families, and freedom. A podcast series from this collection is also available.

"Charles Weever Cushman, amateur photographer and Indiana University alumnus, bequeathed approximately 14,500 Kodachrome color slides to his alma mater. The photographs in this collection bridge a thirty-two year span from 1938 to 1969, during which time he extensively documented the United States as well as other countries."

Thousands of images, including early Soviet Russia, Cuba, China, and the American South.

Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.

The Prints & Photographs Division takes care of 14 million of the Library's pictures and features more than 1 million through online catalogs. Offering historical photo collections through Flickr is a welcome opportunity to share some of the Library of Congress' most popular images more widely.

The Los Angeles Public Library's History and Genealogy Department's Photo Collection emphasizes the history of Los Angeles, Southern California, and California. This Internet-accessible collection is one of the treasures of the Central Library. Search tip: Use a general search term (e.g., Mexican Americans) and browse through the results.

Selections from the Library's vast photographic holdings.

Provides free and open access to over 700,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more.

Unique in their scope and richness, the prints and photographs collections today number more than 14 million images. These include photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters, and architectural and engineering drawings. While international in scope, the collections are particularly rich in materials produced in, or documenting the history of, the United States and the lives, interests and achievements of the American people.

"This digital collection draws on materials held in Southern Methodist University's DeGolyer Library. The Library holds over 500,000 images that document the American West, borderlands, exploration, and the development of the Western railroads. This particular collection brings together over 540 digitized items, including postcards of cowgirls, Native Americans in Oklahoma, and lantern slides of Mexico and California."

"The collection documents the growth and development of Fort Worth, Tarrant County, and the North Texas region. The digital collection contains a subset of images representing the work of W. D. Smith Commercial Photography during the 1940s-1950s as well as some historic images from the 1800s. There are 184 items in this collection, each of which was digitized from its original photographic negative."

The Cartoon Drawings filing series offers more than 9,000 original drawings for editorial cartoons, caricatures, and comic strips spanning the late 1700s to the present, primarily from 1880 to 1980. The cartoons cover people and events throughout the world, but most of the images were intended for publication in American newspapers and magazines.

This assemblage of more than 500 prints made in America during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries encompasses several forms of political art. Most of the prints are from the division's PC/US series, which consists of individually cataloged political cartoons and caricatures.

Herbert L. Block (1909-2001), known to the world as Herblock, was one of the most influential political commentators and editorial cartoonists in American history. His long chronicle of major social and political events began to appear in newspapers in 1929, and he continued to document domestic and international events for 72 years.

In French. "Honoré Daumier is celebrated as one of the most trenchant social critics of the modern age. Through the use of the lithograph, he created works which offered commentary on the heady atmosphere of 19th century France. Brandeis University is the home of one of the major collections of his work in the United States, and this digital collection offers over 3,800 items from this trove."

"Currently, the collection has over 20,000 tracks available for online listening, and visitors should start by just using the "Browse" feature here. There's Jewish comedy ("Stories Our Jewish Mothers Forgot to Tell Us"), classical music, Jewish religious music, and much more. Also, users can perform a detailed search across the entire database." --Internet Scout Report

Showcases the work of prolific inventor Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931). Known as the "Wizard of Menlo Park," Edison patented 1,093 inventions, including the phonograph, the kinetograph (a motion picture camera), and the kinetoscope (a motion picture viewer). In addition to being a renowned inventor, Edison became a prominent manufacturer and businessman by selling his inventions. This site features 341 motion pictures, 81 sound recordings, photographs, original articles, and other related materi

"The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives."

"A video instructional series on American history for college and high school classrooms and adult learners; 26 half-hour video programs, coordinated books, and Web site."

Work, school, and leisure activities in the United States from 1894 to 1915 are featured in this presentation of 150 motion pictures, 88 of which are digitized for the first time (62 are also available in other American Memory presentations).

Extensive collection of videos relating to U.S. and world history.

Showcases the work of prolific inventor Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931). Known as the "Wizard of Menlo Park," Edison patented 1,093 inventions, including the phonograph, the kinetograph (a motion picture camera), and the kinetoscope (a motion picture viewer). In addition to being a renowned inventor, Edison became a prominent manufacturer and businessman by selling his inventions. This site features 341 motion pictures, 81 sound recordings, photographs, original articles, and other related materi

"The Texas Archive of the Moving Image (TAMI) celebrates the state's home movies, industrial films, television output, and regional cine-club product as well as Hollywood and internationally produced images of Texas. Valuable to state history, these films also serve an important collaborative role in the preservation and restoration of the larger motion picture heritage for the United States."

Time Frames regularly spotlights a photograph, map, or document drawn from a broad spectrum of subjects in our extensive collections of the history of Arlington, the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Texas, Mexico and the greater Southwest.