Primary sources provide first-hand accounts of an event or topic from people directly connected to them. They can be visual, material, archeological, or written, video or audio. The sections below focus on a selection of the written and visual primary sources available via the library website. For newspapers, please see the newspapers tab.
For audio and video primary sources, please see the radio and television tab.
The BAR Digital Collection is the world's largest academic archaeology online collection, giving access to eBooks from 1974-2019.
The Loeb Classical Library, founded by James Loeb in 1911, continues the historic mission of making all that is important in Greek and Latin literature available to readers and includes accurate, literate, English translations.
The authors in the Loeb Classical Library span fourteen centuries and every genre. Each work is classified by language, form, genre, subject, and date for ease of browsing and navigation
Access to medieval history documents within the books in the Medieval Sources series from Manchester University Press. The Medieval Portal provides links to other medieval material available on the Internet.
Historical sources from A.D. 300–800 translated into English. This collection contains 66 volumes that bring together a wealth of important early medieval texts in translation, with scholarship from leading academics.
British Periodicals provides access to the searchable full text of hundreds of periodicals from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth, comprising millions of high-resolution facsimile page images.
Colonial Caribbean covers the history of the various territories under British colonial governance from 1624 to 1870. This extensive resource includes administrative documentation, trade and shipping records, minutes of council meetings, as well as details of plantation life, colonial settlement, imperial rivalries across the region, and the growing concern about absentee landlords.
Early European Books traces the history of printing in Europe from its origins through to the close of the seventeenth century, offering full-colour, high-resolution facsimile images of rare and hard-to-access printed sources.
Following its first launch in 1998, EEBO now contains page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473–1700. More than 200 libraries worldwide have contributed to EEBO.
Access to the following collections of British parliamentary papers: 18th century (1688-1834), 19th century (1801-1900), 20th century (1901-2003/04 session) and Hansard (1803-2005).
Digital collection of British and Irish women's diaries and correspondence written during the period 1500 - 1950.
British Periodicals provides access to the searchable full text of hundreds of periodicals from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth, comprising millions of high-resolution facsimile page images.
Colonial Caribbean covers the history of the various territories under British colonial governance from 1624 to 1870. This extensive resource includes administrative documentation, trade and shipping records, minutes of council meetings, as well as details of plantation life, colonial settlement, imperial rivalries across the region, and the growing concern about absentee landlords.
Empire Online charts the story of the rise and fall of empires over five centuries from the explorations of Columbus, Captain Cook, and others, through to de-colonisation in the second half of the twentieth century.
Researchers can explore themes such as colonisation and decolonisation, missionaries, slavery, travel and travel Writing, religion, race, class and imperialism through a wealth of highly indexed manuscript and full text printed material.
Primary source material for the study of the Great War, from the "Personal Experiences" module.
Research tool which allows you to search across multiple collections of primary source documents (historical newspapers, manuscripts, rare monographs and archive collections).
Colour images from the Bodle Library's John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, offering unique insights into the changing nature of everyday life in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Original manuscript and typescript papers created and collected by the Mass Observation organisation between 1937 and the mid-1950s.
From 1800 to 1980, Migration to New Worlds charts the movement of people throughout the ‘Century of Immigration’, through the First and Second World Wars and into the modern era. It includes personal diaries, oral histories, letters, travel journals and scrapbooks which provide individual accounts of migration and settlement in North America and Australasia. Government papers, society correspondence, original maps, watercolours, engravings, objects, shipping papers and rare printed material offer significant context to these eye-witness experiences.
Access to the following collections of British parliamentary papers: 18th century (1688-1834), 19th century (1801-1900), 20th century (1901-2003/04 session) and Hansard (1803-2005).
Definitive collection of primary source materials about the contribution of women to the First World War in Europe.
Finding aid to Women's Studies resources in The National Archives, Kew, combined with original documents.
