Online Primary Source Digital Archives

In 2010, I attended a presentation by Dr. David Staley, Director of the Goldberg Center Links to an external site. and associate professor at the Ohio State University about historical thinking and research for the Voices of American Teaching American Grant Program.  During the talk, Dr. Staley was asked by one of the participants where he can find the right documents for the documents-based lesson they were creating for their classes.  His response was that the "right documents are the one's that help you answer the question that you are asking."  He followed up his answer with an explanation of how he has was doing research at the National Archives and one of the boxes he requested ended up being a was a box full of gasoline receipts.  He goes on to say that even though that those documents were not the right ones for his research, they may have been the perfect thing for another historian's investigation.  

There are several online primary source archives available for teachers, but sometimes the things we are looking for have not been digitized and are part of a collection at a local library or historical society museum.  

Please review the online primary source digital archives listed at the sites below, reflect on how they can be useful for you and your students, and please share additional online sources in your discussion post.

• OCSS Primary Source Digital Archives Links to an external site.
• Online Primary Source Collections Links to an external site.
• Primary Source Sets on the Web Links to an external site.

 

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The task of finding documents for your document-based lessons