Digital Reality Check: Online Primary Sources

October is American Archives month. The website of the National Archives and Records Administration, our nation's record keeper, says that, of all the documents and materials created by the United States government in more than a hundred years, only about 3 percent are legally and historically important enough to be kept forever. NARA’s website is usually the number one resource recommended by librarians and course instructors to search for primary sources online. Its well-known collection of 100 Milestone Documents is now available in digital format, as are more than 2 million other digitized historical documents.

DocsTeach, a popular tool for teachers and students, offers thousands of primary sources organized by historical era, from the nation’s founding to the present: documents, letters, maps, charts, audio, and videos. Students can browse Special Topics and find textual and visual illustrations for research projects in history, science, or English. Immigration, one of the special topic pages, contains 560 files.​

The National Archives site is also a great source for genealogy and personal history research. Military service record requests can be submitted via NARA’s online eVetRecs system, and genealogy guides and tutorials are posted on the Research Your Ancestry page. On October 25^th, NARA will be hosting the annual Virtual Genealogy Fair, the biggest genealogy event of the year that will feature sessions on family history research and offer advice for all skill levels. The fair will be broadcast live on YouTube.

Digitized documents and the majority of images posted in DocsTeach and Special Topics & Tools are in the public domain and may be freely used for research or study, whether you want to look for family history, find proof of military service, or learn about historical events and people. When citing primary sources, credit the National Archives and Records Administration as the original source. 

Review by Svetlana Kondratenko, SWC Librarian