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History Day Research @ the MNHS Library: Step 2: Online Primary Sources

A step-by-step guide for student researchers

Online Sources: Minnesota

Newspapers:

Photographs:

  • Collections Online: Lots of images and photos of artifacts from our collections - currently only available onsite at the Gale Family Library
  • Minnesota Reflections: Images and documents relating to Minnesota’s history, collected from over 150 MN cultural heritage organizations
  • Images as Primary Sources: Strengths/weaknesses of photos as evidence, reading photos, and citing photos

Oral Histories:

  • Voices of Minnesota: 1300 interviews from the Society's Oral History collection, including streaming audio & video and written transcripts accessible online in digital formats.

Online Sources: National and International

  • American Memory Project (Library of Congress): A source for primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States. The site offers more than 7 million digital items from more than 100 historical collections.

  • Chronicling America (Library of Congress): A digital collection of historic American newspapers from 23 states, dating from 1860-1922.  A number of Minnesota newspapers are included.   

  • DocsTeach documents (National Archives): Documents from 1754 to the present, sorted by era and document type.  

  • Internet History Sourcebooks Project (Fordham University): Historical texts from around the world broken down by timeframe and region.  Sources range from Ancient Greek texts to modern American history.  

Useful Terms

Primary Source - Materials from the time of the person or event being researched.  (Letters, diaries artifacts, photographs, and other types of first-hand accounts and records, as well as reminiscences and oral histories. Stories from newspapers of the time may also be primary sources.)

Secondary Source - Materials that were created at a later time.  They analyze and interpret primary sources; footnotes or bibliographies can lead to primary sources.

Still confused about Primary vs. Secondary Sources?  Check out our short video tutorial!

Online Primary Sources Links

MNHS Reference Staff

reading room bookshelves

 

Gale Family Library
Minnesota Historical Society Library

Located on the Second Floor of the Minnesota History Center
345 West Kellogg Blvd.
St. Paul, MN 55102

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Sunday to Wednesday: Closed
 

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Gale Family Library • Minnesota Historical Society • 345 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul, MN 55102-1906 • 651-259-3300
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