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Primary & Secondary Sources

This guide will help you learn the difference between primary and secondary sources in various subject areas and provides resources for locating primary sources, both in the library and on the open web.

European History Resources

European History Primary Sources an index of scholarly websites that offer online access to digitised primary sources on the history of Europe. The websites listed on EHPS are not only meta-sources but also include invented archives and born digital sources. Each website that is listed in EHPS has a short description and is categorised according to country, language, period, subject and type of source.

Europeana Paintings, music, films and books from Europe's galleries, libraries, archives and museums.

Europa: Gateway to the European Union The official website of the European Union. A good starting point if you are looking for basic information on how the EU works, the latest EU news and events, links to EU information on the websites of EU institutions and agencies.

EGO: European History Online From the Institute of European History in Mainz, Germany. A free online resource that covers the "transcultural history of Europe on the Internet" over the past 500 years.

EuroDocs European primary historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. They shed light on key historical happenings within the respective countries and within the broadest sense of political, economic, social and cultural history.

Making the History of 1989:The Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe  A substantial collection of high quality primary sources, multimedia interviews and lesson plans.

The Victorian Web Site dedicated to all aspects of Victorian culture. Thousands of scholarly articles, primary texts, images and related material on Victorian literature, politics, science, technology and much more.

The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913 Fully searchable collection of the digitized images and electronic text of the proceedings of over 197,745 criminal trials held at the Old Bailey, London's Central Criminal Court. 

Studies in Scarlet: Marriage and Sexuality in the U.S. and U.K., 1815-1914 Digitized images of over 420 separately published trial narratives from the extensive collections of the Harvard Law School Library. Included are American, British and Irish cases from 1815-1914 involving child custody, bigamy and violent crime as it relates to sex and marriage.

British Printed Images to 1700 A digital library of prints and book illustrations from early modern Britain.

European Film Gateway The EFG Portal gives you quick access to hundreds of thousands of film historical documents as preserved in European film archives and cinémathèques: photos, posters, programmes, periodicals, censorship documents, rare feature and documentary films, newsreels and other materials. Targeted at scientific researchers and the interested public alike, the EFG offers a look at and behind the scenes of filmmaking in Europe from the early days until today.

Early Music Online The Early Music Online project has digitised 300 of the world’s earliest surviving volumes of printed music, using copies in the British Library, and has made these freely available online. Digitised version of about half of the British Library’s holdings of 16th-century anthologies of printed music, as listed in RISM B/I (Recueils imprimés XVI-XVII siécles). These volumes contain approximately 10,000 musical compositions, which have been individually indexed. The volumes mainly consist of partbooks of vocal polyphony, but also include some early printed tablatures for keyboard or plucked string instruments. They include music printed in Italy, Germany, France and England.

Gallica The digital library of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France. Includes texts from the Middle Ages to the 20th-century.

Charles Booth Online Archive Charles Booth and the survey into life and labour in London (1886-1903)