InfoGuides: Teaching for Content Areas: Find Primary Sources (for Social Studies)

What are Primary Sources?

Primary sources are the original materials or evidence to be analyzed, evaluated, contextualized, or synthesized in the research process. For further explanation of primary and secondary sources, view the Primary & Secondary Research Guide.

Find Primary Sources

Library of Congress Teachers Site
The Library of Congress offers classroom materials and professional development to help teachers effectively use primary sources from the Library's vast digital collections in their teaching. Inlcudes classroom materials sorted by state standards, state content , organizations, or the Common Core
National Archives - Educator Resources
Contains information about conducting online research, in person research, student and teacher workshops
National Archives - Online Exhibits (DocsTeach)
Seven tools featured on DocsTeach are designed to teach specific historical thinking skills, including weighing evidence, interpreting data, and focusing on details. Each employs interactive components such as puzzles, scales, maps, and flowcharts that teachers and students can tailor to their needs.
Our Documents: 100 Milestone Documents
To help us think, talk and teach about the rights and responsibilities of citizens in our democracy, the site invites you to explore 100 milestone documents of American history. These documents reflect our diversity and our unity, our past and our future, and mostly our commitment as a nation to continue to strive to "form a more perfect union."
Smithsonian Learning Lab
The Smithsonian Learning Lab puts the treasures of the world's largest museum, education, and research complex within reach. The Lab is a free, interactive platform for discovering millions of authentic digital resources, creating content with online tools, and sharing in the Smithsonian's expansive community of knowledge and learning.

Document Bank of Virginia (DBVa)
Document Bank of Virginia (DBVa) is the Library of Virginia’s initiative to get documents into classrooms. Using primary sources, teachers can make history relevant to students while helping them learn and understand state standards. DBVa will teach students to be critical thinkers as they analyze the original documents and draw their own conclusions about Virginia’s past
Library of Virginia: Digital Primary Sources: Lesson Plans
Engage your students with history! Develop their powers of analysis and inquiry by guiding them to examine and study a historical source. Use these analysis sheets with any historical source to guide their exploration.
Selected Library of Congress Primary Resources for Virginia
The extensive collections at the Library of Congress contain historic artifacts and cultural materials from across the U.S. The list below is just a sample of the many Virginia resources available for free on the Library's Web site. Teachers can find even more primary sources, along with the tools to help use them in the classroom, at www.loc.gov/teachers. They can also search the Library's American Memory or Prints and Photographs collections.
Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Details life in Augusta County, Va. and Franklin County, Pa. during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Contains letters, diaries, newspapers, speeches, census records and church records.
Virginia for Digital History Projects
At its founding VCDH was charged with creating new forms of historical scholarship and with performing public service and outreach. In these roles VCDH is home to a number of digital projects spanning the range of American history, from the Jamestown settlement, to the Civil War, to the Civil Rights movement. These projects are built to be used by K-12 educators, and the general public, as well as by college students, and scholars.

Avalon Project
Includes documents on law history and diplomacy from 4000 BCE, Medieval times, 15th through 21st century and Project Diana (a Human rights archive) . Includes controversial documents.
Constitute
New constitutions are written every year. The people who write these important documents need to read and analyze texts from other places. Constitute offers access to the world’s constitutions so that users can systematically compare them across a broad set of topics — using an inviting, clean interface. Includes the world's constitutions which may be searched, read, compared.
Historical Scene Investigation
With the advent and accessibility of the internet, many libraries, universities and government agencies are housing their historical documents online. Simultaneously, there has been a push in K-12 history education to give students experiences that more closely resemble the work of a real historian.
Stanford History Education Group: Beyond the Bubble
Beyond the Bubble unlocks the vast digital archive of the Library of Congress to create History Assessments of Thinking (HATs). Explore over 80 easy-to-use assessments that measure students' historical thinking rather than recall of facts. There are 10 “flagship” assessments, each marked with a ribbon.
Teaching History
Designed to help K–12 history teachers access resources and materials to improve U.S. history education in the classroom.

A-Z Databases: History & Primary Source Research
Find the best library databases for your research.