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HISTORY 315H: Nation-Building in Latin America: Primary Sources

What are primary sources?

Primary sources are materials directly related to a topic by time or participation. These materials include letters, speeches, diaries, newspaper articles from the time, oral history interviews, documents, photographs, artifacts, or anything else that provides firsthand accounts about a person or event.

Useful Primary Source Databases

ArchiveGrid
Serves as a single point of entry that provides online access to descriptions of archival collections held by thousands of libraries, museums, historical societies, and archives worldwide. Allows discovery of information about primary source materials - both personal papers and corporate records.
Access: No restrictions.
Gale Archives Unbound
Gale Archives Unbound is a suite of collections, each devoted to a particular topic, from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. The collections include primary, unpublished historical documents and draw from institutional sources, governmental sources, and private collections.
Access:Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Gale Primary Sources
Gale Primary Sources is a search engine for Gale's historical digital collections of primary materials. You can search all at once or choose selectively. Consult the database to see the full-text collections available.
Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
AM Explorer
Search across all the Adam Matthew primary source collections together via the search box, or browse the list of collections individually. The search will be limited to the Adam Matthew collections that have been purchased by UNC Chapel Hill.
Access:Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.

Selected Latin American and Caribbean Primary Source Databases

Sabin Americana: 1500-1926
An online collection of books, pamphlets, serials and other works about the Americas, from the time of their discovery to the early 1900s.
Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Language: Various
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice
Designed as an important portal for slavery and abolition studies, brings together documents and collections covering an extensive time period 1490-2007, from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world. Close attention is being given to the varieties of slavery, the legacy of slavery, the social justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery today.
Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Colonial Caribbean
Digitized archival documents from 27 Colonial Office file classes from the National Archives, UK on British colonial governance of the Caribbean, 1624-1870.
Coverage:1624 - 1870
Access:Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Digital Library of the Caribbean
A cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. dLOC provides access to digitized versions of Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections.
Access: No restrictions.
Language: Various
Empire Online
Covers 500 years of the rise and fall of empires, this features a wide variety of material, including exploration journals & logs; correspondence; periodicals; diaries; government papers; missionary papers; travel writing; slave papers; memoirs; fiction; children's adventure stories; folk tales; exhibition catalogs; maps; marketing posters; photographs; and illustrations, with many in color.
Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.

Primary Sources Research Guide

You may find this library research guide useful:

Finding Primary Source Materials