Collins Memorial Library: SSI2-189: The Experience of World War II in Europe: Finding Primary Sources

Digital Collections

Academic libraries and historical museums often try to digitize primary source collections held in their archives and special collections in order to make them available to the widest possible audience.

BBC Radio Archive -- World War 2
Large collection of streaming audio of broadcasts during the war.
EuroDocs: Germany (National Socialism & WWII)
Includes dozens of documents. In German and in English translation.
Holocaust Primary Sources Bibliography
Bibliography of primary source collections provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Use Primo to find titles.
Internet Modern History Sourcebook
Collection of documents made available via Fordham University.
World War II Operational Documents
Ike Skelton Combined Arms Research Library Digital Library are largely composed of digital versions of paper documents from the Ike Skelton CARL collections and student papers produced at the US Army Command and General Staff College.

Strategies for Identifying Primary Sources

Aim for a variety of materials that will provide multiple perspectives on your topic. In practice, this means using a variety of search strategies and more than one repository or database.
Consult the notes and bibliographies of recently published, good historical monographs and relevant scholarly articles. If much of the cited primary source material is located in a distant archive, you may need to rethink your approach to your research topic.
Use the author search function in Primo. You can use "corporate authors" to find writings published by government entities, businesses, or groups.
Look for scholarly editions of primary sources, or for "documentary histories" that include a selection of primary sources accompanied by scholarly annotations.
Use Library of Congress Subject Headings--especially the subheadings most frequently associated with primary sources.

Library of Congress Subject Headings for Primary Sources

Books in Primo are assigned Library of Congress Subject Headings. In many ways, subject headings are a form of tagging, in that they represent the content of the material and provide ways for you to efficiently locate more materials that are conceptually related.

Library of Congress Subject Headings are also quite useful for discovering primary sources. The following subheadings usually are added to indicate that the material is a primary source: sources, personal narratives, correspondence, diaries, manuscripts, or notebooks. Once you've discovered the subject heading for secondary sources, try adding one of the primary source subheadings to see what you find. Here are some examples:

World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives

Saint Petersburg (Russia) -- History -- Siege, 1941-1944 -- Sources

World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, German

Newspapers & Magazines - Digital Collections

New York Times Historical Newspaper This link opens in a new window
Includes full page images of the New York Daily Times (1851-1857) and the New York Times (1857-2017).
London Times Digital Archive
Since its first publication in 1785, The Times (London) has become one of the most preeminent, global daily (except Sundays) newspapers of the 18th century through the early 21st century, covering international events, people, places, politics, business news, opinion and debate, entertainment, and advertising.