There are three major sources for online databases that provide access to primary source materials:

• Databases that Yale subscribes to - i.e., collections that are compiled by vendors from primary source materials held elsewhere
  See the list below for some examples of primary source databases that Yale subscribes to. To learn about additional databases, search the Databases & Article Searching section of the Yale library web site, talk to a collections specialist, or search in Orbis.
• Databases containing material digitized from Yale's own collections
  See the Digital Collections page for links
• Freely available web resources
  There are many good quality, freely available web resources such as the American Memory project of the Library of Congress and the Documenting the American South project of UNC. See the ALA Using Primary Sources on the Web guide for information on identifying and using sites.

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Examples of primary source databases available through the Databases & Article Searching section of the Yale library:

• Thematic Collections of Documentation: letters, diaries, publications, etc.
• Images
• Magazines and Newspapers
• Early Published Works

Thematic Collections of Documentation: letters, diaries, publications, etc

• The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries: includes more than 400 sources of diaries, letters, and memoirs providing access to thousands of views on almost every aspect of the war. The writings of politicians, generals, slaves, landowners, seaman, wives, and even spies are included

• British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries: includes the immediate experiences of 91 women, as revealed in approximately 24,000 pages of diaries and letters.

• Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment: this database, assembled from hundreds of primary sources, documents the relationships among peoples and with the environment in North America from 1534 to 1850.

• Empire Online: Empire Online is a collection of original documents relating to Empire Studies, sourced from libraries and archives around the world.

• North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories: provides a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada between 1840 and 1950.

• North American Women's Letters and Diaries, Colonial-1950: includes the personal experiences of 1,325 women, as revealed in their diaries and letters. When complete the collection will include approximately 150,000 pages of published letters and diaries from individuals writing from Colonial times to 1950, plus 6,000 pages of previously unpublished materials.

• Women and Social Movements in the United States 1600 - 2000: documents the multiplicity of women's reform activities by bringing together thousands of pages of books, images, and documents.

Images

• Associated Press Photo Archive: The Photo Archive is an electronic library containing the AP's current photos and a selection of pictures from their 50 million image print and negative library.

• ARTstor: ARTstor is a digital library of approximately 550,000 images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes.

• Also check out digital resources from Yale's collections
  

Magazines and Newspapers

• Accessible Archives: provides a searchable collection of American newspapers from the 18th & 19th Centuries. Eras covered include the Colonial Period, the French & Indian War, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, African-American History, Industrial Revolution, and Genealogy

• America's Historical Newspapers: This archive of American historical newspapers provides access to full text digitized versions of primary source material, Early American Newspapers, Series I, II, III, IV, and V. It includes titles from all 50 present states.
  
  

• American Periodical Series: contains 1000 magazines published between 1741 and 1900. Titles include Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine, the first American professional journals, and several consumer magazines still in publication, such as Vanity Fair, Harper's, and Ladies' Home Journal. The search interface allows you to search the complete text, including tables of contents, by boolean and keyword operators. Articles are linked to the corresponding page images, downloadable in PDF format.

• Historical Newspapers Complete: includes extensive runs of the NY Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and other major newspapers.

• Yale Daily News

Early Published Works

• Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans: Upon completion, Evans Digital will consist of over 36,000 works issued in America from 1639 to 1800.

• Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker: (1801-1819) provides full-text access to the 36,000 American books, pamphlets and broadsides published in the first nineteen years of the nineteenth century.

• Early English Books Online : Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English.
  

NB: These are just examples. To learn about additional databases,
search the Databases & Article Searching section of the Yale library
web site,talk to a collections specialist, or search in Orbis.