LibGuides: Twentieth-Century U.S. History: More Sources by Format

Periodicals

Learn more about periodicals:

Research Skills for History Students: Periodicals

These digital collections can be used to find primary source material in periodicals. The article indexes listed on the Find Journal Articles page, although more often used to find secondary sources, can also be used to find primary sources.

African American Periodicals This link opens in a new window
African American Periodicals, 1825-1995 features more than 170 wide-ranging periodicals by and about African Americans.
American Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Consists of digitized reproductions of more than 1,100 eighteenth and nineteenth century American newspapers and periodicals. Derived from the acclaimed American periodicals series microform collection I, II, and III. This database contains periodicals published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals. American Periodicals Series Online (APS Online) includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century. Titles range from Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine and America's first scientific journal, Medical Repository; popular magazines such as Vanity Fair and Ladie's Home Journal; regional and niche publications; and groundbreaking journals like The Dial, Puck, and McClure's.
British Periodicals This link opens in a new window
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This database provides access to the searchable full text of hundreds of periodicals from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth, comprising millions of high-resolution facsimile page images. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the social sciences, music, art, drama, archaeology and architecture.

The University of Illinois owns Collections I, II, III and IV.
Church Missionary Society Periodicals This link opens in a new window
From its roots as an Anglican evangelical movement driven by lay persons, this resource encompasses publications from the CMS and the latterly integrated South American Missionary Society. Documenting missionary work from the 19th to the 21st century, the periodicals include news, journals and reports offering a unique perspective on global history and cultural encounter
Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI) This link opens in a new window
Contains citations to articles in more than 400 scholarly journals published in Latin America or treating Latin American and U.S. Hispanic topics.
Periodicals Index Online This link opens in a new window
An index to tables of contents of periodicals in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, including some published as far back as 1770. Includes periodicals in English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, and other Western languages. Provides access, where available, to page images in the related Periodicals Archive Online (PAO). (When no corresponding text is available in PAO, an E-link is displayed.) PIO and PAO were once parts of a single database, called PCI Full Text.
Readers' Guide Retrospective This link opens in a new window
Provides indexing of general-interest periodicals published in the United States and reflects the history of 20th century America.
Alternate Access Link
Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
An archival research resource containing the essential primary sources for studying the history of the film and entertainment industries, from the era of vaudeville and silent movies through to 2000. The core US and UK trade magazines covering film, music, broadcasting and theater are all included, together with film fan magazines and music press titles. Magazines have been scanned cover-to-cover in high-resolution color, with granular indexing of all articles, covers, ads and reviews.
Women's Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
An archival research resource comprising the backfiles of leading women's interest consumer magazines. Issues are scanned in high-resolution color and feature detailed article-level indexing. Coverage ranges from the late-19th century through to 2005 and these key primary sources permit the examination of the events, trends, and attitudes of this period. Among the research fields served by this material are gender studies, social history, economics/marketing, media, fashion, politics, and popular culture.

Newspapers

Learn more about using newspapers as primary sources:

Research Skills: Newspapers

The Library has access to a very extensive collection of newspapers from the 17th-century to the present. To find specific newspapers or newspapers from specific places, please consult our Newspaper Database and our Guide to Historical Newspapers.

African American Newspapers Series 1 and 2 1827-1998 This link opens in a new window
Part of the Readex America's Historical Newspapers collection, African American Newspapers, 1827-1998 was created from the most extensive African American newspaper archives in the United States--those of the Wisconsin Historical Society, Kansas State Historical Society and the Library of Congress. Beginning with Freedom's Journal (NY), the first African American newspaper published in the United States, the titles in this resource include The Colored Citizen (OH), Rights of All (NY), Wisconsin Afro-American, New York Age, Virginia Journal and Alexandria Advertiser, Richmond Planet, Cleveland Gazette, The Appeal (MN) and hundreds of others from every region of the U.S.
American Indian Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Explore nearly 200 years of Indigenous print journalism from the US and Canada, from historic pressings to contemporary periodicals. With newspapers representing a huge variety in publisher, audience and era, discover how events were reported by and for Indigenous communities.
Caribbean Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Contains 66 newspaper titles from 22 islands between 1718-1876.
Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980 This link opens in a new window
This searchable database contains hundreds of early American newspapers including titles from Hispanic American Newspapers.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Search all 46 ProQuest Historical Newspaper titles owned by the University of Illinois, representing 19 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, as well as titles from Canada, the UK, and India. Coverage spans the 18th century to the 2010s and includes important publications like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Globe and Mail, and Chicago Tribune.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers is the definitive newspaper digital archive offering full-text and full-image articles for significant newspapers dating back to the 18th century. Every issue of each title includes the complete paper, cover-to-cover, with full-page and article images in easily downloadable PDF format. The full collection of ProQuest Historical Newspapers contains over 30 million digitized pages.
Times Digital Archive, The This link opens in a new window
Full-text and full-image articles from the Times of London for the years 1785-2006. It is a digital reproduction, cover to cover, of the paper in PDF files.
World Newspaper Archive This link opens in a new window
World Newspaper Archive chronicles the history and politics of diverse peoples and cultures during the 19th and early 20th centuries. This expanding online resource was created in partnership between Readex, a division of NewsBank, and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL)-one of the world's largest and most important newspaper repositories-and includes historical newspapers published in Africa, Latin America, Slavic and East Europe, South Asia and other regions.

Alternative Press

Non-mainstream media, often referred to as "alternative" or "underground" press publications, can be difficult to locate. Publications in this category include newspapers, magazines, newsletters, and other types of serial publications. These periodicals tend to be written from an acknowledged political perspective--for example, liberal or conservative--and they often promote a specific agenda, such a labor unionism, socialism, or communism. They might, however, report on news that is of interest to a specific community--often a marginalized one--without endorsing any defined ideology.

The digital collections below provide access to a wide selection of "alternative" publications relevant to this class. Find more alternative press material on our Alternative Press guide.

Alt-PressWatch This link opens in a new window
This database provides full-text articles for over 210 publications of the alternative and independent presses, from 1970 to current.
Alternative Press Index This link opens in a new window
The Alternative Press Index is a subject index to over 300 alternative, radical and left periodicals, newspapers and magazines. The Index is international and interdisciplinary, spanning the social sciences and humanities, with its central focus on the practice and theory of socialism, national liberation, labor, indigenous peoples, gays/lesbians, feminism, ecology, democracy, and anarchism.
Alternate Access Link
Independent Voices This link opens in a new window
A four-year project to digitize over one million pages from the magazines, journals, newsletters, and newspapers of the alternative press archives of participating libraries spanning the 1960's to the 1980's. Starting with collections by feminists and the GI press, the collection will grow to include small literary magazines, underground newspapers, LGBT periodicals, the minority press (Latino, Black and Native American) and the extreme right-wing press
Left Index This link opens in a new window
The Left Index (LI) is a guide to the diverse literature of the left, with an emphasis on political, economic, social and culturally engaged scholarship both inside and outside of academia. A secondary emphasis is on significant but little known sources of news and ideas. Other topics covered include the labor movement, ecology and environment, race and ethnicity, social and cultural theory, sociology, art and aesthetics, philosophy, history, education, law, and globalization.
Alternate Access Link
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Communist Historical Newspaper Collection (1919-2013) This link opens in a new window
The digital newspaper archive of the Communist Party USA. This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time. Coverage from 1919 to 2013.

Government Documents

Digital National Security Archive This link opens in a new window
This database includes 55 collections of the most important declassified documents regarding critical U.S. policy decisions.
Heritage Quest Online This link opens in a new window
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Database containing genealogical sources, including family and local history documents, primary sources, finding aids, and U.S. census data.
Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS) Reports This link opens in a new window
Searchable database projected to be a complete full-text collection of the reports issued by the Joint Publications Research Service of the United States Department of Commerce. JPRS (acting as a unit within the Central Intelligence Agency) was established in March 1957 as part of the United States Department of Commerce's Office of Technical Services. JPRS staffers prepared translations for use by U.S. Government officials, various agencies, and the research and industrial communities. This unique collection features English translations of foreign-language monographs, reports, serials, journal and newspaper articles, and radio and television broadcasts from regions throughout the world. With an emphasis on communist and developing countries, this digital edition of Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS) Reports, 1957-1995, contains a wealth of hard-to-find social science, scientific, and technical materials translated from many languages.
ProQuest Congressional Publications This link opens in a new window
Provides users with access to a comprehensive collection of historic and current congressional information. Includes full text of congressional publications, finding aids, a bill tracking service, public laws and other research materials. The database is an effective source for general research in many academic disciplines, in addition to research related to specific legislative proposals and laws. Researchers can access information about Congress, including member biographical and committee assignment information, voting records, and financial data.
U.S. Congressional Serial Set This link opens in a new window
Database of texts from the bound, sequentially numbered volumes of all the reports, documents, and journals of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Texts constitute a rich source of primary source material on all aspects of American history.
U.S. Declassified Documents Online This link opens in a new window
U.S. Declassified Documents Online provides immediate access to a broad range of previously classified federal records spanning the twentieth and twenty first centuries. The collection brings together the most sensitive documents from all the presidential libraries and numerous executive agencies in a single, easily searchable database.The types of materials include intelligence studies, policy papers, diplomatic correspondence, cabinet meeting minutes, briefing materials, and domestic surveillance and military reports. Materials cover virtually every significant foreign policy development and international crisis, from the years leading up to the First World War through the end of the Cold War. Topics include the outbreak and course of the Second World War, the end of colonialism in the global south, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, U.S. relations with non-aligned states in the 1960s, U.S.-Soviet relations in the era of détente, international trade, nuclear proliferation, conflict in the Middle East, and the War on Terrorism.

Find more government documents, and learn more about using government documents as sources:

Government Information for 20c Politics History
by Government Information Services Last Updated Jan 19, 2024 14 views this year

Legal/Judicial Sources

HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
Full text image-based searchable database of legal periodicals. Database coverage for each periodical is from the beginning issue to the most current allowed under contract.
LLMC Digital This link opens in a new window
LLMC (Law Library Microform Consortium) Digital is a full text, searchable U.S. federal legislative, judicial and executive branches collection. It includes state and territorial government documents and various Anglo-American collections and foreign and international jurisdictions.
Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
Primary sources collection designed to complement Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926, is a fully searchable digital archive of more than 1,300 individual titles consisting of about 2,225 volumes sourced chiefly from the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale University, with additional materials provided by the Law Library of Congress ... Primary Sources comprises approximately 1.8 million pages spanning over 300 years of legal primary sources, such as early U.S. state codes, city charters, constitutional conventions and compilations ... legal dictionaries, published records of the American Colonies--About the Making of Modern Law p.
Making of Modern Law: Trials This link opens in a new window
Based on holdings of the law libraries of Harvard and Yale, and the Library of the Bar of the City of New York, the product offers online access to these important collections.
Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Features more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790. Includes current news, business information, company directories, federal and state laws, regulations, legal cases, and more.
Proquest Legislative Insight This link opens in a new window
Congress produces a variety of publications as a bill moves through the legislative process on its way to becoming a law. A compilation of these full text primary source publications produces a legislative history that is valuable to a wide variety of researchers. Legislative Insight offers a research citation page that not only links to the full text of the associated primary source publications, but allows the user to do a Search Within from that very page that searches the full text of all the associated publications with one-click. Full-text publication types associated with a legislative history include the Public Law, all versions of enacted and related bills, Congressional Record excerpts, and committee hearings, reports, and documents. All of these publication types can be used in court to determine the intent of Congress in enacting legislation in cases where the statutory language is ambiguous.
U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs This link opens in a new window
This database contains nearly 11 million pages of records and briefs brought before the U.S. Supreme Court in the period 1832-1978. The collection is derived from two essential reference sources. For the period 1832 (when printed Court records began) through 1915, the documents are based primarily on the holdings of the Jenkins Memorial Law Library, America's first law library, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For 1915-1978 the source is the Library of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, a nationally recognized research facility and the single largest member supported law library in the United States.

Audiovisual materials

Listed here are collections of digitized and/or streaming audiovisual materials including films and television broadcasts. To find additional digitized media, as well as original media materials, you can search the library catalog and limit results by material type (either sound recordings or video/film).

American History in Video This link opens in a new window
At completion, American History in Video will include 2,000 total hours of streaming video content. More than half will be contemporaneous video from the 1890s to the 1980s. The early newsreels, including the complete series of United Newsreel and Universal Newsreel, available online in their entirety only in this collection, capture history as it was made and reported to viewers of the time ... American History in Video also includes hundreds of the documentaries most frequently used in history classrooms, from leading video content producers such as PBS, California Newsreel, Bullfrog Films, Documentary Educational Resources, Pennebaker Hegedus Films, The History Channel, and others.
Black Studies in Video This link opens in a new window
In partnership with California Newsreel, the oldest non-profit social issue documentary film center in the country, this collection includes cutting-edge racial justice and diversity films that inspire, educate and engage audiences. Additionally, Black Studies in Video features access to the SNCC Legacy Video Collection, a series of formal addresses, panel discussions and programs that took place at a conference and reunion unfolding over four days at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
Meet the Press This link opens in a new window
The Meet the Press collection makes over 1,500 hours of footage--the full surviving broadcast run from 1947 to present day--available online in one cross-searchable interface. Network television's longest running program--with its thousands of interviews, panels, and debates--is available via streaming online video.
Socialism on Film This link opens in a new window
This collection of films from the communist world reveals war, history, current affairs, culture and society as seen through the socialist lens. It spans most of the twentieth century and covers countries such as the USSR, Vietnam, China, Korea, much of Eastern Europe, the GDR, Britain and Cuba. - See more at: http://www.socialismonfilm.amdigital.co.uk/#sthash.McOpse05.dpuf
World Newsreels in Video This link opens in a new window
Searchable database of streaming videos that features full runs of many of the key international newsreels produced during the first half of the twentieth century. The collection allows users to search by subject, year, historical era, historical event, people, and places.

Multi-format collections

These collections are huge repositories of digitized primary sources, including many collections relevant to 20th-century US history. See the "Sources by topic" tab of this guide for collections on specific themes.

ProQuest History Vault This link opens in a new window
This database consists of digitized letters, papers, photographs, scrapbooks, financial records, diaries, and many more primary source materials taken from the University Publications of America (UPA) Collections. Major collection areas in History Vault focus on the Black Freedom Movement of the 20th Century, Southern Life and Slavery, Women's Rights, International Relations, American Politics and Society with a strong focus on the 20th Century, and labor unions, workers and radical politics in the 20th Century.
Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
Gale Primary Sources cross-search interface provides access to millions of pages of content spanning many centuries and geographic regions. It contains a wide range of content including monographs, manuscripts, newspapers, photographs, maps, and more.
This database provides access to the:
- 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection,
- 17th and 18th Century Nichols Newspaper Collection,
- 19th Century UK Periodicals,
- American Historical Periodicals,
- Archives of Latin American and Caribbean History, 16th-20th c.,
- Archives Unbound,
- Associated Press Collections Online,
- Brazilian and Portuguese History and Culture,
- British Library Newspapers,
- Daily Mail Historical Archive (1896-2004),
- Economist Historical Archive,
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online,
- Financial Times Historical Archive,
- Illustrated London News Historical Archive (1842-2003),
- Independent Digital Archive,
- Indigenous Peoples: North America,
- International Herald Tribune Historical Archive (1887-2013),
- Liberty Magazine Historical Archive (1924-1950),
- Listener Historical Archive (1929-1991),
- Making of Modern Law (multiple),
- Making of the Modern World,
- 19th Century Collections Online,
- 19th Century U.S. Newspapers,
- Picture Post Historical Archive,
- Punch Historical Archive (1841-1992),
- Sabin Americana (1500-1926),
- Smithsonian Collections Online,
- Sunday Times Digital Archive (1822-2006),
- Telegraph Historical Archive (1855-2000),
- Times Digital Archive,
- Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive (1902-2013),
- U.S. Declassified Documents Online and
- U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs (1832-1978).

Major research libraries, including the U of I Library, have digitized primary source materials relating to 20th-century US history.

Digital Collections at the University of Illinois
Illinois Library Digital Collections
Library of Congress Digital Collections
Digitized texts, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, archival sources, and sheet music that document the history of the United States, including African American history, religion, immigration, and urban history.
The New York Public Library Public Domain Collections