Most digital collections are organized thematically. Increasingly though, digital collections that appear to be organized thematically are actually digitized archival collections, and you'll find that it's helpful to know this before you begin exploring the collection, because with archival collections it's especially important to learn how the documents are organized before you begin using them.

Few digital collections have yet been created specifically around the theme of families. To find sources about families in digital collections, you'll need to do some creative thinking: what sorts of collections might contain documents related to your topic? What kinds of people or organizations might have created documents about your topic? Collections about social services and social groups will often will often include sources that document family life throughout history.

On this page are several key digital collections for your course. In addition to the collections listed here, the Library has dozens of digital collections that might contain relevant primary sources for your classes, and we have organized these by broad subjects (mostly regions). For more of these digital collections, consult our Guide to Digital Collections: