UTSC Finding Primary Sources

The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.

The World Digital Library (WDL) makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.

These pages provide a general overview of the Library and Archives Canada collection, as well as information about how it is developed and how Canadians can contribute to its growth.

Access to print, pictorial and audio-visual collections and other digital services. The Library of Congress has made digitized versions of collection materials available online since 1994, concentrating on its most rare collections and those unavailable anywhere else.

Search over 4 million records with images, video and sound files, electronic journals and other resources from all across the Smithsonian.

The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world

This site provides links which connect to Western European (mainly primary) historical documents which are organized into the following categories: Medieval and Renaissance Europe, Europe as a Supernational Region and individual countries.

Access to 30,000 items from the British Library collection using their "Turning the Pages" software to leaf through books and magnify the details.

Allows you to search and preview millions of books from libraries and publishers worldwide.

This guide is organized geographically and has historical newspapers listed within each region.

Click on 'Enter the ARTstor digital library - GO' to start searching a large collection of images.

Click on the magnifying glass icon to search, or on the books icon to browse this collection of images.

The collections of the Prints & Photographs Division include photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters, and architectural and engineering drawings. While international in scope, the collections are particularly rich in materials produced in, or documenting the history of, the United States and the lives, interests and achievements of the American people.

The Digital Gallery provides free and open access to over 700,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more.

Browse or Search through over 1000 images from MOMA's collection.

The Collection Online features a searchable database of selected artworks from the Guggenheim’s permanent collection. The site currently contains over 700 artworks by nearly 300 artists from the Guggenheim’s overall permanent collection of over 7,000 artworks.

This site displays and describes many of the 5,000 works held at the museum, categorized by theme and time periods.

The art of ancient Greece and Rome.

AdViews is a digital archive of thousands of vintage television commercials dating from the 1950s to the 1980s. These commercials were created or collected by the ad agency Benton & Bowles or its successor, D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B).

This library contains over two hundred thousand free digital recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by our users. Many of these audios and MP3s are available for free download.

Using the Advanced search, limit the format to "sound recordings" then search on "oral history" under Keyword to find oral history collections.

This nationwide bilingual project offers an unprecedented account of Canada’s participation in the Second World War through thousands of firsthand veteran testimonials.

This is a multimedia website devoted to the early days of Canadian recorded sound, providing an overview of the 78-rpm era in Canada.

Explore 44,900 selected recordings of music, spoken word, and human and natural environments.

Collections of sound recordings

This page provides links to many oral history projects.

Canadian Public broadcaster. Francais: http://archives.radio-canada.ca/

US public radio broadcaster

CanLII is a non-profit organization managed by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada. CanLII's goal is to make Canadian law accessible for free on the Internet.

Find Government publications with GPO's Federal Digital System.

Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy, spanning from ancient and medieval times through to the twenty-first century. The Avalon Project will mount digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government. We do not intend to mount only static text but rather to add value to the text by linking to supporting documents expressly referred to in the body of the text.

THOMAS was launched in January of 1995, at the inception of the 104th Congress. The leadership of the 104th Congress directed the Library of Congress to make federal legislative information freely available to the public. Since that time THOMAS has expanded the scope of its offerings to include the features and content listed below.

This collection features approximately 4500 full page plates and other significant illustrations of human anatomy selected from the Jason A. Hannah and Academy of Medicine collections in the history of medicine at the Fisher Library. Each illustration has been fully indexed using medical subject headings (MeSH), and techniques of illustration, artists, and engravers have been identified whenever possible. There are ninety-five individual titles represented, ranging in date from 1522 to 1867.

This site documents two exploratory surveys of the Barren Lands region west of Hudson Bay, in northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan and the area now known as Nunavut. Drawing on materials from the J.B. Tyrrell, James Tyrrell and related collections at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, it includes over 5,000 images from original field notebooks, correspondence, photographs, maps and published reports.

This site provides access to the pre-1930 Canadian pamphlet and broadside holdings of the Fisher Library by supplying both page images in full colour, and full searchability of the contents of each item. To date the site consists of 597 broadsides (single sheets, printed on one or both sides) and 2062 pamphlet titles which amounts to 71508 page images. Additional titles will be added on a regular basis.

The initial phase of a larger project to digitize Canadian periodicals, this site will present the first 20 years of the most significant Canadian trade journal documenting the history of the printing and publishing industry.

The Agnes Chamberlin collection consists of original paintings of Canadian flora and mushrooms by Agnes Chamberlin (1833–1913), dating from the period 1863 to the 1900s. In addition to the original paintings, the Chamberlin digital collection also includes early editions of Canadian Wild Flowers and two editions of Studies of Plant Life. Most of these original paintings have not previously been reproduced.

This digital collection features over 2500 of the prints of Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677), a great master of the art of etching. Although the lion's share of Hollar's work was produced in and about his adopted England, his artistic interest was broad ranging and the site also includes religious and historical prints, maps, portraits, costumes, and natural history.

This site documents the initial period of the discovery and development of insulin, 1921-1925, by presenting over six thousand page images reproducing original documents ranging from laboratory notebooks and charts, correspondence, writings, and published papers to photographs, awards, clippings, scrapbooks, printed ephemera and realia.

The Fisher Library's small, but interesting, collection of papyrus fragments has been scanned and the images and full descriptive data have been contributed to APIS, where they form a part of a comprehensive database documenting papyrus fragments housed at institutions throughout the world. A small collection of fragments transferred from the Classics Department has also been digitized locally. Finding Aid: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/fisher/collections/findaids/papyri.pdf