Research guides: Teaching K-12 History with Online Primary Documents: World History to the End of the 15th Century

World History (Open Access)

The World Digital Library
The World Digital Library (WDL) displays significant primary materials from 193 countries and cultures around the world and shares them freely in a multilingual format. Sources include artifacts, images, and documents from 8000 BCE to 2000 CE with accompanying contextual information. It is a project of the U.S. Library of Congress supported by UNESCO, run in cooperation with many international libraries, institutions, and organizations.
Internet History Sourcebooks Project
The Internet History Sourcebooks are collections of historical texts for educational use covering large eras of global human history.
Google Arts and Culture
Various museum holdings from around the world have been digitized in partnership with Google, creating a free international resource with visual materials from a number of historical periods. For classroom teaching, searching under Historical Events may help to focus your results.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lesson Plans
A number of activities related to museum holdings from various historical places and periods are outlined for educators on this site, including many images of artifacts and paintings.
British Museum Resources
This guide includes a number of in-class activities that make use of images of artifacts from the British Library from various historical places and periods.
Wonders: Images of the Ancient World
This digitized collection from the New York Public Library includes primary visual resources depicting classical and ancient civilizations as conceived by artists and travelers from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. The collection also features Related Resources that provide more context and directions for image searches and use.
The ROM Classroom/At Home Activities
The ROM’s activities, ranging to suit grades 1-12, feature images of artifacts to inspire creative exploration of historical subjects like the design of Chinese Imperial Court robes and Egyptian hieroglyphics

World History (Licensed)

Empire Online
Features a wide variety of material about colonial history, politics, culture and society, including exploration journals and logs, letter books and correspondence, diaries, official government papers, missionary papers, travel writing, slave papers, and more.
Age of Exploration
A multi-sourced archive of letters, first-hand accounts, ship logs, maps, and other illustrated materials tied to global exploration from 1410-1999. The collection also includes audio-visual materials from the British Film Institute and the Explorers Club, including a selection of speeches and films relating to the Arctic and Antarctic explorers of the early-twentieth century.

Africa and the Middle East (Open Access)

Art and Life in Africa
A website created by the University of Iowa featuring images of art, artifacts, and architecture with contextualizing historical information. The Ancient Africa “chapter” of the site showcases material from various ancient African civilizations.
Aga Khan Museum Teacher’s Resources
For a multidisciplinary approach to teaching grades 1-8 that incorporates Muslim history, download the PDF filled with suggestions for teaching using the Aga Khan’s collections, developed to meet Ontario curriculum guidelines. See especially Section 3: Learning with Aga Khan Museum Resources, which features lessons incorporating primary sources, like paintings and artifacts.
Ancient Near Eastern Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art provides a description and link to images from their Near Eastern Art collection. See also Art of the Ancient Near East: A Resource for Educators for a detailed guide on teaching Near Eastern history using primary sources from the museum.
Islamic Heritage Project
Digitized written and visual documents related to the Islamic history of various nations and civilizations from the fifth to the twentieth centuries, compiled by Harvard University.
The American University in Cairo Digital Collections
The Rare Books and Special Collections Digital Library at the American University in Cairo supports research and teaching in the arts, culture, and society of Egypt and the Middle East by providing online access to unique cultural heritage resources.
Electronic Resources from the Griffith Institute
Digitized primary sources from Oxford University related to ancient Egyptian civilizations and the study of Egyptology. Resources include photographs, maps of tombs, watercolour images, and documents written by Egyptologists dating from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries.

The Americas (Open Access)

Our Voices, Our Histories at the ROM
While still in its beta phase, this timeline uses images of artifacts from the ROM’s collections to tell a balanced version of North American and Canadian history that supports the Ontario curriculum in First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Studies.
The Aztec Empire
This teacher’s guide is created by the Guggenheim Museum, and it is rooted in the museum’s collection of Aztec artifacts. This resource is filled with photos of artifacts and suggestions for activities that make connections between artifacts and historical understanding of ancient cultures.
FAMSI.org Teacher’s Guide to the Mayan Civilization in Casa K’inich
This teacher’s guide includes line-drawing representations of artifacts, archeological sites, maps, and Mayan writing and numbers. It was originally developed for field trips to Casa K’inich in Mexico, but it includes activities that can be completed in any classroom. The full site includes a variety of additional resources, including photos of artifacts and archeological sites, maps, and language dictionaries.

Asia (Open Access)

Freer Sackler Digital Collections
Search through ancient Asian art and artifacts from the complete digitized collections of the Freer and Sackler Galleries and the Freer Study Collection.
Smithsonian Learning Lab Collections
These collections sourced from the Freer Gallery highlight Asian artifacts and art, providing extra information on primary sources designed for educators to use in the classroom.
Masterpieces of the Kyoto National Museum
This digital collection of Japanese and Chinese artifacts, paintings, and scrolls from various periods is accompanied by brief and easy-to-follow contextual explanations.

Australia and Oceania (Open Access)

National Museum of Australia Exhibitions on First Australians
The museum’s webpage for their physical exhibits includes links to digitized images and videos highlighting artifacts and other primary sources related to Australian Indigenous history.

Classical Civilizations (Open Access)

Perseus Digital Library
Developed by Tufts University, this site is filled with resources related to the history, literature, and culture of Mediterranean civilizations, particularly those of the Greeks and Romans.
The Internet Classics Archive
Includes a selection of ancient classical texts from mostly Greek and Roman civilizations translated into English. Some ancient texts originally in Chinese and Persian may also be found here.

Classical Civilizations (Licensed)

Loeb Digital Library
Created by Harvard University Press, this site houses a number of primary texts written in Latin and Greek with facing translations.

Medieval Europe (Open Access)

Medieval Digital Resources
A curated guide of resources with primary materials related to studies of the middle ages.
British History Online
A digital library focusing on the medieval and modern history of the British Isles.

Teaching K-12 History with Online Primary Documents

World History (Open Access)

World History (Licensed)

Africa and the Middle East (Open Access)

The Americas (Open Access)

Asia (Open Access)

Australia and Oceania (Open Access)

Classical Civilizations (Open Access)

Classical Civilizations (Licensed)

Medieval Europe (Open Access)

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