Finding Primary Sources
Original documents can be found in a variety of places, from library, archive, and museum collections, to government websites, online databases, newspapers, and even your family records. Depending on the subject focus and topic of your research, you might find relevant resources in TMU Library's online databases, physical collections on campus. local archives, or other online resources.
Online Sources: Databases available through the TMU Library
The TMU Library has access to a variety of databases that provide online access to digitized primary sources related to many subjects.
- Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
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Black Thought and Culture contains the non-fiction published works of leading African Americans. Where possible the complete published non-fiction works are included, as well as interviews, journal articles, letters, speeches and other material. - British And Irish Women's Letters And Diaries This link opens in a new window
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British and Irish Women’s Letters and Diaries includes the immediate experiences of women, as revealed through pages of published letters and diaries from 1500 to 1900, including several thousand pages of previously unpublished materials. Drawn journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings, much of the material is in copyright. Represented are all age groups and life stages, all ethnicities, many geographical regions, the famous and the not so famous.
The collection also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of the sources in the database. - 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. - China: Trade, Politics and Culture, 1793-1980 This link opens in a new window
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Manuscript material relating to the activities and observations of British and American diplomats, missionaries, business people and tourists in China from 1793 to 1980, together with rare periodicals, colour paintings, maps, photographs and drawings. All of the manuscript material has been indexed by person, place and subject. An interactive map encourages searches by city and region. - Defining Gender This link opens in a new window
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This exciting collection of original source material from British and European archives will enrich the teaching and research experience of those studying history, literature, sociology, education and cultural studies from a gendered perspective. Manuscripts, printed works and illustrations combine to address the key issues from both masculine and feminine perspectives. - Canadiana This link opens in a new window
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Canadiana is a bilingual digital library of primary (source) documents of early Canadian printed publications including books, annuals and periodicals. Over 1,300 sources (including 350 titles from outside the U.S.) are indexed and abstracted. Of these, 600 are available in full text.
Formerly known as Early Canadiana Online. - Early Encounters in North America This link opens in a new window
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Early Encounters in North America contains over 100,000 pages of letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts of early encounters. Particular care has been taken to index the material so that it can be used in new ways. For example, you can identify all encounters between the French and the Huron between 1650 and 1700. - Eighteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
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Bearing witness to what many scholars consider the three most significant events in world history – The American Revolution, The French Revolution and The Industrial Revolution – this resource features: Full-text search capabilities; Canonical titles of the period as well as contemporary works that analyze and debate those titles; Works by both well-known and lesser-known authors. Toronto Metropolitan has both original ECCO and ECCO 2. - Eighteenth Century Journals This link opens in a new window
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This database brings together journals printed between 1693 and 1799 illuminating all aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life. They offer effective coverage of the important issues of the period, and are invaluable to the study of all aspects of the eighteenth century, including crime, sport, advertising, the theatre; fashion; politics, revolution; agriculture; social issues and society life. - Empire Online This link opens in a new window
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This resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of 'Empire' and its theories, practices and consequences. The materials span across the last five centuries and are accompanied by a host of secondary learning resources including scholarly essays, maps and an interactive chronology. - English Historical Documents This link opens in a new windowEnglish Historical Documents Online contains over 5,500 indexed and fully searchable primary documents from 500 to 1914. This includes American Colonial Documents, which was previously out of print. The online version of the standard series of primary source documents in British history, conceived in wartime and with volumes published since 1953, can also be found here.Sources include government and cabinet proceedings, military dispatches, newspaper articles, pamphlets, personal and official letters and diaries. It covers political and constitutional topics and social, economic, religious and cultural history.
- Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies This link opens in a new window
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The Fortunoff Archive currently holds more than 4,400 testimonies. The Fortunoff Archive and its affiliates recorded the testimonies of willing individuals with first-hand experience of the Nazi persecutions, including those who were in hiding, survivors, bystanders, resistants, and liberators. Testimonies were recorded in whatever language the witness preferred, and range in length from 30 minutes to over 40 hours (recorded over several sessions). - Harper's Bazaar Archive This link opens in a new window
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Harper's Bazaar Archive is an archive of the US (1867 to present) and UK (1930-2015) editions of Harper’s Bazaar. - HathiTrust ETAS Digital Library This link opens in a new window
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The Emergency Temporary Access Service permits special access for HathiTrust member libraries during temporary disruption to normal operations, such as closure for a public health emergency. ETAS provides full text electronic access to over 85K in copyright print titles in Toronto Metropolitan Library's collection.
A preservation repository with millions of volumes digitized by Google, the Internet Archive, and HathiTrust’s partner institutions. Approximately one-third of the volumes are in the public domain and can be viewed in their entirety. - Medieval Travel Writing This link opens in a new window
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The core of the material is a collection of medieval manuscripts from libraries around the world and dating from the 13th to the 16th centuries. The main focus is accounts of journeys to the Holy Land, India and China. These have been reproduced in colour where appropriate. These are augmented by an array of translations and supporting materials (all of which are fully searchable) and interactive maps showing the routes of the travellers. - Music Online: Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries This link opens in a new window
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Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries, produced in partnership with Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, is a virtual encyclopedia of the world’s musical and aural traditions.
It includes the published recordings owned by the non-profit Smithsonian Folkways Recordings label and the archival audio collections of the legendary Folkways Records, Cook, Dyer-Bennet, Fast Folk, Monitor, Paredon and other labels. It also includes music recorded around the African continent by Dr. Hugh Tracey for the International Library of African Music (ILAM) at Rhodes University as well as material collected by recordists on the South Asian subcontinent from the Archive Research Centre for Ethnomusicology (ARCE), sponsored by the American Institute for Indian Studies. - Nineteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
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Nineteenth Century Collections Online is a multi-year global digitization and publishing program focusing on primary source collections of the long nineteenth century, with archives releasing incrementally beginning in spring 2012. - North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories This link opens in a new window
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North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories includes 2,162 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of information, so providing a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada between 1800 and 1950. Composed of contemporaneous letters and diaries, oral histories, interviews, and other personal narratives, the series provides a rich source for scholars in a wide range of disciplines. - North American Indian Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
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This fifth release of North American Indian Thought and Culture contains over 119,000 pages of text and images. Included are biographies, auto-biographies, personal narratives, speeches, diaries, letters, and oral histories. - North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
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North American Women's Letters and Diaries includes the immediate experiences of 1,325 women and 150,000 pages of diaries and letters. - Oral History Online This link opens in a new window
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Oral History Online provides in-depth indexing to more than 2,500 collections of Oral History in English from around the world.
The collection also provides keyword searching of more than 271,000 pages of full-text by some 9,000 individuals from all walks of life. It also contains pointers to some 3,000 audio and video files and over 17,000 bibliographic records. - Slavery, abolition and social justice, 1490-2007 This link opens in a new window
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This resource on trans-Atlantic slavery and abolition brings together original manuscript and rare printed material from dozens of libraries and archives across the Atlantic world. Documents are presented alongside contextual essays contributed by leading academics in the field; each essay will have hypertext links to the primary sources it discusses. - Vogue Archive This link opens in a new window
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The Vogue Archive contains the entire run of Vogue magazine (US edition) from 1892 to the present day, reproduced in high-resolution color page images. More than 400,000 pages are included. - Women's Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
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An archival research resource comprising the backfiles of leading women's interest consumer magazines. 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.
Historical Newspapers
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Globe and Mail This link opens in a new window
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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: 1844 - 2020 - ProQuest Historical Newspapers: New York Times This link opens in a new window
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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: 1851 - 2020 - ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Times of India This link opens in a new window
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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: 1838 - 2011 - ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Toronto Star This link opens in a new window
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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: 1894 - 2021 - ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Wall Street Journal This link opens in a new window
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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: 1889 - 2012 - ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Washington Post, The This link opens in a new window
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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: 1877-2007
Government Documents
- Acts of the Parliament of Canada (Annual Statutes) This link opens in a new window
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With HeinOnline's Acts of the Parliament of Canada (Annual Statutes) digital collection, users can access all historical and current Acts of the Parliaments of Canada in an online, fully-searchable format from 1792. - Canada Supreme Court Reports This link opens in a new window
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HeinOnline's Canada Supreme Court Reports contains the official bilingual series published under authority of the Supreme Court Act. This collection includes nearly 10,000 cases which include background information, statutes and regulations, authors cited, analysis and the decision. - E-Laws (Ontario Statutes and Regulations) This link opens in a new windowe-Laws lets you search and browse official electronic copies of Ontario’s statutes and regulations. New laws are usually published on the site within 2 business days.
- Provincial Statutes of Canada This link opens in a new window
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The Provincial Statutes of Canada contain the provincial statutes for all ten Canadian provinces, as well as public and private acts passed by Canadian provincial governments. - Revised Statutes of Canada This link opens in a new window
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This database includes complete coverage of all six revisions from the official printed volumes of the Revised Statutes of Canada. - U.S. Government Documents (FDSYS) This link opens in a new window
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GPO’s Federal Digital System (FDsys) provides free online access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government.
Collections Available at Toronto Metropolitan University
- TMU Archives & Special Collections
Special Collections was established to help support the learning and teaching needs and facilitate the scholarly, research and creative activities of the TMU community by acquiring and preserving photography, film and cultural history objects. We have a particular responsibility to help students and staff gain access to objects in niche subject areas and aid them in the interpretation of those objects. The Archives serves as the institutional memory of the TMU community. The Archives appraises, preserves, and makes accessible a broad range of primary source materials which provide administrative, academic, fiscal, legal, social, and cultural record of Toronto Metropolitan University. - TMU Fashion Collection
Our main goal for the Fashion Research Collection (FRC) is to expand the archive by adopting these principles to further build the collection as a place that includes the perspectives and histories of diverse groups. In support of this goal, we encourage research and conversations from our students, faculty, visiting scholars, and community that promote an inclusive, sustainable and decolonized fashion system. - The Image Centre
The RYERSON IMAGE CENTRE (RIC) exists for the research, teaching and exhibition of photography and related media. We are an active partner within the academic fabric of Toronto Metropolitan University, the cultural network of greater Toronto, and the national and international artistic community. We develop rigorous yet inclusive programs for students, faculty, artists, researchers and curators, as well as the general public. we maintain a collection of photography spanning the medium’s history, as well as several artist and journalism archives—including the renowned Black Star Collection of twentieth-century photoreportage.
Local archival collections
- Archives of Ontario
The Archives of Ontario has created a number of research tools, databases and catalogues of information to help you in your research. Collections include immigration records, maps, photographs, aerial photographs, patents and blueprints. - ArQuives
We are Canada's LGBTQ2+ Archive. We collect and maintain collections related to LGBTQ2+ life in Canada, including books, archival papers, artifacts, photographs, and art. Founded in 1973, we have grown to become the largest independent LGBTQ2+ archive in the world. - City of Toronto Archives
The Toronto Archives is the municipal archives for the city. There are over one million photographs of Toronto in our collection, as well as tens of thousands of maps, plans and architectural drawings. Browse a complete list of all the digitized photographs, in the archives, arranged by series. - Diocese of Toronto Anglican Church of Canada Archives
The Diocesan Archives provides safe, secure and controlled storage for non-current parish records, including baptism, marriage and burial records, proof of status for legal purposes as well as genealogical purposes. Archives also holds the parish history files and frequently receives calls from parishioners seeking historical information for events such as special anniversaries. Photographs and architectural drawings may also be requested and borrowed for displays. - Ontario Jewish Archives
Established in 1973, the Ontario Jewish Archives, Blankenstein Family Heritage Centre, a department of UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, acquires, preserves and makes available documentary sources related to Ontario's Jewish community. - Presbyterial Church in Canada Archives
Our office documents the life and work of the Presbyterian Chuch in Canada by acquiring and preserving records of enduring evidential and historical value to the Church. Our holdings consist of over 3,500 square feet of textual records, 30,000 photographs, hundreds of architectural plans, thousands of hours of audio-visual recordings, and well over a million pages on microfilm. The oldest item in the Archives dates from 1638. - Toronto Public Library Archival Collections
For researchers and professionals the Arts Department on the 5th floor of the Toronto Reference Library offers numerous primary source materials. Unique collections about people and organizations in Canadian and international theatre. Printed ephemera including manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, theatre programs, stage designs, and promptbooks. A small number of collections relating to Canadian dance, music and film. You may view the archival collections in the Marilyn & Charles Baillie Special Collections Centre on the 5th floor of the Toronto Reference Library. - Toronto Ward Museum
Toronto is home to 20 percent of Canada’s immigrants. Almost half of Toronto’s population was born outside of Canada and over 180 languages and dialects are spoken throughout the city. As one of the most multicultural cities in the world, immigration has been integral to Toronto’s past and present. While a number of organizations in Toronto have done much work to preserve and document this history, Toronto currently does not have a go-to destination where the public can discover and interact with this wealth of stories. The city needs a cultural institution that strengthens our understanding of immigration history through innovation in interpretation and public engagement. Working with our partners, the Toronto Ward Museum will bring the city’s untold history to life, and engage visitors and locals alike in a conversation about pluralism and what it means for our communities. - United Church of Canada Archives
The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, includes the General Council Archives and the Ontario Regional Council Archives serving Canadian Shield Regional Council, Antler River Watershed Regional Council, Western Ontario Waterways Regional Council, Horseshoe Falls Regional Council, Shining Waters Regional Council, East Central Ontario Regional Council and parts of Eastern Ontario Outaouais. The Archives holds the records in a variety of formats of the General Council Office and those of the Regions, Communities of Faith, former Conferences and presbyteries of the Central Ontario region. - CAMH Archives
Founded in 1982, the mandate of the original Archives for the History of Canadian Psychiatry and Mental Health Services was to preserve, and make available for study, material concerning the history and development of psychiatry including addictions and other mental health services in Canada, especially Ontario. In 2000, that original mandate was broadened towards a phased evolution as the Corporate (non-clinical/patient) Archives for the permanent operational and administrative records of CAMH. - West Toronto Junction Historical Society
The West Toronto Junction Historical Society is a non-profit, charitable, volunteer organization. It was formed in 1980 by a group of local residents with the active support of the City of Toronto Planning and Development Department and Councillor David White. It was then incorporated in 1981 as an affiliate of the Ontario Historical Society. - Ontario Historical Society
Founded in 1888, The Ontario Historical Society is a non-profit corporation and registered charity; a non-government group bringing together people of all ages, all walks of life and all cultural backgrounds interested in preserving some aspect of Ontario’s history.
Online Collections
- Cornell University Witchcraft Collection
Part of Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell’s Witchcraft Collection contains over 3,000 titles documenting the history of the Inquisition and the persecution of witchcraft, primarily in Europe. - EuroDocs: Online Sources for European History
These open access sources are readily available to all -- without fees or subscriptions. Links connect to European primary historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. In addition you will find video or sound files, maps, photographs or other imagery, databases, and other documentation. The sources cover a broad range of historical happenings (political, economic, social and cultural). The order of documents is chronological wherever possible. - Fordham University: Internet Modern History Sourcebook
The Internet Modern History Sourcebook is one of a series of history primary sourcebooks. It is intended to serve the needs of teachers and students in college survey courses in modern European history and American history, as well as in modern Western Civilization and World Cultures. Although this part of the Internet History Sourcebooks Project began as a way to access texts that were already available on the Internet, it now contains hundreds of texts made available locally. - Fordham University Internet Medieval SourcebookThe Internet Medieval Sourcebook is organized as three main index pages, with a number of supplementary indices. Each individual section is still large - an organizational goal here is to avoid incessant "clicking" to get between pages and to information.
- Google Arts & Culture
Google Arts & Culture features content from over 1000 leading museums and archives who have partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to bring the world's treasures online. - Hathi Trust Digital Library
Founded in 2008, HathiTrust is a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving 17+ million digitized items. HathiTrust offers reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. copyright law, computational access to the entire corpus for scholarly research, and other emerging services based on the combined collection. HathiTrust members steward the collection — the largest set of digitized books managed by academic and research libraries — under the aims of scholarly, not corporate, interests. - Library and Archives Canada Image Search
Search the image collections held by Library and Archives Canada. Searches can be narrowed down by type (architectural drawings, art, maps, objects, photographs, and stamps). - Library of Congress Digital Collections
Access online collections: view maps & photographs; read letters, diaries & newspapers; hear personal accounts of events; listen to sound recordings & watch historic films. - National Archives
Links to digitized photograph collections held by the US National Archives. - Nines: Nineteenth-century Scholarship Online
NINES (Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship) is a scholarly organization devoted to forging links between the material archive of the nineteenth century and the digital research environment of the twenty-first. Our activities are driven by three primary goals:
to serve as a peer-reviewing body for digital work in the long 19th-century (1770-1920), British and American;
to support scholars’ priorities and best practices in the creation of digital research materials;
to develop software tools for new and traditional forms of research and critical analysis. - The Victorian Web
The Victorian Web originated in hypermedia environments (Intermedia, Storyspace) that existed long before the World Wide Web. One of the oldest academic and scholarly websites, it entered the Internet in 1994. The Victorian Web takes an approach that differs markedly from many Internet projects. The Victorian Web resents its images and documents, including entire books, as nodes in a network of complex connections. In other words, it emphasizes the link rather than the search tool (though it has one) and presents information linked to other information rather than atomized and isolated
Creative Commons License
This guide has been created by the Toronto Metropolitan University Library and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License unless otherwise marked.
