Guides: History: Primary Sources for Student Projects: Books and e-books

Open Internet Collections

Google Books
Google Books contains many complete public domain works, as well as excerpts of more recently published books. Google Books has helped to make more than 40 million books discoverable, in more than 400 languages.
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital library, with access to 70,000 free eBooks.

Finding Books and e-books

Depending on their content and how they are used, many books are primary sources or contain them. When searching, use or look for some of the below terms to signal a primary source:

Charters
Correspondence
Diaries
Interviews
Letters
Manuscripts
Personal narratives
Photographs
Speeches

In LumenPlus, you can limit by source type, to only see books and ebooks.

Library Databases

Project MUSE: Open Access This link opens in a new window
Project MUSE offers open access (OA) books, journals, and digital humanities works from several distinguished university presses, scholarly societies, and independent not-for-profit academic publishers. Through our open access hosting programs, we are able to offer publishers a platform for their OA content which ensures visibility, discoverability, and wide dissemination. These materials are freely available to libraries and users around the world.
Sabin Americana, 1500 - 1926 This link opens in a new window
An online collection of books, pamphlets, serials and other works about the Americas, from the time of their discovery to the early 1900s; based on Joseph Sabin's famed bibliography, Bibliotheca Americana – A Dictionary of Books Relating to America From its Discovery to the Present Time.