Research Guides: HIST 027: Living with Total War: Europe, 1912-1923 (SC): Primary sources available online

Primary Sources Available Online

Many primary source documents are available to view online. Some examples include diaries and journals, letters (correspondence), transcribed speeches and sermons, manuscripts, newspaper articles, photographs, posters, and advertisements. Here are just a few online collections:

First World War Poetry Archive
Far more than just poetry, this site offers an extensive collection of primary documents related to the First World War including film, audio, posters, photographs, letters, manuscripts, and more.

Main Site
Audio Collecton
Film Collection
The Great War Archive (letters, diaries, maps, and other items submitted by family members of WWI soldiers)
Publications of War (a few newspapers, magazines, and journals including publications written by soldiers)
Imperial War Museums: WWI-related documents
The (British) Imperial War Museums have digitized versions of thousands of documents available on their website. Since there are over 77,000 WWI-related documents listed, consider using the filters on the left side to narrow down your search results by topic, country, etc. The collection of military documents is extensive but the IWM collections also include materials on the home front, particularly in England. Many, but not all documents are available online.
The World War I Document Archive
The WWI Document Archive offers an extensive collection of links to primary historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. When looking at documents linked from this site (and others), consider the impact of transcribing or otherwise changing the document from its original format.

For more resources, see the collection of links to other WWI sites.
University of Wisconsin World War I Collection
Browse or search this collection of facsimiles of WWI-related documents.

Europeana This link opens in a new window
Use Europeana to search through millions of digitized books, art, newspapers, and other sources from European museums, galleries and national libraries.
Gallica This link opens in a new window
Gallica is a digital library of French and francophone culture maintained by the Bibliothque nationale de France. Contains numerous electronic texts, images, maps, animation, and sound files of French and other publications in history, literature, science, philosophy, law, economics, and political science. Covers the Middle Ages to the present.
Internet Archive This link opens in a new window
The Internet Archive is a non-profit organization that is building an Internet library, with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format. The Internet Archive includes more than 300,000 texts, as well as audio, moving images, software and archived web pages. A good source for books printed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including many travel accounts.
Empire Online
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Offers images of original documents taken from libraries and archives around the world including correspondence, diaries, literature and illustrations. Includes essays by leading scholars in the field of Empire Studies. Covers a range of topics and includes Africa, the Americans, Australasia, Oceania and South Asia. Includes documents published between 1492-1969.

The First World War: Sources for History (UK National Archives)
This curated exhibition makes available an online selection of unique and richly varied source material on the First World War, set in its historical context.

The exhibition draws on historical documents, film and sound available in Britain's National Archives and one of its leading museums.
The Long, Long Trail
This site (maintained by WWI enthusiasts not scholars) includes some valuable sources for researchers interested in British military history. Most are transcriptions rather than scans.

Particular highlights include proclamations mobilizing the British war effort, extracts from units' war diaries, despatches from the front (reports from commanders about battles and daily activities). (Despatches can also be found on the Daily Gazette website, although it's a bit tricky to navigate.)