Selected online collections
There are a growing number of impressive digital projects to make historical documents and visual materials freely available online. Below are a few examples. Check the websites of relevant national institutions and universities.
- Memoria ChilenaMemoria Chilena is a portal of digitized collections, including documents, photos, videos, etc., from the Chilean national library.
- Primeros LibrosThe Primeros Libros de las Américas project aims to provide digital copies of Mexican books printed before 1601, the first books printed in the Americas. As of 2014, 64 of the 220 known surviving titles have been digitized, many in multiple copies.
- World Digital Library: Latin America & the CaribbeanThe World Digital Library (WDL) is an international collaborative project to makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.
- Latin American Pamphlet Digital Collection (Harvard)Harvard's Widener Library is the repository of many scarce and unique Latin American pamphlets published during the 19th and the early 20th centuries. Chile, Cuba, Bolivia and Mexico are the countries most heavily represented in this collection.
- Digital Archive of the Guatemalan National Police Digital ArchiveA product of broad international collaboration, these digitized documents from the Guatemalan National Police Historical Archive (AHPN) aim to facilitate scholarly and legal research into a vast cache of historical documentation.
Print compilations
The UI Libraries own many volumes of primary sources that have been collected and edited for publication. Some include facsimile images of the original documents and some include transcriptions. Most are only available in Spanish, though some are available translated into English.
Subject headings are useful to narrow a search for primary sources. Common terms include collected works, correspondence, description and travel, diaries, interviews, manuscripts, personal narratives, and sources. For example:
America -- Discovery and exploration -- Spanish -- Collected works.
Mistral, Gabriela, 1889-1957 -- Correspondence.
Puerto Rico -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800.
Guevara, Ernesto, 1928-1967 -- Diaries.
Authors, Panamanian -- 20th century -- Interviews.
Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899-1986 -- Manuscripts -- Facsimiles.
Cuba -- History -- Revolution, 1959 -- Personal narratives.
Yucatán Peninsula -- History -- Sources.
Use the advanced search in InfoHawk:
Subject Guide
Beyond UI Libraries
Check these sources for primary sources (and other material!) not owned by the UI Libraries. Use Interlibrary Loan to request items of interest.
- WorldCat This link opens in a new windowA bibliographic database of over 62,000,000 records from over 2,000 libraries around the world.
- Center for Research LibrariesThe Center for Research Libraries (CRL) is a consortium of North American universities, colleges and independent research libraries. The consortium acquires and preserves newspapers, journals, documents, archives and other traditional and digital resources for research and teaching. These resources are then made available to member institutions through interlibrary loan and electronic delivery. The University of Iowa Libraries is a founding member of CRL.