Primary Sources - Resource Guide

The American Museum of Photography is an award-winning Virtual Museum dedicated to educating, informing, and sharing great photographs with millions of Internet visitors world-wide. Exhibitions are drawn from the Museum's Collection, started by Wm. B. Becker more than 35 years ago. The Collection includes five thousand individual images, from the earliest daguerreotype portraits to the work of Ansel Adams. Each photograph has been chosen for its visual impact as well as for the importance of its content.

Digital images, audio and media clips of American history and culture

The Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) contains catalog records and digital images representing a rich cross-section of still pictures held by the Prints & Photographs Division and, in some cases, other units of the Library of Congress.

Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.

Multiple collections of photographs, postcards, maps, etc.

Discover inspiring images and the history of photography through the collections of European cultural heritage institutions.

The David Rumsey Map Collection was started over 30 years ago and contains more than 150,000 maps. The collection focuses on rare 16th through 21st century maps of North and South America, as well as maps of the World, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. The collection includes atlases, wall maps, globes, school geographies, pocket maps, books of exploration, maritime charts, and a variety of cartographic materials including pocket, wall, children's, and manuscript maps. Items range in date from about 1550 to the present.

This worksheet from the National Archives can help analyze maps.

The collection includes maps dating back to the early 1700s. Most of the maps deal with the settlement and development of Missouri, North America, the United States, and the Louisiana Purchase.

Over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements covering five product categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda - dated between 1911 and 1955

This worksheet from the National Archives can help analyze cartoons.

Herblock! includes eighty-two original cartoon drawings, primarily selected from the Library’s extensive Herbert L. Block Collection. These cartoons represent Block’s ability to wield his pen effectively and artfully, using it to condemn corruption and expose injustice, inequality, and immorality on topics including the Great Depression, the rise of fascism and World War II, communism and the Cold War, Senator Joseph McCarthy, race relations, Richard Nixon, the Reagan era, the 2000 election, and more.

This collection contains 298 postcards of Jefferson City, Missouri that date from 1898-1960. Missouri Digital Heritage

The Curt Teich Postcard Archives Collection is widely regarded as the largest public collection of postcards and related materials in the United States. When received at the Newberry Library it was estimated at 2.5 million items, and well over a half-million unique postcard images.

Collection from European archives, libraries, and museums.

Posters include Untied States, Russian, commercial, circus, etc.

The 525 items in this collection comprise a Propaganda Poster collection primarily consisting of images from 1914-1945, the start of World War I to the end of World War II.