Primary Sources for European History

The National Archives is the official archive and publisher for the UK government, and for England and Wales. Its collection of over 11 million historical government and public records is one of the largest in the world. The National Archives provides research guides and access to some digitized materials.

Founded by the Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament Trust in 2003, BHO is a digital library of printed primary and secondary sources from Britain and Ireland. While the focus of the collection is on texts produced between 1300-1800, the collection represents the history of Britain from Anglo-Saxon times to the 20th century.

This resource is a fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court between 1674-1913.

The national library of the UK and the largest library in the world, BL also contains copies of every book published in UK and Ireland.

The library provides access to materials on the history of Wales, including digitized collections of important manuscripts and other documents in Welsh history.

The largest library in Scotland, the National Library specializes in materials related to the history of Scotland, and provides access to some digitized materials, including medieval manuscripts, films, books, and maps.

The purpose of this arm of the Scottish government is to collect, preserve and produce information about Scotland's people and history and make it available to inform current and future generations.

This collection draws on information from a wide variety of sources to delineate changes in the statistical make-up and social backdrop to life across the variety of socio-economic groupings in Britain between 1801 and 2000. The archive features comprehensive statistics from general elections and census reports throughout the period, alongside historical maps outlining the changing landscape of Britain and a significant collection of British travel writing. This resource is sponsored by the University of Portsmouth and JISC.

Digitized materials from the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

The mission of the Library is to collect, preserve, promote and make accessible the documentary and intellectual record of the life of Ireland and to contribute to the provision of access to the larger universe of recorded knowledge.

Occupying a key position in the cultural and intellectual life of the nation, the National Archives holds the records of the modern Irish State which document its historical evolution and the creation of its national identity.

Cultural heritage repositories at UCD hold unique resources that reflect the heritage and history of Ireland. UCD Digital Library provides access to resources from many UCD cultural repositories.

CELT, the Corpus of Electronic Texts, is Ireland's longest running Humanities Computing project. It brings the wealth of Irish literary and historical culture to you on the Internet, for the use and benefit of everyone worldwide. It has a searchable online textbase consisting of over 18.5 million words, in 1620 contemporary and historical documents from many areas, including literature, medicine, and the other arts.

The catalogues of the French national library, a guide to its resources, and 1,700 links to other libraries and reference tools under the heading Les signets de la Bibliothèque.

The site gives access to the digitised holdings of the Bibliothèque nationale de France from the Middle Ages through to the early 20th century together with works from other French libraries, museums and organisations.

In the online catalogue you can explore the resources of the Archives Nationales via over 24,000 finding aids detailing the collections and 14 000 notes defining the entities (organisations and individuals) from which the archives originate; directly consult over 1.9 million digitised archives and LEONORE database documents (records of Légion d'honneur holders, 1800-1976, partly digitised).

Spain's Biblioteca Nacional receives and stores copies of all the books published in Spain. It also holds an extremely valuable collection of incunabula, manuscripts, illustrations, drawings, photographs, audio recordings, musical scores, etc.

The Hispanic Digital Library is the digital library of the Biblioteca Nacional de España. It provides access free of charge to thousands of digitised documents, including books printed from the 15th to the 19th century, manuscripts, drawings, engravings, pamphlets, posters, photographs, maps, atlases, music scores, historic newspapers and magazines and audio recordings.

PARES is hosted by the Government of Spain, to be specific, by the Department of Education, Culture, and Sports. It contains a searchable index of documents from all over Spain.

Search the holdings Netherland's National Library. Some resources are only available to residents of the Netherlands.

Search the archives of the Netherlands. The collection consists of 137 km of documents, 15 million photographs and nearly 300,000 historical maps and drawings and 800 terabyte of digital files.

Delpher gives you access to four centuries of digitized news from newspapers, periodicals and radio bulletins, and to hundreds of thousands of books Contains Early Dutch Books Online and other resources.

The Memory of the Netherlands is a database containing paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures, ceramics, stamps, posters and newspaper clippings from more than a hundred Dutch museums, archives and libraries.

Digitized collections at the Royal Library of Belgium.

Flandrica.be is a web portal for fully digitised materials from Flemish heritage libraries. The corpus consists of ‘Flandrica’, publications produced in Flanders or dealing with Flanders, and unique materials from the Flemish heritage such as manuscripts.

DONum is a Digitized Object Depot developed by the partner institutions of the Interuniversity Library of the French Community ( BICfB ). DONum brings together digitized heritage collections within each partner institution. This portal therefore offers a single point of access to several thousand digital objects stored in libraries, archives, documentation centers or services of the various universities of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation

Search the collections of Luxembourg's National Library.

Digitized works from the National Library of Luxembourg.

The German National Library is entrusted with the task of collecting, permanently archiving, bibliographically classifying and making available to the general public all German and German-language publications from 1913, foreign publications about Germany, translations of German works, and the works of German-speaking emigrants published abroad between 1933 and 1945.

Unrestricted access to Germany’s cultural and scientific heritage: millions of books, archived items, images, sculptures, pieces of music and other sound documents, as well as films and scores, from all over Germany.

Access to archives from German history, including a digital image archive with over 11 million images.

German History in Documents and Images (GHDI) is a comprehensive collection of primary source materials documenting Germany's political, social, and cultural history from 1500 to the present. It comprises original German texts, all of which are accompanied by new English translations, and a wide range of visual imagery.

Search the holdings of Austria's national library.

ALO is a digital library with more than 15.000 documents from the 11. Century up to the present. Books, journals, newspapers, manuscripts, theses and scientific essays are available in digitized form or as PDF.

Digitized Austrian newspapers covering the 19th century to the first third of the 20th.

Search the holdings of Switzerland's national library.

Swiss newspapers digitized by the Swiss National Library and its partners.

The platform for digitized rare books from Swiss libraries.

Unified access to digitized collections of Hungarian history.

Primary and secondary sources from this Central European region.

Digital resources from the Royal Library of Denmark.

Search the holdings of the Swedish National Library.

Search the digital collections of the Norwegian national library. The library aims to digitize every Norwegian book in its collection by the mid-2020s.

Digitized archives and other materials from the national library of Iceland.

Search the print and digital collections of the national library of Finland.

One of 2 national central libraries in Italy (the other is in Rome), this site provides access to digitized materials in the library's collection.

The Directorate General for Archives, as required by the Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape and within the guidelines indicated by the Ministry, promotes and coordinates activities related to the conservation, protection and enhancement of national archival heritage.

One of 2 national central libraries in Italy (the other is in Florence), this site provides access to digitized materials in the library's collection.

Digital collections of National Library of Naples.

Over 16,000 digitized items from the Vatican Library.

Search the print and digital collections of National Library of Greece.

Online Collection of the Greek General State Archives.

Digital version of the print library, which presents Greek and Latin texts alongside their English translations.

Diotima provides easy access to a wide variety of translated materials.

Greek and Latin transcriptions and English translations, plus secondary sources and museum photographs.

Collection of historical maps of Greece.

Search the print and digital collections of the national library of Russia.

Information from and about official archives in Russia.

Catalog and images from the Soviet period and some before.

Digitized images of Russia and the Soviet Union collected from archives and museums throughout Russia.

Posters from the Russian Civil War, 1918-1922.

Over 1300 posters from the Russian and Soviet period through to today.

750 photographs of every-day life in the Soviet Union (1919-1921 and 1930) from the papers of Robert L. Eichelberger and Frank Whitson Fetter.

The Library acquired the majority of the albums in this digital presentation during the early 1930s. Many were originally part of Romanov palace libraries nationalized by the Soviet government and sold abroad for hard currency.

This website is not designed as a history of Albania or of the Albanians, but is simply a compilation of historical texts - some important and some less important - from the eleventh to the twenty-first centuries, which will add to an understanding of the history and development of Albania and its people.