Primary Sources: 21st Century, 2000-present

Historical collections for the National Digital Library, from the Library of Congress. Provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.

This collection, from the University of California, Santa Barbara, contains more than 85,000 documents pertaining to the presidency. The items span all eras of American history and range from the public papers of George Washington to the victory speech of Barack Obama.

This site offers a database of and index to more than 5000 speeches in text, audio and video formats. The site also contains links to the Top 100 speeches of the 20th century.

From the website: "This online exhibition of letters and audio, created by the Gilder Lehrman Institute and the Legacy Project, features correspondence from over 200 years of American conflicts, ranging from the Revolution to the war in Iraq.

This collection, part of the Library of Congress's Veterans History Project presents the stories of gau service men and women who served their country " while balancing the need to keep their private lives private."

This collection from the Library of Congress includes man interviews that involve post-World War II diplomacy, from the late 1940s to the present day, but the collection also includes accounts of Americans involved in Iraq and Afghanistan after 2003

This collection, which is part of the Library of Congress’s American Memory Project, features more than 30,000 photographs from the Western History and Genealogy Department at the Denver Public Library. Taken between 1860 and 1920, those photographs depict mining in Colorado and the West, the lives of Native American people living west of the Rockies and the towns and landscape of Colorado.

This collection, from the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, features images, texts and maps that illustrate the African-American migration experience.

The Life photo archive, hosted by Google's Image Search, features millions of photographs from the magazine's archives. You can search the database keyword or by category. Those categories include: time period, people, places, events, sports and culture.

The Living Room Candidate contains more than 300 commercials, from every presidential election since 1952.

This website provides access to the full text of the 9/11 Commission Report which describes the circumstances surrounding the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the United States and details the response to the attack.

From the NARA website: "The National Archives was established in 1934 by President Franklin Roosevelt, but its major holdings date back to 1775. They capture the sweep of the past: slave ship manifests and the Emancipation Proclamation..."

This digital public law library, a project of The Native American Rights Fund, is devoted to Federal native American and tribal law.

From the website: The Presidential Oral History Program is systematically and comprehensively debriefing the principal figures in the administrations of Presidents Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Clinton, with plans to do the same for future presidents.

This site contains a database of journalists imprisoned while covering the story or killed in the line of work since 1992. The search interface allows you to explore incidents by year and geographic area.

This site, from the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning allows visitors to add their own personal stories, e-mails images, documents and other digital objects to the electronic record of September 11.2001.

The National Archives and Records administration maintains a site devoted to Historical Election Results. Included on this page are the results of the electoral college votes dating back to 1789.

This site, from the U.S. Library of Congress, contains photographs, correspondence and personal narratives from participants in World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, Persian Gulf War and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

From the website: “The Archives of Women's Political Communication consists of a website developed to guide scholars to present and past speeches of women political leaders.”