Contact your liaison librarian
Consult your liaison librarian!
Several primary source collections are recommended below. They were chosen for being broadly applicable to the study of the medieval period.
It is possible there are other collections more focused on your specific topic. If you are not able to gather enough primary sources in the collections listed below, contact the Department of History's liaison librarian, Joseph Roberts. His contact information is on the left side of this page.
Primary source collections for Medieval history
These collections of primary sources are specifically focused on the medieval period. The are hosted by educational and cultural institutions on the open web.
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Internet Medieval Sourcebook An online collection of primary sources mostly related to Medival Europe, hosted by Fordham University. Includes maps and some full-text documents.
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The British Library - medieval and early modern Britain The British Library's archives has a section dedicated to primary sources for medieval and early modern British studies, with a wide breadth of resources available from broad to specific study. Though there are a wealth of resources dedicated to literature, the British Library is an excellent source for information and primary texts related to the historical, political, legal, and social culture of the British Isles prior to 1600.
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De Re Militari - primary sources De Re Militari was created by the Society for Medieval Military History, which furthers scholarship about warfare during the medieval period. The society's officers include faculty members from a number of universities.
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Epistolae: Medieval Women's Letters Epistolae is hosted by the Columbia University Libraries. It contains letters written by and addressed to women from the 4th through 13th centuries. All of the letters were originally written in Latin, though they appear with English translations.
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The Medieval & Classical Literature Library The MCLL offers a selection of primary sources. The site was created by Douglas B. Killings and Roy Tennant.
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Silk Road Narratives: A Collection of Historical Texts Hosted by the University of Washington, this site offers a selection of reproduced primary sources related to the history of the Silk Road.
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Middle English Texts Series METS is an joint effort by scholars at the University of Rochester and the University of Western Michigan. It seeks to "make available to teachers and students texts which occupy an important place in the literary and cultural canon but which have not been readily available in student editions."
Broad primary source collections
These are broader collections of digitized primary sources. They are more diverse in the topics and time periods they cover, but might include useful primary sources from the medieval period.
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Digital Bodleian In an effort to make portions of our collections open to a wide variety of users from around the world for learning, teaching and research, the Bodleian Libraries have been digitizing library content for nearly twenty years. The result is over 650,000 freely available digital objects and almost another 1 million images awaiting release.
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Digital Newberry (The Newberry Archive) The Newberry Archive has a vast digitized collection available for viewing via their open access policy. Based in one of Chicago’s oldest research libraries, the Newberry’s digital collection is an excellent resource for Early Modern manuscripts, maps, photographs, artworks, and other unique print resources that would otherwise be unavailable to us in Muncie. They have dedicated sections of Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern Studies materials, special topics, and the ability to search by collection and century.
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The Folger Shakespeare Library's online resources The Folger Shakespeare Library has an online collection available for viewing. It includes primary source material related to Shakespeare's body of work across multiple archives, collections, and exhibitions. Interested in learning more about Shakespeare’s life and what England was like while he was writing? Start here!
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Hanover Historical Texts Collection The Hanover Historical Texts Collection makes available digital versions of historical texts for use in history and humanities courses. Search by keyword, or browse the listings below.
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Avalon Project Key historic documents in full text.
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EuroDocs: Primary Historical Documents from Western Europe Selected translations of primary historical documents from Western Europe.
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Hathi Trust A large book digitization project where you will find a variety of kinds of primary sources.
Collections of primary sources published in book format
Primary sources are sometimes collected and published in book format, e.g. a collection of letters by a noteworthy person or their journals. You can search for such collections by adding one or more special terms to your searches.
- Correspondence for letters and other forms of correspondence.
- Diaries for diaries and journals.
- Biography for autobiographies and memories - although this term will also return secondary biographies; look for books that are both by and about the person you are researching.
- Documents for documents and records of various kinds.
Most research resources have an advanced search option that includes menus next to the boxes where type your search terms. They often show a default option like "all fields" or "keyword." To add the terms above to a search for books, type one of them in a search box and change the adjacent menu to "subject," "subjects," or "subject terms," as the case may be.
There are two places to search for books at Ball State University Libraries.
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OneSearch This link opens in a new windowOneSearch includes books that are available at Ball State University Libraries.
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WorldCat This link opens in a new windowWorldCat include books at Ball State University Libraries and thousands of other libraries. Books not available at Ball State can be requested through interlibrary loan.
