Sources of Interest

Students preparing for the National History Day competition will want to consult some of the following websites for information. These are sites that offer primary source newspapers, archived government documents, and assorted other historical documents.

Chronicling America
Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1836-1922 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.

The Avalon Project
Through Yale University's Lillian Goldman Law Library, this site is a repository for documents related to law, history and diplomacy. The contents span from 4000bce to the present.

Project Diana
Through Yale University's Lillian Goldman Law Library, this site houses information about assorted United States human rights cases.

British Film Institute
This database contains information collected by the BFI since 1933. It holds over 800,000 film titles – including television programmes, documentaries, newsreels, as well as educational and training films – and is updated daily.

The Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution and serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, maps and manuscripts in its collections.

Baylor University Library
Baylor University hosts the regional Heart of Texas National History Day competition. With its proximity to Waco ISD, our students find that a visit to the library and its friendly librarians is an extremely rewarding activity when looking for source material.

Newsreel Archive
This online archive has the collection of complete newsreels and newsreel excerpts from the heyday of the theatrical newsreel in the 1930′s, 1940′s and 1950′s. This site is searchable.

Through the State of Texas TexQuest Initiative, students can also access the following databases for information:

Access Gale:
Password: learn

Access Britannica Online School Edition and Spanish
Username: j161914
Password: learn

Access American West and American Indian Histories and Culture:
Username: j161914
Password: learn

Additional helpful sources are offered by the National History Day organization as follows:

Organizations and Institutions...