Frontera Collection
- Frontera Collection of Mexican American MusicThe Arhoolie Foundation's Strachwitz Frontera Collection of commercially produced Mexican and Mexican-American recordings (the Frontera Collection) is the largest repository of Mexican and Mexican-American vernacular recordings in existence.
International Digital Ephemera Project (IDEP)
Digitized materials from international partners in Cuba, South Africa, the Middle East and more.
Cuban materials:
- Film Posters from the Cinemateca
- Cuba y America
- El Figaro
- La Lucha
- Chinese Cuban newspapers Kwong Wah Po and Man Sen Yat Po
What Are Primary Sources?
Primary sources are documents from the time period, people, and events of the time under consideration. Primary sources can be:
- diaries or correspondence
- photographs
- illustrations
- newspaper articles (from the time period)
- manuscripts
- pamphlets, broadsides, or other ephemera
Online Archive of California
A searchable database that provides access to materials such as letters, manuscripts, photographs, oral histories, and works of art held in libraries, museums, archives, and other institutions across California, including the UC campuses. Contains descriptions of over 120,000 images; 50,000 pages of documents, letters, and oral histories; and 8,000 guides to collections.
- Tulancingo (Hildago, Mexico) Manuscript Collection 1567-1882Example of a UCLA Library Special Collections Online Archive of California (OAC) record.
Digital Primary Source Collections
- Age of Exploration This link opens in a new window
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Includes five centuries of journeys across the globe, scientific discoveries, the expansion of European colonialism, conflict over territories and trade routes, and decades-long search and rescue attempts in this multi-archive collection dedicated to the history of exploration. Collection also includes images, video, and audio. - Archives of Latin American and Caribbean History, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century This link opens in a new window
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Over 1.3 million pages of archival material (manuscripts, monographs, newspapers and periodicals) concerning Latin America and the Caribbean, including major collections about Latin American independence, Brazilian popular groups, Diplomatic activities in Cuba and more. Under this database's former name, Gale World Scholar: Latin America and the Caribbean included some periodicals and reference books that have been moved to Gale’s Dictionary of Literary Biography and Gale eBooks. - Arte Público Hispanic Historical Collection: Series 1 This link opens in a new window
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Content pertaining to US Hispanic history, literature, and culture from colonial times to 1960. Includes historical articles, books, broadsides, newspapers and pamphlets in both Spanish and English. - Arte Público Hispanic Historical Collection: Series 2 This link opens in a new window
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Thematic content focusing on the evolution of Hispanic American civil rights, religious thought, and the growing presence of women writers from the late 19th and 20th centuries. Rare books and newspapers are presented in their original form. Extensive manuscript collections of both organizations and individuals are included. - Border and Migration Studies Online This link opens in a new window
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Documents, videos, and images providing historical background on 30 key border areas, including: US and Mexico; the European Union; Afghanistan; Israel; Turkey; The Congo; Argentina; China; and Thailand. - Brazilian and Portuguese History and Culture: the Oliveira Lima Library (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new window
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Historical books and pamphlets focusing on Brazil and the early period of Portugal's overseas expansion, mostly covering 1500 to 1930. - Calisphere This link opens in a new windowOver one million photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more from the collections digitized and contributed by all ten campuses of the University of California and other important libraries, archives, and museums throughout the state.
- Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969 This link opens in a new window
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Documents from the British Foreign and Colonial Offices which cover the whole of South and Central America, plus the non-British islands of the Caribbean, from just after the final Spanish withdrawal from mainland America in the 1820s to the height of the Cold War in the 1960s. Includes coverage of revolutions, territorial changes and political movements, foreign financial interests, industrial and infrastructural development (including the building of the Panama Canal), wars, slavery, immigration from Europe, and and relations with indigenous peoples. - David Rumsey Map Collection This link opens in a new windowCollection of mostly historical maps. Global coverage, with emphasis on North and South America.
- Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC)Cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. dLOC provides access to digitized versions of Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections.
- Early European Books This link opens in a new window
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Traces the history of printing in Europe from its origins through to the close of the 17th century, offering full-color, high-resolution facsimile images of rare and hard-to-access printed sources. - Empire Online This link opens in a new window
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Primary source manuscripts and secondary essays relevant to Empire Studies. The sections cover Cultural Contacts, 1492-1969; Empire Writing and the Literature of Empire; The Visible Empire; Religion & Empire; and Race, Class & Colonialism, 1783-1969. - Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration and Cultural Exchange This link opens in a new window
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Portal that includes visual, manuscript and printed materials sourced from multiple libraries, companies, and trade organizations. It charts the history of 15 major commodities, including chocolate, coffee, oil, and sugar. - Guatemala Collection This link opens in a new window
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Government and Church Documents for Sacatepéquez (1587-1991). Concentrates primarily on the national era, particularly 1824 to 1948. The documents of the collection are organized into fifty-seven distinct categories that include economy, agriculture, forced labor, complaints, crime, natural disasters, municipal affairs, education, elections, military, public works, religion, public health, lands and estates, development, resignations and solicitations, regulations, festivities, and maps. - Immigrations, Migrations and Refugees Global Perspectives, 1941-1996 This link opens in a new window
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Translated and English-language radio and television broadcasts, newspapers, periodicals, government documents and books providing global insight on immigration in the mid-to-late 20th century - Latin American Anarchist and Labour Periodicals Online This link opens in a new window
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Periodicals documenting the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist period (1890-1920) of Latin American labor movements. - Latin American Women Writers This link opens in a new window
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A collection of full text literature and non-fiction by Latin American women from the 17th century colonial period to the present. Includes prose, poetry, and drama composed by women writing in Mexico, Central America, and South America. Also included are essays by Latin American feminists and revolutionaries, who address both the universal concerns of women in every age and the distinctive issues of their struggles in the region. - Mexican Cinema This link opens in a new window
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Online collection of cinema periodicals, lobby cards, and flyers from the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema, including Cinema Reporter and Cine Mundial.
- Migration to New Worlds This link opens in a new window
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Primary sources from 1800 to 1924 concerning migration from Europe and Asia to the Americas and Australasia. Includes both first-person accounts such as letters, travel journals, diaries, and oral histories; and supplementary materials such as scrapbooks, government papers, maps, emigration pamphlets, and ship plans.
- Poertal de Archivos EspañolesGeneral portal for Spanish archives, including the Archivo General de Indias, Spain's colonial archives
- Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926 This link opens in a new window
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Scanned books, pamphlets, serials, and other works about the Americas. Covers a span of 400 years in North, Central, and South America, as well as the Caribbean, and provides primary source material to understand the society, politics, religious beliefs, literature, customs, and events of the times. - Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007 This link opens in a new window
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Collection of digitized documents, maps, and essays concerning the Atlantic slave trade, primarily from British and North American libraries. Includes 18th and 19th-century court records from Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, and North Carolina.
- Theological Commons: Latin AmericaThe Latin America Collection at Princeton Theological Seminary comprises over 28,000 books in Spanish and Portuguese and 1,300 periodicals supporting instruction and research in Latin American religious culture.
Guides to Archives and Collections
Look for directories of archives on the topic, country, or period that you are researching. The following are some examples of general Latin American resources, as well as specific sources on Mexico. Search web sites of institutions for the most recent information about collections, access to materials, and service.
- Guía de archivos y bibliotecas.Published by Universidad Iberoamericana, Departamento de Historia.
- Guía de archivos y bibliotecas privados. 2d ed.Published by Asociación Mexicana de Archivos y Bibliotecas Privados.
Microform and Digital Collections
These are a few examples of the many collections containing primary sources that are available to UCLA researchers. Additional microform collections are available at the Center for Research Libraries, and may be borrowed for lengthly periods of time.
- Calafia Guide to Large Microform Sets on Latin AmericaHoldings of large microform sets on Latin America at the libraries of Stanford University, the University of California, the University of Southern California, and the Center for Research Libraries.
- Brazil’s popular groups, 1966-1986A microfilm collection of materials (2,271 pieces) issued by socio-political, religious, labor, and minority grass-roots organizations in Brazil between 1966 and 1986. There is this main record and 23 supplements.
Reel Guides to the collection: https://www.loc.gov/acq/ovop/rio/bpg/bpg-reelguides.html - Cuba and the American sugar trade, 1897-1920 : the Braga Brothers Collection.Primary Source Microfilm Latin American history and culture: an archival record. Series 7.