Disability Studies Research Guide: Find Primary Sources

Georgia Disability History Archive
Located at the UGA Special Collections Libraries, the Georgia Disability History Archive seeks to preserve the state's disability history. The materials in the archive document the vital and transformative work undertaken by disability activists, advocates, and organizations, along with the experiences of people with disabilities over the past 100-plus years in the state of Georgia. Major subject areas documented in these collections include accessibility, activism and social justice, disability policy and law, citizen advocacy, independent and community living, education, employment, recreation and sports, culture, pride, and more.

The archive was created by the Georgia Disability History Alliance, a group of advocates, self-advocates, organizational leaders, archivists, researchers, and others united to preserve and protect the state’s disability history. The Georgia Disability History Archive is part of the collections of the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies.

All of the resources below provide primary source materials on a wide range of topics, including disabilities. For effective searching of historical materials, use outdated keywords that would have been in use in earlier historical eras, for example “crippled soldiers” or "lunatic asylum" or “feeble minded.”

Adam Matthew Explorer 
Access millions of pages of primary source collections across the entire portfolio of Adam Matthew Digital, spanning content from the 15th-21st centuries. Over 60 digital collections supporting research in history, literature, gender studies, race relations, popular culture, and many other areas of the humanities and social sciences, developed in collaboration with leading libraries and archives.

Digital Library of Georgia
The DLG provides access to key information resources on Georgia history, culture, and life for researchers, scholars, students, and the general public. Primary source materials available via the Digital Library of Georgia include digitized books, manuscripts, letters, diaries, newspapers, pamphlets, maps, government documents, photographs, audio, video, and other resources drawn from Georgia's libraries, archives, museums, and other institutions of cultural heritage.

Digital Public Library of America
A digital library providing access to millions of photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions across the United States, enabling researchers to explore topics in history, literature, and culture through primary source materials.

Historical Newspapers
Search a wide range of historical newspapers provided via the UGA Libraries to explore news media coverage of disabilities-related topics. Newspapers available range from Georgia to nationwide to international, from the 1600s up to modern times.

Human Rights Documents Online
Access more than 76,000 documents from almost 700 non-governmental human rights organizations (NGOs) worldwide. The database brings together a wide variety of reports on human rights issues, including many topics related to disabilities.

DocsTeach
An online tool for teaching with documents from the U.S. National Archives. Provides thousands of digitized primary sources for use in classroom activities.
 

Disability History Museum
Hosts an online library of virtual artifacts, education curricula, and museum exhibits. These programs are designed to foster research and study about the historical experiences of people with disabilities and their communities, with a focus on materials from the United States from 1800 to the present. The Disability History Museum's mission is to foster a deeper understanding about how changing cultural values, notions of identity, laws, and policies have shaped and influenced the experience of people with disabilities, their families, and their communities over time.

Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement
The DRILM collection provided by the University of California - Berkeley consists of more than 100 oral histories with leaders and shapers of the disability rights and independent living movement from the 1960s onward, and an extensive archive of personal papers of activists and records of key organizations. Through its rich collection of primary sources exploring the social and political history of the disability movement, the Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement Project captures the history of a remarkable movement by people with disabilities to win legally defined civil rights and control over their own lives.

It's Our Story
A collection of oral history interviews with disability leaders and activists. It’s Our Story is a national initiative to make disability history public and accessible. It includes more than 1,300 video interviews from disability leaders across the country collected since 2005, presenting first-hand accounts that reflect the diversity and dynamism of people with disabilities, their loved ones, friends, and allies.

Disability Voices
Collection of nearly 600 oral history interviews from the British Library that chart the experiences of people with disabilities. Some of the topics covered include cerebral palsy, disability athletics, education, hearing loss, and polio. Transcripts are included with the audio files.

Nineteenth-Century Disability: Cultures and Contexts
An interdisciplinary digital collection of primary texts and images on physical and cognitive disability, covering the years 1780 to 1914. The archive presents a historical picture of how disability was represented and experienced throughout the nineteenth century. Each piece has been selected and annotated by scholars in the field, with the aim of helping university level instructors and students incorporate a disability studies perspective into their classes and scholarship through access to contextualized primary sources.