Now is a great time to be researching history! Every day, more and more content that was previously accessible only in special collections and archives is now being scanned, digitized, and posted on the web.
Search for primary source documents both online and in the library catalog, Library Search.
Books published before 1926 are in the Public Domain, so the full-text of many historical books may be found via Google Book Search.
Search Library Search to find books containing primary source resources.
Try adding one of the following words to your search to find collections of primary sources:
"Documents"
"Sources"
e.g., "Korean War AND Sources"
"Civil War AND Sources"
Search Library Search to find books by a particular person using the "Advanced Search" author field, e.g. " Voltaire, 1694-1778." You might also want to limit the language to "English".
Project Gutenberg is a collection of over 30,000 e-texts in the Public Domain. Use the "Author" and "Title" searches to locate works by a particular person.