The Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute is pleased to launch the website Fontes: Open Access Sources for Ukrainian History. Fontes is a database of online, open-access resources for original research on the history of Ukraine. The name Fontes refers to the Latin word for “sources,” as our project aims to connect students, researchers, and the public with freely available primary resources for researching Ukraine’s past, from the prehistoric era through the twenty-first century.
This project was born out of the need to promote digital access to sources on Ukrainian history. This was inspired by limitations to traditional archival access due to the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Our project compiles different websites that host online, open-access primary sources on Ukraine’s history. Each website includes online collections that can be accessed digitally from anywhere in the world. They are all open-access, meaning that any internet user can access sources without a university or institutional affiliation. Each included collection features primary sources, including archival documents, books, periodicals, photographs, films, and more, for use in original research. Users can browse collections by a variety of tags, including major category, region, era, source format, keywords, and language. We feature websites with primary sources in a variety of languages, including English.
Students, researchers, and curious members of the public can locate sources from the entire swath of Ukrainian history, from ancient Scythians to Kyivan Rus’, from the Cossack Hetmanate to the Soviet period and the twenty-first century revolutions and wars.
We are actively looking for additional resources to add to our collection. To inform us of an open-access digital resource on Ukrainian history, please fill out this this form, also available under “Contact and contribute” on the Fontes website.