Useful Tips
Browse footnotes and bibliographies of books, encyclopedias, and articles for information about primary sources.
Search the Library Catalog for primary sources--both unpublished manuscripts and modern editions in print and online, sometimes in translation, of original primary sources. Use keywords such as:
- sources
- diaries
- personal narratives
- interviews
- letters
- correspondence
What is Microfilm?
When you can't find published primary sources, you may be able to get ahold of electronic or microfilm copies

Much archival primary source material has been filmed over the years, but using it will take some getting used to. Ask for help with microfilm, microfiche, or microcards at a reference desk!
Using Microfilm
A sense of what it is and how you use it

Archival Collections
Digital Collections
-
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)ECCO is a comprehensive digital edition of The Eighteenth Century microfilm set, which has aimed to include every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas, between 1701 and 1800. Consists of books, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera. Subject categories include history and geography; fine arts and social sciences; medicine, science, and technology; literature and language; religion and philosophy; law; general reference. Also included are significant collections of women writers of the eighteenth century, collections on the French Revolution, and numerous eighteenth-century editions of the works of Shakespeare. Where they add scholarly value or contain important differences, multiple editions of each individual work are offered.
Primary Sources in Detail
Electronic resources
This is just a sampling of the many, many primary resources available in electronic form.
Try the "history: primary sources" section of the Cornell library databases list.
-
Accessible archivesA site devoted to primary source material in American history. Information archived is from leading historical periodicals and books, and includes eyewitness accounts of historical events, vivid descriptions of daily life, editorial observations, commerce as seen through advertisements, and genealogical records. Databases are encyclopedic in scope and allow full Boolean, group, name, string, and truncated searches. Transcribed individual entries are complete with full bibliographic citations and are organized chronologically. Titles will continue to be added covering important topics and time periods for scholars and students of all academic levels.
-
Hathi Trust Digital LibraryAs a digital repository for the nation's great research libraries, HathiTrust brings together the immense collections of partner institutions. It was initially conceived as a collaboration of the thirteen universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, the University of California system, and the University of Virginia to establish a repository for those universities to archive and share their digitized collections, and quickly expanded to include additional partners with fast growing treasure of digitized collections.
-
Internet Archive (archive.org)
"The Internet Archive "was founded [in 1996] to build an 'Internet library,' with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format," such as Internet sites and other cultural digital artifacts (i.e. movies, interviews, images, etc.). Using the Internet Archive's "Wayback Machine," users can look at their own Web site and track how it has evolved. Plug-ins are made available as needed. "Special Wayback Collections" provide a sense of how events such as September 11, 2001, were recorded digitally. This site is appropriate for anyone doing research on the history of the Internet and for those who want to see how the Internet has changed over the years." "Best Free Reference Web Sites 2002." RUSA Quarterly, Fall 2002; reviewed Feb. 19, 2002.
Electronic resources: Historical Journal Articles
-
JSTORJSTOR is a fully-searchable database containing the back issues of several hundred scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, mathematics, music, ecology and botany, business, and other fields. It includes the following collections: Arts & sciences I, II and III, General science, Ecology and botany, Business, Language and literature.
-
ProQuest Historical NewspapersThis database offers full-text and full-image articles for newspapers dating back to the 19th century. For most titles, the collection includes digital reproductions of every page from every issue, cover to cover, in downloadable PDF files. The database is an ongoing project.
Major Repositories
Peru: Archivo General de la Nación
The Newberry Library's Latin American History Collection
Newberry Library Digital Collections (via Internet Archive)
Yale University Latin American Pamphlet Collection: Peru (Olin Microfiche 794)
The Latin American Pamphlets Collection--available on microfiche--contains approximately 10,000 priceless publications documenting social, political and economic conditions in the region from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. While coverage is strongest for independence movements betweeen 1808 and 1830, particularly in Mexico and Peru, the collection of first-hand accounts, government records, economic reports, biographies, political broadsides, scholarly theses, religious and civic speeches, and playbills is a springboard for countless research projects, ranging from internal social history to the United States-Mexican conflict.
In addition to illuminating Spanish civil society, religion, military, economy, and government in the Andes before nineteenth century independence, the Andean Collection contains religious documents detaling native peoples' "demonic" religious practices, first hand accounts of the Tupac Amaru indigenous rebellion, correspondence by and related to revolutionary leaders Simón Bolívar, José de San Martín, and Antonio José de Sucre, and foreign correspondence sketching Lima society between 1869 and 1871. The collection is mostly focused on Peru, but includes Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela. Personal correspondence, government reports, laws, accounting ledgers, official Church documents, manuscripts and publications document the Bourbon reforms, Indian unrest, the Wars of Independence, the early Republics, and the nineteenth century war of the Peru-Bolivian Confederation. Also of interest are Jesuit reports from indigenous communities in Paraguay and other remote environs. The collection's depth provides insights to both 'everyday' social history as well as the racial, economic, and religious fires that fueled the region's most dramatic conflicts.
Guide to Latin American pamphlets from the Yale University Library, selections from 1600-1900
- v. 5. Peru: Subject guide: Olin Library Reference (Non-Circulating) Microfiche 794 guide
- v. 6. Peru: Author/Title & Chronological guide (as above)
