What makes a source primary?
Primary sources are original documents and objects which were created at the time. Typical examples include letters, diaries, photos, newspaper articles, eyewitness accounts, autobiographies, government reports, paintings, maps, etc. In actuality, it can be more complicated and can depend on the topic/time period.
Always clarify with your professor.
Selected Primary Source Collections
- Gale Primary SourcesPrimary sources from the Eighteenth Century and Nineteenth Century collections, Making of Modern Law, and other Archives products. Global in scope.
- Translated Texts for HistoriansClassical and Medieval primary sources in translation.
- Online Medieval Primary Source BibliographyA guide to translated sources. Geography and type features particularly useful.
- Internet Medieval SourcebookSelected excerpts of sources translated into English full-text online arranged chronologically and geographically. Helpful for getting a sense of the types of medieval sources and for bibliography.
- British History OnlineCore printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles.
- Parker Library on the WebDigitized medieval manuscripts including key Old English, Anglo-Norman, and Middle English texts. Also includes music, medieval travelogues and maps, bestiaries, royal ceremonies, historical chronicles, Bibles, and illuminated manuscripts.
Newspapers
- ProQuest historical newspapersMajor North American newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post from the 19th century until about 2010.
- African American Newspapers OnlineUse this guide to find newspapers by and about the African American communities in the US.
- ProQuest Digitized Newspapers and ProQuest Recent NewspapersTen major newspaper titles are linked from the ProQuest Digitized Newspapers home page.
Ten more U.S. titles are part of the Recent Newspapers US Stand-alone collection. These titles are only accessible by browsing the News & Newspapers databases list under change Databases in the ProQuest interface.
Five additional multi-title Regional Collections covering 41 newspapers are cataloged as ProQuest Recent Newspapers: Regional Collections.
Coverage for all titles starts from either 1/1/2008, 1/1/2009, 1/1/2010, 1/1/2011, or 1/1/2012 with a three-month embargo on full text.
Useful Tips for finding printed primary sources in library catalogs
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 the "advanced search" with the terms for primary sources below as subjects, not keywords.
Library catalog/database terms for primary sources:
- sources
- bibliographies
Sources means primary sources in a library catalog. It can mean a printed, edited, modern edition of an archival source; or it can mean a collection of excerpted, translated sources which might have the words "reader" or "documents" in the title; or it can mean a book about primary and secondary sources. All are invaluable. The footnotes and bibliography of any of them will lead to more sources.
Bibliographies are whole books devoted to a topic, usually a broader topic such as "Vietnam War" or "Early Modern Europe." They are a list of sources, often primary and secondary, generally described and annotated. Extremely helpful for getting a handle on sources and the scholarly literature on a topic.