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.
Atlantic World
- U.K. Parliamentary Papers, 1774 - 2005Reports and other kinds of documents from the House of Commons and House of Lords.
- ProQuest CongressionalMaterial produced by the United States Congress from 1789 to the present.
- Gale Primary SourcesCross-search multiple Gale collections including Making of the Modern World, Eighteenth Century and Nineteenth Century collections, Making of Modern Law, and other Archives products.
- Empire OnlineManuscripts and printed material. Approximately 60,000 images of original documents linked to essays by leading scholars in the field of Empire Studies.
- Caribbean Newspapers, 1718-1876,A major full-text database, is also searchable separately or as part of America's Historical Newspapers.
- British Records on the Atlantic WorldConsists of 12 collections of manuscript material found in England. Includes materials such as journals, correspondence, official records, personal papers, and printed books from over a two hundred year period, all related to British involvement in the Atlantic region, including both Africa and the Americas. It has a wealth of information about Britain’s colonization, commercial, missionary and even literary relations with Africa and the Americas. Alongside the records of Liverpool merchants involved in the infamous Triangular Trade, there are those of slave plantation owners, of early Anglican missionaries, and of naval and customs officials.
- The Guatemala CollectionConcentrates primarily on the national era, particularly 1824 to 1948.
- Voyages: the trans-Atlantic slave trade databaseComprises nearly 35,000 individual slaving expeditions between 1514 and 1866. Records of the voyages have been found in archives and libraries throughout the Atlantic world. They provide information about vessels, enslaved peoples, slave traders and owners, and trading routes.
- The Making of the Modern World
Books, serials, pamphlets, essays and more from 1450-1914 focusing on the development of trade, wealth of the modern, Western world.
Primary Source Collections Online
- Evans digital edition (American Imprints)Books printed in the US during the 17th and 18th centuries.
- Eighteenth century collections online (ECCO)English-language and foreign-language books, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera printed in the UK and the Americas, between 1701 and 1800.
- Early English books online (EEBO)Covers 1450-1661.
- Early encounters in North America: peoples, cultures, and the environment. 1534 to 1850The collection focuses on personal accounts and provides unique perspectives from all of the protagonists, including traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials, both men and women.
- American journeys eyewitness accounts of early American exploration and settlementEyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies.
- Making of AmericaPrimary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction.
- American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital LibraryPrimary-source collections on American history and culture, including photographs, documents, sound recordings, and motion pictures.
- GallicaFrom the French Bibliotheque Nationale. Includes many digitized collections of primary sources originally published in the 19th century.
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:
- diaries
- personal narratives
- interviews
- letters
- 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.
Personal narratives is a newer library catalog subject term encompassing letters, interviews, oral histories, diaries, journals, etc.
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.