Italian Studies: Research guide: Primary sources

• Archives Made Easy is a good place to start to find archived books, articles, etc. from around the world
• Historical Research in Europe. A guide to archives and libraries (will be taken down in 2018)
• Archivi: Portale ufficiale dell'amministrazione archivistica italiana 
• Biblioteca Italiana
• Fondazione Istituto Gramsci
• Guida ai fondi degli archivi di Stato italiani 
• Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento
• The Medici Archive Project
• Villa I Tati: The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies 
• Guide to Italian libraries and archives, by Rudolf J. Lewanski (1979).
• International directory of archives = Annuaire international des archives (1992).  ONLINE
• Italian post-1600 manuscripts and family archives in North American libraries(1992). Library Annex Z6605.I8 W45 1992z 
• WESSWEB Archives

• Eurodocs: History of Italy, Primary Documents. (Lee Library, Brigham Young University)
• Making of the Modern World. Tracks the development of the modern, western world through the lens of trade and wealth. Includes books, serials, pamphlets, essays and more. Sourced from leading collections at major libraries around the world. (Cornell license)

These words and phrases are standard terms (metadata) used in many databases and  library catalogs to signal primary sources.

• charters
• correspondence
• diaries
• early works
• interviews
• manuscripts
• oratory
• pamphlets
• personal narratives
• sources
• speeches
• letters
• documents

So you might add one of these terms to your search.  Thus: Haiti--History--Coup d'etat 1991 and add the subdivision "Personal narratives."

You are combining Place and Time and Subject and then Type of Source.

Each academic discipline creates and uses primary and secondary sources differently; the definition of a primary source only makes sense in the context of a specific discipline or field of inquiry. In the humanities and the arts, a primary document might be an original creative work, or it might be a part of the historical record written about, or near the time of an event. In the sciences, it might be a publication of original research (such as a journal article)

Here are two definitions that try to capture the elusive nature of primary documents:

• A definition from Cornell: Primary sources are the main text or work that you are discussing (e.g. a sonnet by William Shakespeare; an opera by Mozart); actual data or research results (e.g. a scientific article presenting original findings; statistics); or historical documents (e.g. letters, pamphlets, political tracts, manifestoes).
  ["What is a Source?"Recognizing and Avoiding Plagiarism. Cornell University. College of Arts and Sciences.]
• A definition from Yale: "A primary source is firsthand testimony or direct evidence concerning a topic under investigation. The nature and value of a source cannot be determined without reference to the topic and questions it is meant to answer. The same document, oranother pieceof evidence, may be a primary source in one investigation and secondary in another. The search for primary sources does not, therefore, automatically include or exclude any category of records or documents."
  [Yale University Library Primary Sources Research Colloquium in History]

The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) is a consortium of North American universities, colleges, and independent research libraries. The consortium acquires and preserves newspapers, journals, documents, archives, and other traditional and digital resources for research and teaching and makes them available to member institutions (such as Cornell) through interlibrary loan and electronic delivery. Materials at CRL are available for long-term loan to researchers at member libraries.