HIST 27/127: Public and Digital History (Gudgeirsson)

"Primary sources are original records created at the time historical events occurred or well after events in the form of memoirs and oral histories. Primary sources may include letters, manuscripts, diaries, journals, newspapers, speeches, interviews, memoirs, documents produced by government agencies such as Congress or the Office of the President, photographs, audio recordings, moving pictures or video recordings, research data, and objects or artifacts such as works of art or ancient roads, buildings, tools, and weapons. These sources serve as the raw material to interpret the past, and when they are used along with previous interpretations by historians, they provide the resources necessary for historical research."
(American Library Association, Reference and User Services, History Section)

There are many ways to find primary sources for historical research.

• Books can contain primary sources or be totally composed of primary sources
• Archives contain primary sources, and many archives have digital collections to make this easier to access
• Databases the library subscribes to may be totally or partially populated with primary sources

Terminology

You will find the terms digital collections, digital archives, digital libraries, online repositories, and online exhibits are used interchangeably to describe the portal that contains an institution's digitized content. Some sites, like the Digital Public Library of America and Calisphere, aggregate these digitized items into one portal.

Using OSCAR to search for primary sources essentially means searching for books that contain reproduced or transcribed primary sources. This is advantageous because the sources come with an editorial apparatus that puts the sources in context, and often gets around the handwriting problem by transcribing and printing the content of handwritten documents.

The following keywords should be utilized for this:

correspondence, papers, speeches, memoirs, personal narratives, documents, sourcebook, or sources

Combine the keywords representing the topic with keywords representing primary sources, such as

• correspondence, letters, papers, speeches, memoirs, personal narratives, documents, sourcebook, or sources
• Examples:
  • immigration korea narratives
  • suicide ethics sources
  • (sources or "personal narratives" or letters or correspondence) and haiti
• If you're feeling spiffy, go for an advanced search and play around with searching some words in the title and some words in the subject

Over a Dozen Primary Source Databases Through the SCU Library

Under the Databases tab on the SCU Library website, you can search by type or vendor. This is a way to look at all the databases that contain primary source materials available through the library. From there you can pick a database that provides materials from your time period, geographic focus, or other topic as appropriate.

Once you enter into the list of these primary source databases, select one that is appropriate to your topic.

Some examples:

Some primary source repositories are a subscription that the SCU Library pays for on your behalf. Other primary source repositories are open access and free on the open web.

Below is a list of newspaper databases you can access through SCU Library subscriptions, in addition to those you found at the link above.

Below that is a list of open access repositories that a librarian has curated for you.

Individual Newspaper Databases

Databases containing multiple newspapers (sometimes hundreds)

Government publications are a rich source of primary documents. 

Use this database to find congressional publications, bills, laws and regulations, hearings, and government reports.  

Here's an example of the kind of documents you can find in the database:

• U.S. Policy Toward the Far East: Chronology of Significant Events, 1844 Through July 30, 1966