Primary sources are original documents or artifacts created by a person who witnessed or participated in an event. They can be firsthand testimony or evidence created during the time period that you are studying.
Primary sources include these kinds of resources:
You can find Primary sources in a lot of different places, both online and in person. This page will help guide you through finding Primary sources in the University Library, our Archives and Special Collections, and other online archives, museums and collections. Newspapers are also a very good primary source. This guide has a whole page dedicated to helping you search through newspapers. Check out the tab on the left side for the page.
To understand more about Primary Sources and how to use them here's a helpful guide (from Carleton College) to help you understand and interpret your primary sources:
You can find primary sources in the University Library catalog - they are a part of our collection. Some are collected into books which are in the library.
To figure out which books contain primary sources, use "primary source" or a specific type of primary sources as search terms. Here are some examples of what those searches would look like:
"primary sources" (For example: "cold war" and "primary sources")
letters (For example: pioneer* and women and letters)
documents (For example: espionage documents)
diary/diaries (For example: pioneer* and women and diar*)
"personal narratives" (For example: holocaust and "personal narratives")
The University Library also subscribes to a large number of databases which are collections of primary sources organized around a topic or related topics. Below is a list of databases you might want to use based on your topic.
To find a resource in the archives go directly to our Archives and Special Collections portal. You can learn about what is in the Archives and Special Collections and how to access them.
You can also search directly in the digital special collections database here. Try using the same search keywords as you would searching in the library catalog from the section above.