source: Santiago Canyon College [Youtube video] 17 Oct. 2017.
Recap:
Primary sources are first-hand evidence related to the time or event you are investigating. This includes accounts by participants or observers and a wide range of written, physical, audio or visual materials created at the time or later by someone with direct experience.
If a primary source is direct first-hand evidence, then a secondary source is second-hand commentary including anything that investigates, comments on, brings together, or reviews those primary sources and other secondary sources.
Example:
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History |
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Art & Literature |
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Communications & Journalism |
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Political Science |
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Science and Social Science |
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Newspapers & Magazines
The databases below are all ways to find magazine and newspaper articles that could constitute PRIMARY sources, depending on your specific topic, because they will lead you to articles published back into the 19th century in some cases. The first three listed are major African-American newspapers.
The databases below offer access to mostly PRIMARY sources in their focused subject areas.
Archives of Sexuality & Gender The Archives of Sexuality & Gender provides a robust and significant collection of primary sources for the historical study of sex, sexuality, and gender. The Library subscribes to Module 1, LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940, Part 1, a collection of primary sources on social, political, health, and legal issues impacting LGBTQ communities around the word), and Module 3, Sex and Sexuality 16th to 20th centuries, a collection of documents allowing scholars to examine how sexual norms and gender roles have changed over time.
Independent Voices A four-year project to digitize over one million pages from the magazines, journals, newsletters, and newspapers of the alternative press archives of participating libraries spanning the 1960's to the 1980's. Starting with collections by feminists and the GI press, the collection will grow to include small literary magazines, underground newspapers, LGBT periodicals, the minority press (Latino, Black and Native American) and the extreme right-wing press.
Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers With digital facsimile images of both full pages and clipped articles for hundreds of 19th century U.S. newspapers and advanced searching capabilities, researchers will be able to research history in ways previously unavailable. For each issue, the newspaper is captured from cover-to-cover, providing access to every article, advertisement and illustration.
Student Activism Student Activism is an open access database of approximately 75,000 pages of primary source documents that capture the protest, advocacy, and political demonstration activities of American college students in the 20th and 21st centuries, ranging from the most conservative to the most radical.
Fully cross-searchable gateway to Black studies including scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, and much more. It combines several resources such as Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, International Index to Black Periodicals (IIBP), Black Literature Index, and historical black newspapers such as the Chicago Defender (1910-1975) and the Daily Defender (1956-1975).
Collection of primary documents and secondary sources related to U.S. women's history. Includes 63 document projects that interpret and present documents, more than 22,000 pages of documents, a dictionary of social movements and organizations , a chronology of U.S. Women's History, and teaching tools and materials.
Rich resource with both primary and secondary sources on African American history and culture as well as some African and Caribbean resources.
This resource showcases the speeches, reports, surveys and analyses produced by Fisk University from 1943-1970, including Charles S. Johnson, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall.
Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media : digital archives / open access
You can browse OR KEYWORD SEARCH individual issues, or all issues at once, back to April 1911.
This is an amazing resource! You can identify a paper by its title or geographic home. The years available, the method of access, the ability to keyword search, all vary from paper to paper. You are not going to find anything quickly in here, but it is a true GOLDMINE if you are researching a topic related to African American history!!
You can browse from here. Or, to search, click on any issue. You will see a tiny search box to keyword search inside the issue. You will also see a checkbox saying "Search all issues"!
Although everything in this collection has not been digitized what is available online is really impressive and always growing. You can keyword search it or just browse and be amazed!
"Includes over 100,000 items of correspondence (more than three quarters of the papers), speeches, articles, newspaper columns, nonfiction books, research materials, book reviews, pamphlets and leaflets, petitions, novels, essays, forewords, student papers, manuscripts of pageants, plays, short stories and fables, poetry, photographs, newspaper clippings, memorabilia, videotapes, audiotapes, and miscellaneous materials."
Primary sources can be located through a Google search by using phrases like "primary sources" or the word archive or documents to a search:
Barack Obama "primary sources"
Barack Obama documents
Barack Obama archives
The various museums and collections that comprise the Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives, and the Library of Congress have created some marvelous internet tools, exhibitions, collections and databases. A quick way to "get in" is to construct search statements to use in a Google search following these three patterns:
your topic site:si.edu
your topic site:loc.gov
your topic site:archives.gov
These databases are useful for the secondary journal literature of history. Some of these articles, for example, primary sources could be reproduced.
This database covers the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. With selective indexing for 1,700 journals from 1964 to the present, this database also provides full-text coverage of more than 196 journals and more than 92 books.
This database covers the history of the world (except the United States and Canada) from 1450 forward. It provides selective indexing of historical articles from more than 1,800 journals in over 40 languages back to 1955, as well as access to the full text of more than 316 journals and more than 138 books.
These databases could provide secondary as well as primary sources.
Fully cross-searchable gateway to Black studies including scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, and much more. It combines several resources such as Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, International Index to Black Periodicals (IIBP), Black Literature Index, and historical black newspapers such as the Chicago Defender (1910-1975) and the Daily Defender (1956-1975).
Provides access to more than 7,500 articles focusing on African American history and culture. The articles come from major reference sources and are written by leading scholars in the field. Also includes primary sources, images, and maps.