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Guide to finding primary sources

What is a primary source?

Primary sources are original artifacts or documents. They offer contemporary accounts from participants or people directly involved in an event.

Examples include:

• Diaries
• Legal documents
• Editorials
• Speeches
• Letters
• Literary narratives (memoirs, autobiographies)
• Artistics works (musical and visual arts)
• Interviews
• News segments/transcripts

What is a secondary source?

Scholarly articles, textbooks, and encyclopedias are examples of secondary sources. A secondary source draws on primary sources, often intrepreting and analyzing the material to create a unified work.

Why use primary sources?

Secondary sources are further removed from the events and often reflect the author’s biases. Using primary sources enables you to work with the raw material and draw your own conclusions.

How can I tell if something is a primary source?

The following characteristics can help you differentiate primary sources from those that are not.

Criteria

Authors

• How does the author know what he/she knows?
• Does his/her knowledge stem from personal experience or having witnessed an event?
• Does the author cite several other (published) reports?

Content

• Why is the information being provided or the article written?
• Are there references to other writings on this topic?

Currency/Timeliness

• Is the date of publication evident?
• Does the date of publication close to the event described?

Where can I find Primary Sources?

You can find primary sources at the library and local archives. You can also access primary sources using the library’s or online resources. The following list is not comprehensive, but it includes some good starting points.

A Sampling of Books in the Undergraduate Library Reference Collection

• America Decades Primary Sources (Q. 973.91 Am3532)
• Economic Report of the President (330.973 Un315e)
• Encyclopedia of Holocaust literature (809.93358 En192)
• From Suffrage to the Senate (320.0820973)
• Historic Documents (1 vol. 1972-present, 320.973 H62)
• Landmark American Speeches (3 vol., 815.08 L235)
• Representative American Speeches 1937-1997 (815.08 R292)
• Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (818 Si582s cop.2)
• Speeches of the American Presidents (353.035 Sp34 2001)

Other Library Materials

Diaries and Memoirs

• From the Online Library Catalog advanced search screen, type personal narratives into the first box and select Subject Words from the Search by drop-down menu. Add another search term, for example Anne Frank, to the box below. You might replace personal narratives with diaries, if your search returns too few results.

Correspondence

• From the Online Library Catalog advanced search screen, type correspondence into the first box and select Subject Words from the Search by drop-down menu. Add another search term, such as World War to the box below.

Musical Scores

• From the Online Library Catalog, with the limit already set to musical scores, search by composer, title, or keywords.

Musical Recordings

• From the Online Library Catalog, with the limit already set to musical recordings, search by composer/performer, song or album title, or other keywords.

Films

• From the Online Library Catalog, with the limit already set to Films/videos, search by title or keywords.

Article and Newspaper Databases

• Start with the Undergraduate Library’s Find Articles Guide. You can search magazines, newspapers, and other sources using Academic Search Premier (EBSCO), for example.
• The History Library’s guide to Historical Newspapers and major newspaper digitization projects. Look here for African American Newspapers from the 19th Century, Early American Newspapers, and more!
• Early American Imprints, 1639-1800 and Early American Imprints, 1801-1819 include several types of primary source documents, browse by topic or search.
• News Transcripts are available through Lexis Nexis Academic. Select the Power Search tab and select Transcripts in the Select Sources section..
• Speeches and Interviews can be searched in Academic Search Premier. Scroll down to select your prefered document type.
• Use the Guide to Finding Editorials to locate editorials.
• Use the Guide to Finding Images to locate photographs, paintings, and other images.
• Use the Guide to Finding statistics to access various sorts of data.

Local Archives

• The University Archives includes over 17,000 cubic feet of office records, publications, and personal papers from the University and the Urbana-Champaign campus.
• The Student Life and Culture Archival Program of the University Archives includes collections relating to student life and culture on the national level and at the University of Illinois.
• The Illinois Historical Survey contains material on Illinois and local history, in addition to other collections.

Web pages

• The American Memory Project, a Library of Congress initiative, offers a diverse collection in a variety of formats (prints, photographs, letters, reports, sheet music, recordings, maps).
• The National Archives & Records Administration and Google Video have collaborated to offer a selection of historical video clips.
• The National Archives has a huge collection of photographs, documents, reports, and more.
• Thomas is a comprehensive guide to legislative information online.
• NYPL Digital is a great source for images.
• The Sheet Music Consortium provides a large collection of digitized sheet music and its cover art.

Primary Source Village provides a more detailed tutorial on understanding and using primary sources.

Updated: 11/12/2007
RES/SKA