In the academic discipline of history, a primary source is an immediate, firsthand account of a topic. Historians often use letters, diaries, photographs, and audio as primary sources, as well as documents such as laws, newspapers, speeches, and census or other datasets.
Some primary sources are included in library databases (such as certain newspapers, photographs, and government documents) or published in books that the library can purchase, while others are held in museums and archives or in personal family collections. Most materials in archives have not been fully digitized, but the largest documentary institutions share millions of digitized materials online.
In the Library
Your best bet for finding primary sources in the library is to search your topic in OneSearch. You may find speeches, newspaper articles, photographs, and government documents in the various subscription databases, DVDs, and books that are cataloged there. You will need to critically evaluate the search results to determine which ones are primary sources for your purposes.
A small sampling of where to find primary sources in the stacks (second floor of the Learning Commons):
- Chinese American voices: from the gold rush to the present
- Landmark speeches of the American conservative movement
- Malcolm X: speeches at Harvard
- Our stories: an introduction to South Asian America
Online Collections
The Digital Public Library of America offers primary sources sets about important events, social movements, industries, and periods in U.S. history. These curate digitized sources from archives throughout the country. Sample sets: American Indian Boarding Schools, Women in the Civil War, Blackface Minstrelsy in Modern America, There is No Cure for Polio, The Panama Canal
The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., is the largest library in the world. Its online catalog of prints and photographs includes 1.2 million images, and its digital collections share presidential papers; historical comics, maps, and music; as well as photographs and books.
The National Archives is the nation’s record keeper, preserving records that are important for legal and historical reasons. The National Archives’ website includes milestone documents from U.S. history, as well as a catalog that can be searched for military records, family histories, and historical topics. Researching in archives is a specialized skill; this guide to using the National Archives catalog is a good place to start.
Newspapers
The Library of Congress’s searchable database of historic newspapers, including some digitized pages