Find Primary Sources: What are primary Sources?

Journal of a march from Delhi to Peshâwur and from thence to Câbul, https://lccn.loc.gov/ltf90029951

Primary sources are original texts created at the time events occur, or well after the event in the form of memoirs and oral histories. They enable you to get as close as possible to what actually happened during an historical event or time period. We use primary sources to help us understand and contextualize the past. (See this guide from the American Library Association's Reference & User Services Association's History Section for more information.)

Examples of primary sources include:

• Diaries, speeches, letters, memos, manuscripts, and other papers
• Memoirs and autobiographies
• Records of information collected by government agencies and organizations
• Published materials (books, magazine and journal articles, newspaper articles) written at the time of an event
• Photographs, audio recordings, and moving pictures or video recordings
• Research data
• Cultural objects, artifacts, or rituals

Primary sources are found in a variety of formats:

• Original texts in archives and special collections
• Materials transcribed and reprinted in contemporary formats, such as collections of letter collections or diary entries (example: the collected letters of D.H. Lawrence)
• Microforms, located in the basement of Shafer Library
• Materials digitized on the Web (example: the Walt Whitman Archive)
• Original recordings (examples: MP3 files, cassettes, CDs, Blu-Rays, vinyl LPs)

While this guide provides information on a variety of resources to find Primary Sources, there are many more digital archives and collections out in the world that could possibly be listed. Please contact a Shafer Librarian if you have any trouble finding something!

Secondary sources are any published or unpublished works that are a step removed from original sources. These sources usually describe, summarize, analyze, or evaluate primary sources. Some examples of secondary sources are:

• Histories about a topic
• Works of criticism and interpretation
• Scholarly monographs
• Textbooks
• Biographies
• Dictionaries and encyclopedias
• Handbooks and manuals
• Bibliographies
• Directories