Where to find primary sources

For the arts, history, and humanities, original primary source documents usually are housed in museums, archives, restricted library collections, and government offices. Reproductions of primary source documents often can be found in online digital collections, microform collections, books, and other secondary works.

You can find published primary sources by using the online catalog, or by searching in a digital collection of historical documents, such as the Gerritsen Collection of Women’s History, Chronicling America, and Empire Online. The History Library maintains a list of these collections on its website.

Using Subject Headings to Find Books

The best way to find primary sources in the library catalog is with subject headings. You may have to try several searches, but one strategy is to combine a keyword for your topic with a subject heading for a material type (see list at right).

Google / Google Scholar / Google Books: search for the topic plus the words “primary source.” Or search for the topic plus a word that indicates a primary source, such as diary, interview, correspondence, etc.

Examples of primary sources:

Theses, dissertations, scholarly journal articles (research based), some government reports, symposia and conference proceedings, original artwork, poems, photographs, speeches, letters, memos, personal narratives, diaries, interviews, autobiographies, and correspondence.

Maps as Primary Sources

Maps can be useful as primary sources because they provide insight into a place at a particular time, and they demonstrate how places and the understanding of places can change over time. Maps can also reveal interesting information about the culture and society in which they were produced.

In the fields commonly considered sciences, a primary source is the first report of research, published as a journal article, a research report or conference proceeding, or if extensive, a book or book chapter. They include methodology, data and results, and discussion.

Using Mayo Clinic as a primary source, Google provides information about symptoms and treatments, whether or not it’s critical, or contagious, what ages it typically affects, and more.

A website is a secondary source if it analyzes, summarizes, evaluates and processes information from primary sources. Information on a secondary source website can exist in the form of published blog posts, review articles, bibliographies, reference books, indexes, journals, commentaries and treatises.

A primary source gives you direct access to the subject of your research. Secondary sources provide second-hand information and commentary from other researchers. Examples include journal articles, reviews, and academic books. A secondary source describes, interprets, or synthesizes primary sources.

What is a primary source? … Primary sources are available in their original format in libraries, museums, archives, and are also reproduced online in library databases, books, and on university, government, and museum websites.

Primary resources, including primary or original research articles, explain the results of an experiment or research project. Primary articles are written by the researchers who conducted the experiment and describe exactly what they did. … Secondary sources are written about primary sources.

Published materials can be viewed as primary resources if they come from the time period that is being discussed, and were written or produced by someone with firsthand experience of the event. Often primary sources reflect the individual viewpoint of a participant or observer.

Social Sciences (psychology, sociology, education) place a heavy emphasis on unanalyzed data sets as primary sources. Numerical data sets such as census figures, opinion polls, surveys or interview transcripts constitute this type of raw, uninterpreted data.