How do I find primary sources?

Articles can function both as primary sources and secondary sources depending on how one approaches them. The most common criteria for determining whether or not an article is a primary source is the article's date.

For example, an article on slavery in a current issue of the Journal of Southern History should be read as a secondary source, because it is most likely a scholar’s attempt to interpret primary source materials such as ledgers, diaries, or government documents in order to write an account of the past. An article on slavery published in the Journal of Southern History in 1935, however, can be read not only as a secondary source on slavery but also – and perhaps more appropriately – it can be read as a primary source that reveals how scholars in the 1930s interpreted slavery.

Numerical data can be gathered to analyze relations between people, events, and their environments.

Includes resources for streaming video, DVDs, VHS, magazines, newspapers, photo archives, high resolution reproductions of art works, streaming music, CDs and LPs.

Media can be analyzed as a primary source to represent misrepresentations or societal influences during a specific time period.

Books can be a rich source of primary source material, especially in the case of published memoirs, autobiographies, and published documents.

Manuscript and archival materials are unpublished primary sources. The term archives refers to the records made or received and maintained by an institution or organization in pursuance of its legal obligations or in the transaction of its business. The term manuscripts refers to a body of papers of an individual or a family. Both terms can encompasses a broad array of documents and records of numerous formats and types.

Maps are primary sources because they are created in particular cultural contexts. Mapmakers may have hidden agendas or be influenced by political or social factors. Maps may reveal misperceptions or deliberate misrepresentations.

Dissertations that can be primary sources might be edited versions of texts or could be used to analyze the influence of a professor on a generation of graduate students and, by extension, on the teaching and writing in a discipline over a period of time.