Research Guides: History : Primary Sources

What is a primary source?

Primary sources are original materials that provide direct evidence or first-hand testimony concerning a topic or event -- firsthand records created by people who actually participated in or remembered an event and reported on the event and their reactions to it.
Primary sources can be contemporary sources created at the time when the event occurred (e.g., letters and newspaper articles) or later (such as, memoirs and oral history interviews).
Primary sources may be published or unpublished. Unpublished sources include unique materials (e.g., family papers) often referred to as archives and manuscripts.
What constitutes a primary source varies by discipline. How the researcher uses the source generally determines whether it is a primary source or not.

*This material is used with permission from the University of Pittsburgh Library's research guide on Primary Sources

General Databases

Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
Search a large number of primary source databases.
ProQuest History This link opens in a new window
Contains 38 historical databases covering primary sources such as newspapers, magazines, government documents, first-hand accounts, and more.

Government Documents

Historical Statistical Abstracts of the US This link opens in a new window
The Statistical Abstract of the United States is the authoritative and comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political and economic conditions of the United States. It gathers statistics from various agencies into a more accessible format (PDF and downloadable excel tables).
Digital National Security Archive This link opens in a new window
Contains declassified U.S. government documents covering policy towards world events, especially in the areas of foreign policy and intelligence.

Historical Newspapers

America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Access various historical newspapers that span from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.
Formerly Early American Newspapers Digital.
ProQuest African American Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Black Newspapers provides a record of social change spanning almost a century. Covers major events to everyday life; includes newspapers such as Atlanta Daily World, Los Angeles Sentinel, New York Amsterdam News, and Pittsburgh Courier.
Alternative Press Index This link opens in a new window
Includes international alternative, radical, and left periodicals to provide access to the emerging theories and practices of radical social change. Coverage begins in 1991.
World Newspaper Archive This link opens in a new window
An ongoing project to produce searchable full text of historical newspapers from around the world. Initially will contain selected newspapers from Latin America, Africa and South Asia.

American History, 1493-1945 This link opens in a new window
Module 1 Settlement, Commerce, Revolution and Reform: 1493-1859; and Module 2 Civil War, Reconstruction and the Modern Era: 1860-1945.
Archives Unbound This link opens in a new window
Topically-focused collections of historical documents that support research and study. Materials range across area studies and disciplinary fields.
Collections vary widely by subject and include the following: Through the Camera Lens:" The Moving Picture World and the Silent Film Era Evangelism in Africa: Correspondence of the Board of Foreign Missions, 1835-1910 Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984 Federal Response to Radicalism James Meredith, J. Edgar Hoover, and the Integration of the University of Mississippi Correspondence from German Concentration Camps and Prisons Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees: The West's Response to Jewish Emigration Jewish Underground Resistance: The David Diamant collection Newspapers of the French Revolution, 1848 Indochina, France and the Viet Minh War, 1945-1954: Records of the US State Department, 1945-1949 Czechoslovakia from Liberation to Communist State, 1945-63: Records of the U.S. State Department Classified Files East German from Stalinization to the New Economic Policy, 1950-1963
Readex AllSearch This link opens in a new window
Enables searching across all available Readex collections, including historic newspapers, books, pamphlets, and government publications from the Americas and Africa.

Archives and Special Collections at Oxford College Library

The Archives and Special Collections at Oxford College Library are available to all students. In addition to collections described in the EmoryFindingAids database, the Oxford College archives contain primary sources and unpublished material suitable for many forms of research. In-person access to the collections is typically by appointment only, and research help is always available prior to placing a request or making an appointment.

Collections include:

Records relating to Oxford College and early Emory College history
Local history, including Oxford, GA and Newton County
Manuscripts, especially correspondence and personal papers of notable Oxford families, college alumni, and faculty
Artifacts and memorabilia from the Oxford campus

Emory Digital Archives

The Emory Libraries have an online repository for digitized archives and special collections material. The collections are available to the public on the Emory Digital Collections site.

Emory Digital Collections
An online repository for digitized archives and special collections material.
Emory University Yearbooks
Emory student yearbooks including Oxford, Emory College, and Emory University.
The Spokesman
A student newspaper published at Oxford College of Emory University from 1966-2011
The Emory Wheel
The Emory Wheel is the independent, student-run newspaper of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. This full-text searchable collection of digitized issues of the Emory Wheel contains all existing copies of the Wheel in the Emory University Archives from the first issue in 1919 through 2009. To access it you will need to log in using your netID.