Portals to Primary Sources
Left: Photo by Joanna Kosinska from Unsplash.com. Right: Letter written by Esther & Eva Hart from Titanic, Wikimedia Commons
What are Primary Sources?
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- Primary sources may be published or unpublished. Unpublished sources include unique materials (e.g., family papers) often referred to as archives and manuscripts.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 -- see Primary Sources by Discipline below. 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
Don't know where to start? Try one of the following database portals. They allow researchers to search across multiple databases produced by the same publisher.
- Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)The Digital Public Library of America provides access to "millions of materials from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions across the country available to all in a one-stop discovery experience." - DPLA
- Archive Explorer (Adam Matthew) This link opens in a new windowAccess primary sources for a wide variety of themes and topics. Materials concentrate on English language archival documents from the UK and the U.S.
- Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new windowSearch a large number of primary source databases.
- Digital Scholar Lab: Gale's Tool for Digital Humanities & Scholarship This link opens in a new windowFor Access: After logging in with your Emory credentials, users will need to create a personal account on Gale as a requirement to access content.
Gale’s Digital Scholar Lab, developed with participation from beta testers across a wide range of institutions and organizations, is designed to transform the way scholars and students access and analyze Gale primary source content by offering solutions to some of the most common challenges facing researchers in the digital humanities today. By integrating an unmatched depth and breadth of digital primary source content with the most popular digital humanities tools, Gale’s Digital Scholar Lab provides a new resource for exploring and teaching history and empowers researchers to generate world-altering conclusions and outcomes.
Using The Library of Congress Subject Headings to Find Primary Sources
"Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) has been actively maintained since 1898 to catalog materials held at the Library of Congress. By virtue of cooperative cataloging other libraries around the United States also use LCSH to provide subject access to their collections. In addition LCSH is used internationally, often in translation." - http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects.html
These are incredibly helpful for locating relevant sources for your research. Please consult the table form MIT to learn the basics of LOC subject headings.
Finding Primary Sources via discoverE
Use Library Search to find published primary sources in Emory's libraries, including:
- Published books that contain primary source documents
- Manuscript and archival collections and rare books held by the Manuscript, Archives & Rare Book Library
- U.S. government documents
- Primary source collections in microfilm or microfiche format (see more about microforms in the box below)
Try adding one or more of the following search terms to your search:
|
autobiographies |
diaries |
|
autobiography |
personal narratives |
|
biography |
sources |
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captivity narratives |
speeches |
|
correspondence |
pamphlets |
Examples:
sioux and biography
japanese internment and (sources or personal narratives)
TIP: You can also ask the library reference staff for help in refining your search strategy.
Primary Sources in Library Databases
Please click on the following subject guides to locate relevant digital primary sources for your research.
- Digital Primary Soruces from African Studies Research GuideThis page provides access to primary sources relevant for African history.
- Digital Primary Sources from Latin American Studies Research GuideThis guide provides information about primary sources for Latin American history.
- Digital Primary Sources from the African American Studies Research GuideThis page provides access to primary sources relevant for African American history.
- Digital Primary Sources from the European History Research GuideThis page provides access to primary sources relevant for European history.
- Digital Primary Sources from the South Asian Studies Research GuideThis page provides access to primary sources relevant for South Asian history.
- Digital Primary Sources from the United States History Research GuideThis page provides access to primary sources relevant for the US history.
Primary Sources on the Web
Thanks to a number of major digitization initiatives, MANY published sources (books, journals, etc.) are now freely available via digital web repositories. Most of these materials are in the public domain - i.e. not copyright-protected. For the U.S. this means titles published prior to 1922; copyright "cutoff" dates vary for other countries. Googling by title or author will likely retrieve materials in these digital repositories, but you can also search their contents individually. Notable examples: