Primary sources are original records created during the time under study. Because they were present during the experience, they offer an inside first-hand view of a particular event unfiltered by interpretation, criticism, or evaluation.
Examples include letters, newspapers, interviews, photographs, manuscripts, memoirs, speeches, diaries, news film footage, autobiographies, official records, personal narratives, creative works (poetry, drama, novels, music, art), anecdotes, correspondence, pamphlets, and case studies.
Learn about finding, evaluating, and using primary sources through the guide "Primary Sources on the Web: Finding, Evaluating, Using" by the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a subset of the American Library Association (ALA).
Find primary sources in the Library Catalog by searching for the topic and the type of resource you're interested in:
[Research interest or person] - correspondence or diaries
Examples:
Civil War - sources
Immigrants - personal narratives
Women's suffrage - diaries
Eleanor Roosevelt - letters
Sources goes with topics; Archives goes with people and organizations. To be safe, try this: [research interest] - sources or archives
(From the book Magic Search: Getting the Best Results from your Catalog and Beyond. Kornegay, R.S., et al. (2009), Chicago: American Library Association.)
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