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Primary Sources |
| What are primary sources? |
Primary sources are accounts of an event recorded in books, letters, diaries, photographs, film, or other media. Ideally, they are created by an eye witness to the events, but secondary accounts of the events recorded at the time are also usually acceptable, e.g., a December, 1917 newspaper account of the Halifax Explosion. Another type of primary document is the oldest existing account of a historical event.
See this page by the American Library Association (ALA) for more information |
| Finding Primary Sources |
Searching the TWU Catalogue
We do have some books containing primary documents in the TWU library. The most reliable way to find them is to do a "Keywords" search using a keyword that describes your subject and adding search terms such as "sources," "documents," or "reader," etc. For example, a Keywords search for "greece history sources" gives 18 results. The record describing the first book "The Hellenistic Period : historical sources in translation" contains several subject headings with links to other books with primary sources on Greek history. Note that a search for "greek history sources" brings up results with more emphasis on the Greek language.
If this all sounds confusing, feel free to drop by our Research Help Desk and a librarian will be happy to help you with your search.
Note that the resources available from Early Canadiana Online are now linked to the library catalogue and may appear in your catalogue search results.
Internet Searches
Search engines are useful for finding a particular document. Search for the exact title of the document in quotation marks, if you have it. Otherwise, use terms unique to the document you are searching for combined with "primary documents."
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a good source of links to primary documents. Search for the subject you're researching, go to External Links at the bottom of the article and see if there are any links to sites with primary documents.
Google Books
Google Books may have the full text of works in the public domain. It's not the best place to start a search, but worth a try if other sources fail.
Evaluating Internet Resources
A certain degree of caution is necessary when using resources from the internet. For more information see the Assessing information on the Web tutorial.   
Further Resources
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| Online Collections of Primary Documents |
The sites listed below are a good place to start. Most of them are maintained by educational institutions, so they are relatively reliable and stable. However, some of the sites to which they link may have disappeared.
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| British Columbia |
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| Canada |
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| The United States |
- African American History: Primary Documents
- The American Civil War Homepage (University of Tennessee)
- The American Civil War Homepage seeks to provide a comprehensive directory of hypertext links about the Civil War period (1861-1865). Intended for general audiences, this Internet directory covers the war from the major military, political, and social perspectives. Links arranged in broad categories take the user to sites that supply narrative overviews, bibliographies, photographs, and primary source documents. Updating is frequent, but the large number of listings does result in some dead links. The contact information is current and responsive to feedback. For both beginners and serious Civil War researchers, this site is a logical starting point.
- American Memory Historical Collections for the National Digital Library
- American History Sources (Documents from Revolution to Reconstruction)
- American Indians of the Pacific Northwest Digital Collection
- This site provides an extensive digital collection of original photographs and documents about the Northwest Coast and Plateau Indian cultures. These cultures have occupied, and in some cases still live in parts of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. Maps are available that show traditional territories or reservation boundaries. The digital databases includes over 2,300 original photographs as well as over 1,500 pages from the Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior from 1851 to 1908 and six Indian treaties negotiated in 1855.
- American Left Ephemera Collection
- The material on this Web site represents a small sample of ephemera that documents the three largest and most influential left-wing organizations in the United States in the twentieth century: Socialist Party of America (SPUSA), Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA), and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Digitized items include flyers, leaflets, pamphlets, posters, postcards, illustrations, photographs, pins, ribbons, and miscellaneous objects.
- American Colonist’s Library
- Digital History (University of Houston)
- George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress
- Historical United States Census Data Browser
- One Hundred Milestone Documents
- Perseus Collection 19th-Century American
- Primary Documents in American History (Library of Congress)
- Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive
- Spain, the United States & the American Frontier: Parallel Histories
- Valley of the Shadow
- Letters, diaries, newspapers, etc. from a northern and southern town before, during, and after the American Civil War.
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| Classic / Ancient Near East |
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| Europe |
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Asia |
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| Africa |
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| Middle East |
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| Latin America/Caribbean |
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| Global |
- Conversations with History
- Interviews with famous people -- from Kofi Annan to Zhou Xingbao
- Eyewitness to History
- Hanover Historical Texts
- Historical Text Archive
- History and Politics Out Loud: A Searchable Archive of Politically Significant Materials
- History Wiz
- International World History Project
- In the First Person
- A free, high quality, professionally published, in-depth index of close to 4,000 collections of personal narratives in English from around the world.
- Legal Documents (Avalon Project)
- Primary source materials in the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and
Government.
- Modern History Sourcebook, Internet
- Newspapers
- links to a TWU library page that describes the various options for accessing current and historical newspapers.
- Romanticism
- Scientific Revolution
- Women's History Sourcebook, Internet
- World History Sources
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This page is maintained by the Library - (contact) |
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