Find primary source materials

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A primary source is an eyewitness account or the first record of an event. It was usually written or created during the time period under study. Primary sources are the "materials on a topic upon which subsequent interpretations or studies are based, anything from firsthand documents such as poems, diaries, court records, and interviews to research results generated by experiments, surveys, ethnographies, and so on" [from Hairston, Maxine and John J. Ruszkiewicz. The Scott Foresman Handbook for Writers. 4th ed. New York : HarperCollins College Publishers, 1996, pg. 547].

Secondary sources were written sometime after the event occurred. This could be days later or centuries later. Secondary sources provide analysis, interpretation, explanation, description and/or evaluation. Secondary sources are often based on primary sources.

Here are some examples of each:

Primary Sources:

• diaries, letters and emails
• speeches, testimony and interviews
• some newspaper articles
• news film or video
• autobiographies
• statistics and raw data sets
• original scientific research
• legislative hearings and bills
• pictures and maps
• poetry, drama, novels, music and art
• artifacts such as jewelry, tombstones, furniture and clothing

Secondary Sources:

• textbooks
• encyclopedias
• literature reviews
• many magazine articles
• journal articles which are not primary reports of new research
• literary criticism of Hamlet
• reviews of books, movies, plays, etc.
• a book written in 1995 about the causes of the French Revolution

The Reference section in Joyner Library contains a wide selection of primary source materials in print, including:

• African American History in the Press: Ref E 185.2 A25 1996
• American Decades Primary Sources: Ref E 169.1 A47 1977
• Dictionary of Literary Biography. Documentary Sources: Ref PS 221 D52x
• Documents of American History: Ref E 173 C66 1973
• Historic Documents on Presidential Elections: Ref JK 1965 H56 1991
• In Our Words: Extraordinary Speeches of the American Century: Ref PS 661 I53 1999
• Landmark Documents on the U.S. Congress: Ref JK 1041 L36 1999
• The Complete Bill of Rights: The Drafts, Debates, Sources, and Origins: Ref KF 4744 1997
• The African American Years: Ref E 185 S797 2003
• The American Years: Ref E 174.5 G753 2003
• The Annals of America: Ref E 173 A793
• Twentieth-Century America: A Primary Source Collection from the Associated Press: Ref E 740.5 T84 1995

Some good online sources for locating primary source materials include:

• American Civil War Collections at the University of Virginia Electronic Text Center
• American Memory Collection from the Library of Congress
• American Slavery: A Composite Autobiography
• Archives USA
• Core Documents of U.S. Democracy
• Documenting the American South
• Early English Books Online
• Eastern North Carolina Digital History Exhibits
• Gerritsen Collection - Women's History Online
• Historic Events of the 20th Century
• HarpWeek
• Joyner Library North Carolina Collection
• Joyner Library Special Collections Department & University Archives
• Making of America - Cornell University
• Making of America - University of Michigan
• North American Women's Letters and Diaries
• North Carolina ECHO
• Perseus
• The Vietnam Project
• The World War I Document Archive

The URL for this page is: http://media.lib.ecu.edu/reference/howdoi/display.cfm?id=34.0