about the library

Information Services - Primary Source Materials: A Guide

A primary source is generally a document or artifact created during the time of the event. Primary sources come in a variety of formats, as described below.

Formats

  • Original manuscripts, diaries, journals, letters, memos

  • Memoirs, autobiographies, oral histories of a participant or observer. These may not be as reliable, since they are often published long after the fact

  • Magazine, journal, and newspaper articles describing an event at the time of its occurrence. Articles written as historical analysis are not primary source documents

  • Speeches and Interviews

  • Audio recordings, video recordings, music, motion pictures, photographs, posters created during the time period being researched

  • Maps

  • Government documents, records, statistics, and information

  • Archival information of organizations and agencies, such as minutes of meetings, correspondence, etc.

  • Stamps, coins, art objects, artifacts

  • Research data and reports in the sciences and social sciences

Most primary source materials are not publicly accessible in the original format, but in reprinted form (e.g., collections of speeches), on microform (e.g., newspapers and magazines), a video or audio recording, or on the Internet (e.g., scanned documents).

 

Primary resources in the Bedford Library

  • The Annals of America, newest edition
  • The Century [video recording]: America's Time/ABC News; The History Channel
  • New York Times (1943; 1977-), Bedford Minuteman (1957-), on microfilm
  • New York Times Archives (1851-2001); online database available in the Library and from home
  • Series: Pages from History
  • Source books, such as: Twentieth Century China: A History in Documents.
  • Speeches in print and audio formats, and in the online database LitFINDER
  • Interviews in magazines and newspapers (print and online), and collected in books
  • Others

 

Primary sources on the Internet

Evaluating primary source websites:

  1. Check the source, purpose, and authorship of the website to determine that the information is being presented in an unbiased way.
  2. Check the domain: educational (.edu), nonprofit (.org), U.S. Government (.gov), commercial (.com), other countries (.ja, .uk, etc.). There should be "About Us" and "Contact" links on the site.
  3. Check to be sure that the information presented as primary source material is documented. If it is transcribed, the original document should be cited, and consulted, if possible.

Selected Websites:

 

Searching the Minuteman Library Catalog for primary source material

The Subheading "Sources" indicates primary source material, e.g., African Americans - History - Sources.

Doing a subject search for "sources" will invert the subject headings and bring up all primary source material and will display as follows:

 

1 Sources African American Women History   c1999 1
2 Sources African Americans Civil Rights History 20th Century   4
3 Sources African Americans Civil Rights History Juvenile Literature   c2001 1
4 Sources African Americans History   2
5 Sources African Americans History 1863 1877   2

 

Another approach is to do a Keyword search combining the word "sources" with the country, region, time period, conflict, etc., being researched. (e.g., china sources; or civil war sources)

This approach will also work with other subject subheadings related to primary source material, such as "personal narratives," "correspondence", "speeches", "diaries", "pamphlets", and "interviews".

Tip: Besides a specific keyword search, such as "roosevelt* speech*", try a broader search, such as "president* speech*".

Tip: As you are searching, check the subject headings of items that appear to be useful to your research, then click the appropriate subject heading to find more items on that topic.