Primary sources are original artifacts or documents. They offer contemporary accounts from participants or people directly involved in an event.
Examples include:
Scholarly articles, textbooks, and encyclopedias are examples of secondary sources. A secondary source draws on primary sources, often intrepreting and analyzing the material to create a unified work.
Secondary sources are further removed from the events and often reflect the author’s biases. Using primary sources enables you to work with the raw material and draw your own conclusions.
The following characteristics can help you differentiate primary sources from those that are not.
Authors
Content
Currency/Timeliness
You can find primary sources at the library and local archives. You can also access primary sources using the library’s or online resources. The following list is not comprehensive, but it includes some good starting points.
Diaries and Memoirs
From the Online Library Catalog Advanced Search screen:
Correspondence
From the Online Library Catalog Advanced Search screen:
Musical Scores
From the Online Library Catalog:
Musical Recordings
From the Online Library Catalog:
Films
From the Online Library Catalog:
The Undergraduate Library’s Find Articles Guide provides resources to search magazines, newspapers, and other sources using databases such as Academic Search Premier (EBSCO). More specific subject databases will be found under specific categories on the list.
The History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library's Historical Newspapers page includes links to databases with hundreds of digitized newspapers. Look here for African American Newspapers from the 19th Century, Early American Newspapers, and more.
Early American Imprints, 1639 -1800 and Early American Imprints, 1801-1819 include several types of primary source documents, browse by topic or search.
News Transcripts are available through Lexis Nexis Academic.
Speeches and Interviews can be searched in Academic Search Premier.
Editorials: See the Guide to Finding Editorials to locate editorials.
Images: See the Guide to Finding Images to locate photographs, paintings, and other images.
Statistics: See the Guide to Finding Statistics to access various sorts of data.
The University Archives includes over 17,000 cubic feet of office records, publications, and personal papers from the University and the Urbana-Champaign campus.
The Student Life and Culture Archival Program of the University Archives includes collections relating to student life and culture on the national level and at the University of Illinois.
The Illinois History and Lincoln Collections contain material on Illinois and local history, in addition to other collections.
The American Memory Project, a Library of Congress initiative, offers a diverse collection in a variety of formats (prints, photographs, letters, reports, sheet music, recordings, maps).
The National Archives & Records Administration and Google Video have collaborated to offer a selection of historical video clips.
The National Archives has a huge collection of photographs, documents, reports, and more.
Thomas is a comprehensive guide to legislative information from the Library of Congress.
The New York Public Library Digital Gallery provides free and open access to over 685,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections.
The Sheet Music Consortium provides a large collection of digitized sheet music and its cover art.
Primary Source Village, from the University of Illinois Library, provides a more detailed tutorial on understanding and using primary sources.