Ask yourself: Whose eyes am I seeing this through?
A primary source is a piece of information about a historical event or period in which the creator of the source was an actual participant in or a contemporary of a historical moment.
A primary source that you have access to may be the original but is more commonly a reproduction. A reproduction can be a book, a book chapter, an article, a website, or part of an online database.
Combine your search terms with phrases in quotations marks like:
There are certain words that signal primary sources in the Library catalog. The most important of them is sources, but there are others.
In the simple keyword search box, you can put such words after SU: in order to specify the SUBJECT field.
ex.: civil rights and SU:sources
In the Advanced search, set one of your search lines for Subject: sources, and combine it with your other search terms on other lines.
Other keywords that may help you find primary sources:
Depending on the period being studied, it can also be helpful to limit your search by publication date.
More keywords identifying primary sources in Library of Congress Subject Headings
The Diary of a Young Girl by 
Off the Record by 
The Routledge Sourcebook of Religion and the American Civil War by 
The World Turned Upside Down: Indian voices from early America by 
