A primary source is any record contemporary to an event or time period. Primary sources may be written, oral, visual or physical. Some of these sources were produced with the intent of being preserved for the future. Such intentional sources include government documents, church records, autobiographies or memoirs. On the other hand, many primary sources were produced without any intent of future use. Such unintentional sources may include private correspondence not originally meant for posterity but which later are deposited in archives and libraries. Physical evidence such as buildings, clothing, tools, and landscapes may also be labeled as unintentional sources.
--Galgano, Michael J., J. Christopher Arndt, and Raymond M. Hyser. Doing History: Research and Writing in the Digital Age. Cengage Learning, 2007, p. 57.
Primary sources are often found in archives and special collections (either separate, special libraries or special-collections sections of larger libraries). Some of these locations make parts of their collections available online.
Contains searchable PDF's of material published in the U.S. in the early 19th Century including state papers and early government materials which chronicle the political and geographic growth of the developing American nation. In addition to searching, the collection may be browsed by topic (e.g., Genre: Satires, Peoples: Illinois Indians, Government: Church and State).
Images and full-content access to historic newspapers from the 18th to mid-19th Century, based on the collections of the American Antiquarian Society, the Wisconsin Historical Society, and 90 other institutions, from every region of the United States.
Provides access to nineteenth-century books, periodicals, official documents, newspapers and archives. Includes Palmer's Index to The Times, Periodicals Index Online, Poole's Index to Periodical Literature, and Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, among others.
A full-text collection resources that chronicle the development of America across 150 years that include digitized images of the pages of magazines and journals.
Cover-to-cover digital reproductions of every issue (1851-2020). Full page-image and full-text searching.
There are certain words that appear in the subject headings of items in the UM LIBRARIES CATALOG that constitute primary sources. 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.: trail of tears and SU:sources
In the advanced keyword search, you can put your search term(s) in the top box, and in the second box, put the word(s) you're using to locate primary sources in the next box, and change the drop-down menu to Subject:
Keywords that will 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
To find the papers of a historically prominent individual, use the Advanced MERLIN Search. Use the first line to specify the author (surname first, e.g., Lincoln, Abraham) and the second line to specify papers in the title. You can also use the Advanced search to combine any of the above primary source oriented keywords with a particular author.
Presents the numerical history of the United States. It contains annual time series of quantitative historical information covering virtually every quantifiable dimension of American history, all from the earliest times to the present.
Letters & diaries published as books can be found in the UM LIBRARIES CATALOG by adding keywords:
Offers full-text searchable letters and diaries of soldiers and noncombatants on both sides of the U.S. Civil War. The database can be searched by U.S. state, topics described, year of writers death, as well as by Union or Confederate loyalty and many other ways.
Provides access to full-text letters & diaries by North American women from colonial times to 1950. This collection includes the immediate experiences of 1,325 women and 150,000 pages of diaries and letters.
