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University Library

History Research

American History

E-books on the Web

History of Great Britain

Primary Sources in Books

You can find a large number primary source material or references to them in books. To begin, you should start with a broad search, for example, “black panther”, and review your results for clues that the work may be a first-person account or record of an actual event.

Second, if you have too many results, try narrowing them by adding one of the keywords/subject headings listed below (note: this is not a comprehensive list). When doing a keyword search, add one of these terms to your search. For example:

Black Panther* AND sources

Examples of Library of Congress subheadings useful for locating primary source material:

sources

manuscripts

letters

holocaust AND personal narratives

speeches, addresses, etc

court records

oratory

description and travel

correspondence, reminiscences, etc.

civil rights AND interviews

oral history

autobiographies

church records

registers

printed ephemera

essays

diaries

art

passenger lists

street literature

periodicals

photography

art and photography

philosophy AND early works to 1800

imprints

pamphlets

early works to 1850

facsimiles

transcripts

early works to 1900

archives

pictorial works

Special Collections and Archives