Primary sources are documents (or other kinds of materials) that were created in the past researchers can use in the present to gain insight into a specific time period. Primary sources provide ideas and evidence about events in the past. Scholars use the evidence found in primary sources to draw conclusions and construct narratives about the past.

Types of primary sources: Diaries, speeches, manuscripts, photographs, letters, oral history interviews, news film footage, autobiographies, official records, and meeting minutes can all be primary sources, as can objects such as pottery, furniture, clothing, and buildings.

Primary source documents exist as such only after the passing of time; they were not necessarily created to support historical analysis. They are often the day-to-day documents that support the functioning of a business or organization or an individual. Over time, these documents remain and can lend insight into specific time periods, or organizations' and individuals' histories. But it is important to note that this is their secondary, not original, function.

A secondary source is a published work that presents arguments and conclusions about an event in the past based on primary source (or archival) research. Types of secondary sources include, for example, magazine articles, histories, criticisms, commentaries, encyclopedias, and textbooks.

You can find a large number primary source material or references to them in our SSU Library, using OneSearch. To begin, you should start with a broad search, for example, “native american”, 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:

Native American* AND sources

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

These are some examples of primary source materials available online beyond SSU, just to give you a taste of opportunities that exist for research support.

• Bracero History Archive

  Oral histories and artifacts pertaining to the Bracero program, a guest worker initiative that spanned the years 1942-1964. Millions of Mexican agricultural workers crossed the border under the program to work in more than half of the states in America.
• FBI Records: The Vault

  Over 6,700 documents the FBI has digitized and made publicly available.
• Harvard University's Women Working 1800-1930

  A unique virtual collection, comprising over 650,000 individual pages from more than 3,100 books and trade catalogs, 900 archives and manuscript items, and 1,400 photographs. Women Working is a digital exploration of women's impact on the economic life of the United States between 1800 and the Great Depression.
• Massachusetts Historical Society's Adams Family Papers

  This electronic archive presents images of manuscripts and digital transcriptions from the Adams Family Papers. Correspondence between John and Abigail Adams is included.
• Michigan State University Libraries' American Radicalism

  The Radicalism Collection includes books, pamphlets, periodicals, posters, and ephemera (materials that were originally expected to have only short-term usefulness or popularity) covering a wide range of viewpoints on political, social, economic, and cultural issues and movements in the United States and throughout the world.
• American Memory

  American Memory, from the Library of Congress, provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity.
• The American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara

  Thousands of documents such as party platforms, candidates' remarks, Statements of Administration Policy, documents released by the Office of the Press Secretary, and election debates. Public papers of the presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush.
• The Cornell University Witchcraft Collection

  Part of Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell's Witchcraft Collection contains over 3,000 titles documenting the history of the Inquisition and the persecution of witchcraft, primarily in Europe.

• American Folklife Center

  The collections in the Archive of Folk Culture include folk cultural material from all fifty states, as well as United States trusts, territories, and the District of Columbia. Most of these areas have been served by the Folklife Center's cultural surveys, equipment loan program, publications, and other projects.For those interested in Dust Bowl research, the Alan Lomax recordings are included in the archive.