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Primary Sources
Your
professor has instructed you to get primary sources for your research project,
and you are confused. Primary sources enable the researcher to get as close as
possible to what actually happened during an historical event or time period. A
primary source reflects the individual viewpoint of a participant or observer.
The following list gives examples of primary sources. If in doubt, ask your
professor.
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Diaries, journals,
speeches, interviews, letters, memos, manuscripts and other papers in
which individuals describe events in which they were participants or
observers.
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Memoirs and
autobiographies. These may be less reliable than diaries or letters since
they are usually written long after events occurred and may be distorted by
bias, dimming memory or the revised perspective that may come with hindsight.
On the other hand, they are sometimes the only source for certain information.
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Records of or
information collected by government agencies. Many kinds of records
(births, deaths, marriages; permits and licences issued; census data; etc.)
document conditions in the society.
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Records of
organizations. The minutes, reports, correspondence, etc. of an
organization or agency serve as an ongoing record of the activity and thinking
of that organization or agency.
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Published materials
(books, magazine and journal articles, newspaper articles) written at the time
about a particular event. While these are sometimes accounts by participants,
in most cases they are written by journalists or other observers. The
important thing is to distinguish between material written at the time of an
event as a kind of report, and material written much later, as historical
analysis.
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Photographs, audio
recordings and moving pictures or video recordings,
documenting what happened.
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Materials that
document the attitudes and popular thought of a historical time period.
If you are attempting to find evidence documenting the mentality or psychology
of a time, or of a group (evidence of a world view, a set of attitudes, or the
popular understanding of an event or condition), the most obvious source is
public opinion polls taken at the time. Since these are generally very
limited in availability and in what they reveal, however, it is also possible
to make use of ideas and images conveyed in the mass media, and even in
literature, film, popular fiction, textbooks, etc. Again, the point is to
use these sources, written or produced at the time, as evidence of how people
were thinking.
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Research data
such as
anthropological field notes, the results of scientific experiments, and other
scholarly activity of the time.
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Artifacts of all kinds: physical objects, buildings, furniture, tools,
appliances and household items, clothing, toys.
Web
Sites for Digital Images:
Two BC
databases (available on campus)
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Early American
Imprints
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full-text
digitization of the microform set Early American Imprints, Series I
(1639-1800), which was itself based on the American Bibliography of Charles
Evans (14 vols., 1903-34, 1955-59).
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Early Encounters in North
America - sources from diaries, letters, and memoirs
about the people, cultures, and environment.
Digital Library of Appalachia
(Appalachian College Association)
Image Collections
(from the Virtual Library of Virginia)
Other
Helpful Web Links for Primary Sources:
Primary Resources on the Web (USC-Berkeley)
Primary Resources by Subject
(Michigan State University)
Another Site for
Primary Sources
Also try a Google search engine search-- example: modern europe (or your topic)
and primary sources
And find your subject on our
Subject Internet Guides page to see if primary sources
are listed.
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