Primary Sources
Primary sources are original documents used by scholars to reconstruct a historical event, provide an interpretation of a text, or engage in other intellectual activity. The terms "original" and "document" are both broadly defined. A digital reproduction of an English translation of a Latin text may be considered "original" in some contexts as far as primary sources are concerned. "Document" may also have a wide range of meanings: it may be a critical edition of a literary text, a manuscript, or a news paper, but it can also be an image, a speech, or a data set (to name only a few examples).
Help with Research
Primary Source Databases and Collections
- American Notes: Travel in America, 1750-19201750-1920 CE | Personal narratives | Library of Congress
- Early American imprints. Series I, Evans (1639-1800)1639-1800 CE | Books, pamphlets, and broadsides | Covers titles in the Evans and Shaw-Shoemaker bibliographies
- Early American imprints. Series II, Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-18191801-1819 CE | Books, pamphlets, and broadsides | Covers titles from the Shaw-Shoemaker bibliography
- Early Encounters in North America1534-1850 CE | Personal narratives, diaries, journals, and correspondence
- Early English Books Online1475 -1700 CE | Page images of nearly every book published in English from 1475 to 1700
- Empire Online1482-2003 CE | Diaries, correspondence, government papers, travel writing, and maps
- Gale Primary Sourcesn.d. | Rare books, newspapers, manuscripts, maps, photographs
- The Grand Tour1550-1850 CE | Correspondence, diaries, travel writing, guidebooks, maps, architectural drawings, and account books | British travel to the continent for pleasure, business, and diplomacy
- HathiTrust Digital Libraryn. d. | digitized books, especially useful for 18th and 19th century materials
- Library of Congress: Maps12th c. to present | Maps | Library of Congress
- A Library of Historical British Travel Writing1188-1854 CE | Personal narratives | From A Vision of Britain through Time.
- Making of the Modern World1450-1850 CE | Rare books, reports, correspondence, speeches, and surveys | History of Western trade
- The Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA)1800-1950 CE | Maps, travel narratives, travel guides, museum catalogs | Focus on the Middle East, especially Egypt
- Women's Travel Diaries1827-1991 CE | Diaries | Focus on British and American women
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online1701-1800 CE | Books, pamphlets, and broadsides | Works catalogued in the English Short-title Catalogue
Historical Newspapers
- African Newspapers, 1800-19221800-1922 CE | Newspapers
- America's Historical Newspapers1690-1922 | Newspapers
- American Indian Newspapers1828-2016 CE | Newspapers | English and Native American languages
- British Library Newspapers1800-1899 | Newspapers
- Hispanic American newspapers, 1808-19801808-1980 CE | Newspapers | English and Spanish
- Latin American Newspapers Series 11805-1922 CE | Newspapers | Multiple languages
- Latin American Newspapers Series 21822-1923 CE | Newspapers | Multiple languages
- Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection1603-1804 CE | Newspapers and pamphlets
- South Asian Newspapers, 1864-19221864-1922 CE | Newspapers | Multiple languages
Find Primary Sources in JumboSearch
JumboSearch can be used to find books, articles, films, and other resources from Tisch Library. You can even customize your search results to return primary source material if you combine select subject terms with your other search terms. Here are other subject terms which will help you find primary sources in JumboSearch: