What is a Primary Source?
What is a primary source? A primary source is a document, image, or artifact that provide first hand testimony or direct evidence concerning a historical event and/or topic. Some examples would be letters, manuscripts, diaries, journals, newspaper, speeches, government documents, photographs, data, artifacts/objects, interviews, audio, and video recordings.
You can find these primary sources online and in print. The rest of the tabs on this guide will mostly be for sources available online, but the items on this page will focus on print items.
Books on your Topic
The fullness of time : temporalities of The fifteenth-century Low Countries by Call Number: DH71 .C47 2017ISBN: 9780226514796The Fullness of Time asks how the passage of time in the Low Countries was ordered by the rhythms of human action, from the musical life of a cathedral to the measurement of time by clocks and calendars, the work habits of a guildsman to the devotional practices of the laity and religious orders. Through a series of transdisciplinary case studies, it explores the multiple ways that objects, texts and music might themselves be said to engage with, imply, and unsettle time, shaping and forming the lives of the inhabitants of the fifteenth-century Low Countries.
Transformations of Time and Temporality in Medieval and Renaissance Art by Call Number: Oversize N8253.T5 C64x 2014ISBN: 9789004267855This book presents a multifaceted picture of the dynamic concepts of time and temporality in medieval and Renaissance art, adopted in speculative, ecclesiastical, socio-political, propagandist, moralistic, and poetic contexts.
Finding Print Primary Sources
Primary sources can also be found in published books. You can use the Tufts Catalog to search for them or in Libraries Worldwide. Using subject headings can help you find these primary sources:
- Sources
- Description and travel
- Personal narratives
- Correspondence
The Library of Congress assigns subject headings to every book published in the US. These subject headings can be helpful in finding items related to your topic. If you'd like to use subject headings for your search, click on Advanced Search on our Tufts Catalog and some search boxes will appear. On the left-hand side, instead of Any Field, click that to change to Subject. Once you have made that change, you can do a search using subject headings. For example, you can do the following searches:
- Time--Social Aspects--Benelux countries
- Time perception--Social Aspects
- Middle Ages, 500-1500--Personal Correspondence
When you click on a book that seems of interest for your research, you can see other subject headings that correspond to that topic, and you can click on them and will take you to other items that have the same subject heading.