Finding Primary Source Documents
Sierra College Library
What are primary sources?
Primary sources are “first hand” accounts or “original” documents, usually created
at the time of the event. Examples of primary sources include speeches, diaries,
newspaper articles, letters, autobiographies, maps, photographs, speeches, sound
recordings, motion pictures, and manuscripts. Only certain motion pictures can be
considered primary sources. For example, the movie The Day After from 1983
would be useful in demonstrating American attitudes and fears about nuclear war
during the Cold War, but The Patriot from 2000 would not be an acceptable
primary source for the American Revolution.
Locating primary sources through the library catalog
When you do a subject browse search in the library catalog, you can identify
primary source material by the following subheadings:
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sources
interviews
diaries
personal narratives
correspondence
Here are some examples of what these headings may look like in the library
catalog:
Women -- History -- Sources
Slaves -- Interviews
Pioneers -- West (U.S.) -- Diaries
Spain -- History -- Civil War, 1936-1939 -- Personal narratives
Addams, Jane, 1860-1935 -- Correspondence
You may also use the keyword relevance search to find primary sources by adding
any of the above subheadings to your search topic. For example:
witchcraft sources
California diaries
Vietnam personal narratives
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Locating primary sources on the internet
Many primary sources can be found on the internet. One way to locate these
documents is to add terms like primary sources or documents to your search
topic.
For example:
medieval England primary sources OR documents
This search will find pages which contain the words medieval and England and
primary and either the word sources or the word documents. This search will
work in Google, Yahoo and Ask.com. Note that the word OR must be capitalized.
Another way to search for primary sources on the internet is to search by the name
of the document. Put the name in quotation marks to search for the exact title.
For example:
“Pacific railway act”
“I have a dream”
You can also use Sierra College Library’s customized search engine (CSE) for
primary sources to help you locate documents. This CSE can be found at:
http://tinyurl.com/242dwp
Selected Reference Books with Primary Sources
The American Republic: Primary Sources
R 973 A512am
The Annals of America
R 973.08 A613
Documents of American History
R 973 C734
Encyclopedia of American Historical Documents
R 973.03 E56r
The Encyclopedia of World War I, Volume 5: Documents
R 940.303 W927t v. 5
The Encyclopedia of World War II, Volume 5: Documents
R 940.5303 E56t v. 5
Our Documents: 100 Milestone Documents from the National Archives
R 973 U58o
Shaping of America, 1783-1815: Primary Sources
R 973.4 H237 v.3
Voices of the American Past: Documents in U.S. History
R 973 V889
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