ANSO 402: Senior Seminar

Primary sources are first-hand accounts by participants of a particular event or materials produced at the same historical time period. 

Some examples of primary sources include:

• Memoirs, speeches, writings, correspondence
• Papers of a political party, agency, or association
• Official documents such as congressional hearings and reports
• Contemporary magazine and newspaper articles
• Contemporary art, films, literature and music
• Contemporary artifacts, such as buildings and monuments

When looking for primary sources, you need to consider:

• Who would create the documents? 
  • Who can be individuals or groups, such as local, regional, or international organizations, associations, and governmental agencies.
  • When reading secondary and primary sources, make a list of the names you encounter. Search these names as authors in library databases.
• How would the documents be preserved and accessed?
  • Formally published/produced, such as books, newspaper and magazine articles, films, music, court cases, etc.
    • Search library databases to find these materials.
  • Informally published/produced, such as press releases, reports, policy statements, etc.
    • For government materials, search government information resources 
    • For companies and organizations, try Williams WorldCat, HathiTrust Digital Library, and Internet Archive.
  • Personal or internal documents, such as diaries, letters, research interviews, internal memos, etc 
    • May no longer exist
    • May not be publicly available (could be in personal files only)
    • May have been deposited with a library archive, museum, historical site, or corporate/organization archive
      • Search Archive Finder or Google to determine where a person's/organizations papers are housed
      • Look for finding aids and digitized documents at the institution that holds the papers.
    • May have been collected and published
      • Search Williams WorldCat