HISTORY 201: The Historian's Craft: The French Revolution (Spring 2023) : Find Primary Sources

Primary sources are materials originating from the time period in which historians examine the events or people of interest.  Examples include books (e.g., personal narratives, memoirs, and autobiographies, collected works, and collections of documents); journal and magazine articles, newspaper articles, government documents, archival sources (.e.g, diaries, interviews, memos, manuscripts, and other papers and records of organizations); and multimedia sources (e.g., photographs, audio recordings, and motion pictures or video recordings). 

This page provides access to selected databases for primary sources that related to the topics of this course.

 Use the tips below to search the Library Catalog for books that contain primary sources.

• Words in catalog records can identify an item as a primary source. Search for format related words like: autobiographies, correspondence, diaries, documents, journal, letters, manuscripts, memoirs, personal narratives, sources, speeches, etc. You can combine a primary-source format word with words describing your topic (e.g., letters and Burke or diaries and French Revolution).
• To find diaries, letters, autobiographies, personal papers, etc., by a particular person, search for the person's name as an author.
• For more information about finding primary sources, see the Research Guides on this page.

See the Research Guides below for more information about primary sources. The Research Guides include many more online resources including ones with historical journals, magazines and newspapers and documents.

You can search for historical newspapers that could also be used as primary sources.

This newspaper research guide has an entire page dedicated to finding Historical Newspapers.