HISTORY 201: The Historian's Craft: The Violence of Mass Confinement (Spring 2022) : Find Primary Sources
What are Primary Sources?
Primary sources are original records created at the time historical events occurred or well after events in the form of memoirs or oral histories. They enable researchers to get as close as possible to what actually happened during an historical event or time period to help them understand and interpret the past. (See definition from the American Library Association's Reference & User Services Association's History Section.)
Some examples of types and formats for primary sources include:
- Books such as personal narratives, memoirs, and autobiographies, collected works, and collections of documents (these may be edited and published after the historical event or time period)
- Journal, magazine, and newspaper articles
- Government publications
- Archival sources such as diaries, interviews, letters, photographs, video recordings, and other media
Finding Primary Sources in Books (in the Library Catalog)
Use the tips below to search the Library Catalog for books that contain primary sources.
- Words in Catalog records may identify an item as a primary source. Search for format-related words like advertisements, autobiographies, correspondence, documents, interviews, journal, letters, manuscripts, personal narratives, sources, speeches, etc. You can combine a primary source format word with words describing your topic (for example, letters and Lincoln, diaries and civil war)
- To find diaries, letters, autobiographies, personal papers, etc. by a particular person, search for the person's name as an author.
- Use the "Years" drop-down to filter results to those published during a time period.
Selected Primary Source Digital Collections
Below are several digital primary source collections that may be useful in your research. More can be found here.
If the topic you're interested in isn't covered here, please ask a librarian for help! This list isn't comprehensive and librarians are glad to suggest other resources.
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Border and Migration Studies OnlinePrimary source documents, archives, films, and ephemera related to significant border areas and migration events from the 19th to 21st centuries. Materials in the collection are organized around fundamental themes of Border Identities, Border Enforcement and Control, Border Disputes, Border Criminologies, Maritime Borders, Human Trafficking, Sea Migration, Undocumented and Unauthorized Migration, and Global Governance of Migration.
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Confidential Print: Latin AmericaThe Confidential Print series, issued by the British Government between c. 1820 and 1970, is a fundamental building block for political, social and economic research. The series originated out of a need to preserve the most important papers generated by the Foreign and Colonial Offices. This collection consists of the Confidential Print for Central and South America and the French- and Spanish-speaking Caribbean. Topics covered include slavery and the slave trade, immigration, relations with indigenous peoples, wars and territorial disputes, the fall of the Brazilian monarchy, British business and financial interests, industrial development, the building of the Panama Canal, and the rise to power of rulers such as Perón in Argentina and Vargas in Brazil.
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Correspondence from German Concentration Camps and Prisons, 1936-1945This collection consists of items originating from prisoners held in German concentration camps, internment and transit camps, Gestapo prisons, and POW camps, during and just prior to World War II.
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Digital National Security ArchiveThe DNSA includes over 100,000 declassified primary documents relating to US foreign policy. It is separated into 42 collections consisting of over compiled and organized by top scholars and experts and exhaustively covers critical world events, countries, and U.S. policy decisions from post World War II through the 21st century.
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Disability in the Modern WorldCollection of primary sources, supporting materials, archives, and video, as voiced by the disability community.
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Empire OnlineEmpire Online spans five centuries, charting the rise and fall of empires around the world. It provides exploration of colonial history, politics, culture, and society. One section is Race, Class, Colonialism, Imperialism. Types of materials include: exploration journals and logs; letter books and correspondence; periodicals; diaries; official government papers; missionary papers; travel writing; slave papers; memoirs; fiction; children's adventure stories; traditional folk tales; exhibition catalogs and guides; maps; marketing posters; photographs and illustrations.
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Experiencing History: Holocaust Sources in ContextA digital teaching and learning tool of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum featuring a diverse set of translated, contextualized, interconnected primary sources including diaries, photographs, oral histories, maps, artwork, documents, and more.
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Human Rights Studies OnlineThis collection of primary and secondary source materials offers access to comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide, from 1900 to 2010. The collection includes multiple media formats and content types for each selected event or human rights theme, including Armenia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Darfur, and more than 30 additional subjects.
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Indigenous Peoples of the Americas: History, Culture & Law (HeinOnline)Full-text legal materials by and about indigenous peoples of the United States, including treaties, federal statutes and regulations, federal case law, tribal codes, constitutions, and jurisprudence.
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March on MilwaukeeThis digital collection presents primary sources from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries and the Wisconsin Historical Society that provide a window onto Milwaukee’s civil rights history. During the 1960s, community members waged protests, boycotts, and legislative battles against segregation and discriminatory practices in schools, housing, and social clubs. The efforts of these activists and their opponents are vividly documented in the primary sources found here, including photographs, unedited news film footage, text documents, and oral history interviews.
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National Criminal Justice Reference Service Virtual LibraryThe NCJRS Virtual Library contains summaries of more than 225,000 publications on criminal justice, including federal, state, and local government reports, books, research reports, journal articles, and unpublished research. Subject areas include corrections, courts, drugs and crime, law enforcement, juvenile justice, crime statistics, and victims of crime. (Updated daily)
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Post-War Europe: Refugees, Exile and Resettlement, 1945-1950Primary sources for the study and understanding of European peoples in the aftermath of World War II. It covers the politics and administration of the post-war refugee crisis in Europe.
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ProQuest CongressionalComprehensive ongoing collection of U.S. federal government publications from the late 18th century to the present. Includes acts (laws), bills and resolutions, committee reports and documents, hearings testimony, and selected legislative histories. Also includes the Congressional Record (floor debate) and the Serial Set & American State Papers.
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U.S. Declassified Documents OnlineThe US Declassified Documents includes documents made available through the Freedom of Information Act from the period immediately after World War II through the 1970's. Nearly every major foreign and domestic event of these years is covered: the Cold War, Vietnam, foreign policy shifts, the civil rights movements, and others.
Research Guides
See the Research Guides below for more information about primary sources. They include many more online resources including ones with historical journals, magazines and newspapers and documents.
Finding Newspapers
Newspapers that could be used as primary sources. Listed below are just a few of the databases holding historic newspapers. If these don't address your needs, this newspaper research guide has an entire page dedicated to finding Historical Newspapers.
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American Indian NewspapersAmerican Indian Newspapers presents the publications of a range of communities, covering periodicals produced in the United States and Canada, including Alaska, Arizona, British Columbia, California, Nevada and Oklahoma, from 1828 to 2016. The collection provides a unique view of a range of subjects from an Indigenous perspective, including the civil rights era and American Indian Movement (AIM), education, environmentalism, land rights and cultural representation.
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American Prison Newspapers: Voices from the insideDigitized newspapers produced in the United States by people who have been incarcerated.
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Ethnic NewsWatchNewspapers, magazines and journals of ethnic, minority and native press, from Asian-American, Jewish, African-American, Native-American, Arab-American, Eastern-European, Latino, multi-ethnic communities.
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ProQuest Historical Newspapers: New York Times (1851-2016)This version of The New York Times includes full-text and full-image articles since its beginning year. Digital reproductions of every page and every article from every issue are available in downloadable PDF files.