Primary Sources

Reprinted Sources

Secondary Sources
 

II. Getting Started

Reference Sources

Identify key participants, dates & publications
 

III. Strategies

1. Online Catalogs

2. Periodical & Newspaper Indexes

3. Special Collections

4. Popular Fiction, Movies, Television

5. Public Opinion Polls

6. Government Documents

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I. Definitions

WHAT ARE PRIMARY SOURCES?

Primary sources enable the researcher to get as close as possible to what actually happened during an historical event or time period.  A primary source reflects the individual viewpoint of a participant or observer.

Undergraduates are sometimes allowed to use a broader definition of primary sources, which may include some of the types of materials listed below.  If in doubt, ask your instructor.

• Diaries, journals, speeches, interviews, letters, memos, manuscripts and other papers in which individuals describe events in which they were participants or observers.
• Memoirs and autobiographies. These may be less reliable than diaries or letters since they are usually written long after events occurred and may be distorted by bias, dimming memory or the revised perspective that may come with hindsight. On the other hand, they are sometimes the only source for certain information.
• Records of or information collected by government agencies.  Many kinds of records (births, deaths, marriages; permits and licenses issued; census data; etc.) document conditions in the society. 
• Records of organizations.  The minutes, reports, correspondence, etc. of an organization or agency serve as an ongoing record of the activity and thinking of that organization or agency. 
• Published materials (books, magazine and journal articles, newspaper articles) written at the time about a particular event. While these are sometimes accounts by participants, in most cases they are written by journalists or other observers. The important thing is to distinguish between material written at the time of an event as a kind of report, and material written much later, as historical analysis.
• Photographs, audio recordings and moving pictures or video recordings, documenting what happened.
• Materials that document the attitudes and popular thought of a historical time period.  If you are attempting to find evidence documenting the mentality or psychology of a time, or of a group (evidence of a world view, a set of attitudes, or the popular understanding of an event or condition), the most obvious source is public opinion polls taken at the time. Since these are generally very limited in availability and in what they reveal, however, it is also possible to make use of ideas and images conveyed in the mass media, and even in literature, film, popular fiction, textbooks, etc. Again, the point is to use these sources, written or produced at the time, as evidence of how people were thinking. 
• Research data such as anthropological field notes, the results of scientific experiments, and other scholarly activity of the time.
• Artifacts of all kinds: physical objects, buildings, furniture, tools, appliances and household items, clothing, toys.

Reprinted Primary Sources

Some primary sources, such as diaries or letters, are original manuscripts which exist in only one place in the world.  Others, such as newspaper articles or transcripts of speeches, exist in multiple copies but may be hard to find. 

Look for reprinted primary source materials that are available on campus, such as books that collect speeches, letters, or government documents; microfilm collections of the papers of an organization; or videos of archival newsreel footage.  These materials are often more accessible and easier to use than the original materials.  You can search for these primary sources in library catalogs using primary source subheadings (see III section 1., below).

PRINT.
Some compilations of reprinted primary source materials appear in books which can often be found in reference collections, or which can be checked out from campus libraries:

• Annals of America
• Speeches of the American Presidents
• A woman doctor's Civil War : Esther Hill Hawks' diary
• Dark and Bloody Ground: A guerrilla Diary of the Spanish Civil War

MICROFILM.
The Library maintains a rich microform collection of primary sources. These microform collections may be compilations of letters, manuscripts, newspapers, magazines, and other documents on a particular topic. Among the types of resources you will find are: 

• Letters Received by the Office of Indian Affairs
• Daily Oklahoman, May 1894 to April 1911
• New York Times, 1851 to present
• Times Picayune (New Orleans) Nov 1860 to March 1868
• English Books Before 1640
• Time Magazine 1923 to present

INTERNET.
Increasingly, libraries are digitizing archival resources and providing access to these special collections through the Web. Many digital library collections contain excellent primary resources such as photographs, scanned images of letters or the full-text of books and journals.

For a more extensive list of primary sources on the Web, go to http://www.lib/berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/PrimarySourcesOnTheWeb.html
or Electronic Collections Online
 

WHAT ARE SECONDARY SOURCES?

A secondary source is a work that interprets or analyzes an historical event or phenomenon. It is generally at least one step removed from the event. A recent article that evaluates and analyzes the relationship between the feminist movement and the labor movement in turn-of-the-century England is an example of a secondary source; if you were to look at the bibliography of this article you would see that the author's research was based on both primary sources such as labor union documents, speeches and personal letters as well as other secondary sources. Textbooks and encyclopedias are also examples of secondary sources. 

To find secondary sources, look in the library catalogs (for books and other monographs).

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II. Getting Started: Background Information

1. FIND THE RIGHT REFERENCE SOURCE.

A good first step in finding primary materials is to look at the resources in the library's reference collection. These sources will give you a good overview of the topic, will outline the basic historical context and will help you identify key participants, dates and publications associated with your topic.

Ask a librarian or professor to suggest reference sources or textbooks, such as specialized encyclopedias, chronologies or factbooks which will give you an historical overview of a topic or event and identify the participants. If you have specific people in mind already, biographical dictionaries and encyclopedias will give you background information and bibliographies of primary and secondary sources.

Books and historical journal articles (especially those with extensive bibliographies) and other secondary sources can give you background information and clues as to the participants involved and source materials which might be available.

Specialized bibliographies and guides to research often give both an introductory overview of how to go about researching a particular topic as well as list specific primary and secondary sources.

Examples of specialized encyclopedias, chronologies and handbooks: 

• Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups 
• Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War 
• Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment 
• Encyclopedia of the Holocaust
• Encyclopedia of American Studies
• Encyclopedia of the American West
• Encyclopedia of the North American Colonies

Examples of biographical sources:

• Current Biography (1940-present) 
• Dictionary of American Biography
• American National Biography
• Women in World History

Examples of bibliographies and guides to research:

• Harvard Guide to American History 
• AHA Guide to Historical Literature 
• Bibliographical and Historical Index of American Indians and Persons Involved in Indian Affairs

2. IDENTIFY KEY PARTICIPANTS, DATES AND PUBLICATIONS ASSOCIATED WITH YOUR TOPIC.

When looking at reference sources, pick out names of people, organizations, and governmental agencies that were participants, and any publications such as reports, newsletters, magazines, pamphlets, etc. that they produced in conjunction with the events or developments you are researching.  Search for these names and titles in the library catalog (see section III 1. below, "Use the Online Library Catalog.")

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III. Strategies for Finding Primary Sources

Use library catalogs to find books, videos, manuscript materials and the locations of newspaper and journal titles.  To find individual newspaper and magazine articles, see Indexes, below.

1. USE THE ONLINE LIBRARY CATALOG

The online library catalog at SE are:

• SE Library Catalog http://unicorn.se.edu/uhtbin/cgisirsi.exe/x/o/49
  For access to materials in the SE Library: includes sophisticated search capabilities like limiting by language and type or item or combining subject headings.

Another catalog that you can use is:

• Oklahoma Union Database http://odo-agent.auto-graphics.com/agent/login.asp?cid=odol&lid=YZHE&mode=G
  The catalog of all libraries in Oklahoma. Allows limiting by language and format, combining subject headings, and sending search results by e-mail.

A.  Search by subject

(Library of Congress Subject Headings)

In order to use the library catalogs to find primary sources on a subject, you must first identify the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). LC Subject Headings are standardized terms developed by the Library of Congress to describe materials listed in catalogs. To determine the appropriate subject headings associated with your topic you can:

• Ask a librarian. 
• Look in the four red volumes of the Library of Congress Subject Headings book located near the reference desk in most libraries. 
• Look up the catalog record for a book that you already know about, display the record in long format and then do a subject search based on the subject headings listed.

You should know that the official subject heading assigned to a book is not necessarily a commonly-used term. For instance, the LCSH for the Vietnam War is NOT "Vietnam War" but rather "Vietnamese conflict, 1961-1975."

Once you have identified the appropriate Library of Congress Subject Heading, you can pair that heading with specific subheadings that identify materials as primary sources. Some of the subheadings are:

 

correspondence

diaries

early works to 1800

interviews

pamphlets

periodicals

personal narratives

sources

You can add any of the subheadings listed above with a Library of Congress Subject Heading to specifically search for primary source material. For example:

• world war 1939-1945 england personal narratives
• student movements japan history sources
• anarchism united states pamphlets
• france revolution correspondence
• soviet union history revolution 1917-1921 pamphlets
• women suffrage united states history sources 
• indians of north america history

etc.

B.  Look up the people, organizations, and agencies as authors.

Materials that were written or produced by them either at the time of the event or later will, in most cases, be primary sources.

Examples: 
In any of the catalogs, look up individual names as author. 
 

sanger, margaret

pankhurst, christabel

Lee, Robert Edward

Roosevelt, Theodore

Look up group names or organizations as corporate author or author.
 

american birth control league

retrieves a collection of pamphlets they issued

congress of racial equality

retrieves the Congress or Racial Equality (CORE) papers

In the Oklahoma Union Catalog, you can select the Oklahoma Serials Catalog , select advanced search, and then look up personal or corporate authors to find serial publications such as newsletters, annual reports, magazines, journals, etc.
 

corporate author:  woman's christian temperance union

retrieves The Temperance Educational Quarterly

C.  Identify Contemporary Books from the Era

If you wish to identify textbooks or other contemporary books of a particular era, you can use the online catalogs and limit your search by date. 

In the Oklahoma Union Catalog, you must limit to a single year, or a range of years, or use the less than (<=) or greater than (>=) symbols to limit to all years before or after a certain year. You can only limit by year in advanced search. Example:
 

Search for: san francisco earthquake

year of pub: 1906-1910 (date)

In the SE I-Link Catalog, you must go to power search to limit by year:

words or phrase:titanic

PubYear(s):1912-1929

2.  USE PERIODICAL AND NEWSPAPER INDEXES COVERING THE TIME PERIOD

Finding newspaper and magazine articles from the time period you are researching is a two-step process.  To find citations to individual articles, use a newspaper or periodical index. These indexes are available in print and/or electronic formats. 

After you use the index, search a library catalog to determine whether the periodical or newspaper is available at the SE Library.

Newspaper indexes:

• Wall Street Journal Index (1975 - present)
• New York Times Index (1851-present)

Periodical indexes:

• International Index to Periodicals (1906-1965)
• Nineteenth Century Reader's Guide (1890-1922)
• Poole's Index to Periodical Literature (1802-1906)
• Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature (1915-present )
• Social Sciences and Humanities Index (1965-1973)

Newspapers on the Web: 
For a list of newspapers available in full-text online, see http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/PrimarySourcesOnTheWeb.html#journals
 

3. GO TO SPECIAL COLLECTIONS OF PRIMARY SOURCE MATERIAL

Go to libraries which have collections of manuscripts, papers, organizational records, ephemera or other unpublished materials relating to the people, organizations and agencies involved in the events.  These are often original, one-of-a-kind materials.

The Oklahoma State University Library has many special collections, some of which are available online at their Electronic Publishing Center ("http://digital.library.okstate.edu/) They have the Chronicles of Oklahoma, Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties, The Proceedings of the Oklahoma Academy of Sciences, and the Speeches of Boone Pickens

Other libraries have been digitizing their resources on the World Wide Web. For example, the Berkeley Library has several collections that can be access through the World Wide Web, such as: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/ and include: The Jack London Collection (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/), the Emma Goldman Papers (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/) and the California Heritage collection of historical images (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CalHeritage/).

The Online Archive of California (OAC) at http://www.oac.cdlib.org/   is a searchable online database of finding aids to archival collections. Finding aids are indexes or guides to collections held by archive and manuscript repositories, libraries and museums.  Some finding aids list the contents of the collection, box by box and folder by folder; others are less detailed.  In some cases, online finding aids link to the item in the collections such as the image of a letter written by Emma Goldman or the California Heritage Collection. There are 13 institutions represented in the OAC including the University of California campuses, Stanford.

5.  FIND PUBLIC OPINION POLLS FROM THE TIME PERIOD

To identify public opinion polls, talk to the librarians at the Doe Reference Center, 2nd floor Doe Library and the Institute of Governmental Studies Library (http://www.igs.berkeley.edu/library/). Among the most important sources are: 

• Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935-1971.
• Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1997
.
• Gallup Poll Cumulative Index 1935-1997
.

6. USE INDEXES TO GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS

Publications generated by a government body, public records, reports and statistics such as census records, laws, Supreme Court decisions and treaties, are excellent sources of primary materials. Ask at the reference desk for assistance in locating government documents related to your topic. You can also search several indexes to government documents available online. 

Last Updated: January 8, 2006

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