Special Collections & Archives: Welcome

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.

Diaries, journals, speeches, interviews, letters, memos, manuscripts and other papers in which individuals describe events in which they were participants or observers are primary sources.

Memoirs and autobiographies may be less reliable than diaries or letters.  On the one hand, they are often 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 include many kinds of records (births, deaths, marriages; permits and licenses issued; census data; etc.); all document conditions in a society.

Records of organizations, such as minutes, reports, correspondence, etc. of an organization or agency, may serve as an ongoing record of the activity of that organization or agency.

Published materials (books, magazine and journal articles, newspaper articles), written at the time about a particular event, are sometimes accounts by participants; in most cases they are written by journalists or other observers. Be sure 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 also document events.

There are also materials documenting the attitudes and popular thought of a historical time period. If you are seeking 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, one can make use of ideas and images conveyed in the mass media, and even in literature, film, popular fiction, textbooks, etc. Use these sources, written or produced at the time, as evidence of how people were thinking.

Other research data include anthropological field notes, the results of scientific experiments, and other scholarly activity of the time.

Yet another primary source is artifacts of all kinds: physical objects, buildings, furniture, tools, appliances, household items, clothing, and toys.