A primary source is "first-hand" information, sources as close as possible to the origin of the information or idea under study. Primary sources are contrasted with secondary sources, works that provide analysis, commentary, or criticism on the primary source. In literary studies, primary sources are often creative works, including poems, stories, novels, and so on. In historical studies, primary sources include written works, recordings, or other source of information from people who were participants or direct witnesses to the events in question. Examples of commonly used primary sources include government documents, memoirs, personal correspondence, oral histories, and contemporary newspaper accounts.
Documents central to U.S. foreign and military policy since 1945, compiled by top scholars and experts.
Personal accounts, such as diaries and letters, of people in North America from 1534-1850, including traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials.
Historical books, pamphlets and broadsides from 17th and 18th century America.
Primary sources on American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction.
Access to personal narratives including several thousand indexed and searchable pages of Ellis Island Oral History interviews, starting around 1840 to the present, focusing on 1920 to 1980.
Letters and diaries from colonial times to 1950 plus journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings
For a magazine or newspaper to count as a primary source, the article must have been written around the time that the event took place.
All of the sources listed below provide the option of restricting your search by date.
Primary source material from 18th and 19th century including historical periodicals and books; eyewitness accounts of historical events, descriptions of daily life, business advertisements, and genealogical records.
Series I offers more than 700 historical American newspapers from 23 states and the District of Columbia printed between 1690 and 1876
Access to selected newspaper pages from 1836 to 1922. Use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information on newspapers published between 1690-present.
Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).
Includes full-text of the Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper from 1934 to 2005.
Features news, business and legal sources from LexisNexis®—including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790. For help on how to use Nexis Uni, visit the research guide.This database is only available to current Pepperdine students, faculty, and staff.
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