Guides: History: Primary Sources

Tips for Finding Primary Sources

Primary sources, what we call sources of information created at the time we're studying, can be just about anything and can be found in a ton of places. It's overwhelming to try to find them, so below are some of my favorite techniques for finding them. If you want personal help finding some, email me what you're looking for at nicholas.dandrea@pepperdine.edu.

Look through the sources of a history book/article on your topic. This technique is called citation chaining and you can use it for history to see what they're using, what kinds of sources they're using to support their argument, and get ideas of how to better use primary sources.
Search the web for your topic and add "archives" to the search terms. This helps me find more unique and small online archives and other digital collections on different topics.
Check out other libraries, universities, and museums for digital collections. Tons of public libraries, museums, and academic/research institutions have online resources these days. Try looking at places local to the area your interested in and look for the term "digital collections". For example, if you're researching something that happened in NYC, you could look at the New York Public Library.

Primary Sources Online

This is a list of some big online resources, but is not exhaustive. Contact me for specialized recommendations for your research at nicholas.dandrea@pepperdine.edu.

Library of Congress Digital Collections
An expansive, fully digitized collections of resources from the US Library of Congress.
Digital Public Library of America
Search tool for public domain and other openly available digital resources.
Internet Archive
Digital library containing an extensive collection of books, sounds, videos, and more. Requires a free account to read.
HathiTrust
A not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving 17+ million digitized items
Internet History Sourcebooks
A list of lists of primary sources split up by time and region, with sources form ancient times to the 20th century.
The Online Books Page
Resource which can tell you where books are freely online.
Google Books
Search tool for accessing books through Google, which contains some fully digitized books.

Loeb Classical Library

Greek and Latin texts with English translations. Requires profile sign-in.
First time users, to create profile and set password, visit https://www.loebclassics.com/

EuroDocs: Online Sources for European History
Select digital resources from the history of various European countries.
Biblioteca Digital del Patroimonio Iberoamericano
Portal to digital collections of many Latin American national libraries
Historical Newspapers List
List of Pepperdine provided historical newspapers covering different time periods and from different parts of the world.

Locating Primary Sources Using the Library Search

By using a proper search strategy, you can find Primary Source material at Pepperdine University Libraries and over 70,000 libraries worldwide.

Search by people who witnessed or participated in an event:

Harry Truman
Leon Trotsky
Jackie Robinson
Bartolome De Las Casas
Jesse Owens
Saint Augustine

Some useful terms to add to your search for primary sources are:

correspondence
diaries
interviews
pamphlets
personal narratives
sources
biography (An autobiography is a primary source.)
oral history
sourcebook
documentary history

Try limiting your search to books that were written at the time of the historical event to target primary sources.