Humanities Program

What is a Primary Source?

Primary Sources are first-hand accounts of events, such as letters, diaries, memoirs, speeches, newspaper articles, photos, film footage, speeches, interviews, original research, government documents, postcards, leaflets, etc.  In other words, they are documents or artifacts created during the time period being studied or by the individual being studied.

Image from University of Minnesota Libraries: http://digital.lib.umn.edu/warposters/

Finding Primary Sources in Libsearch

To search for primary sources in Libsearch, add one or more of the following terms to your search terms:

• sources [one of the most common words that identifies primary texts]
• document* [note the wild card character at the end of this term]
• personal narratives
• correspondence
• letters
• diaries
• interviews
• speeches
• quotations
• periodicals [identifies newspapers, magazines or journals]
• manuscripts
• reports

*You may want to combine some of the above words using "or", for example:
sources or personal narratives or correspondence or diaries