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A primary source is an item that was created during the period being studied and documents in some way what is being studied.
Examples of primary sources include:
Newspaper accounts | Letters, diaries and scrapbooks |
Government documents (research data, statistics, congressional transcripts, laws) |
Personal accounts, autobiographies, memoirs |
Images and museum artifacts | Speeches |
Data from scientific experiments | Oral histories |
If you are looking for historical primary sources, here are three strategies:
1. Search the Library Search box. If you are looking for primary sources on a certain topic, use the Advanced Search with subjects.
For example, you could search for medieval as a keyword and sources OR documents OR personal narratives as subject headings.
2. Search in Google Books - If your topic is pre-1923, you can probably find primary sources that are in the public domain (no longer under copyright protection). Google has digitized books from many of the world's major research libraries, and all of the works in the public domain are freely available in Google Books.
3. Search in Library Databases: The DU Libraries have some databases for primary source materials. Below are examples of such databases.