Forrer Learning Commons Library Services: Using Primary Sources: Finding Primary Sources

What Kind of Primary Sources are you Looking for?

For some disciplines, primary sources are documents, accounts, and publications from a particular time period. Things like:

Newspaper articles
Letters
Advertisements
Photos
Journals
Speeches

For other disciplines, the primary sourcesare original research or materials like:

Statistics/data
original research/experiments
original artwork, poetry or prose

If you're not sure what kind of primary sources you need, check with your professor for clarification.

Using Primary Sources on the Web
From ALA's Reference and User Services Association

Historical Primary Sources

Using the Special Collections

Bridgewater College's Special Collections focuses on primary sources pertaining to Brethren history, Shenandoah Valley history, and the Civil War. If you'd like to take a look at some of the Special Collections materials that have been digitized, visit the library's Digital Commons. But, you may be able to find sources covering additional topics. Contact our Special Collections Librarian to see if we have any materials related to your topic.

If you would like to search the Special Collections' online catalog, you can do so in the search box below:

Citation Chasing

One great way to find primary sources is to do what's called citation chasing. If you've found a good secondary source about your topic, it's likely that it cites primary sources somewhere within it. This is mandatory for scholarly articles, but some web sources may include hyperlinks to their sources as well. Explore these sources!

As an example, visit this History Channel page about the Civil Rights movement. If you select "Sources" from the menu, you'll find a large number of primary sources that are relevant to the topic. Some include the Civil Rights Digital Library and the National Archives, two sites recommended below.

Searching/Browsing Online Archival Materials

Below are examples of some freely accessible online digital collections from other libraries. These are recommended sources from your librarians. If you have any questions on how to use them, please feel free to ask.

Recommended Library Databases:

New York Times [1851-2014] This link opens in a new window
Full-text access to archival content from the New York Times.
Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies This link opens in a new window
Bridgewater College is an access site to view these archival testimonies. However, students/faculty will need to create an individual account as well. Yale will send a confirmation email after the account is created, so please use your Bridgewater email address. Let us know if you need help setting up the account, email: research@bridgewater.edu, or chat with us!

General Sources:

Date/Era-Specific Sources:

Using Historical Primary Sources

Take some time to analyze the primary source that you have in front of you. If you take the time to look at where the source came from and what the source includes, you'll likely find a wealth of information beyond simply reading a document or glancing at an article.

The recommended steps to analyzing a primary document (per the National Archives) are:

Meet the document,
Observe its parts,
Try to make sense of it, and
Use it as historical evidence.

Try take a closer eye to each primary document that you encounter. These PDFs will help you through the process of analyzing a primary document fully. By the time you complete this exercise, it is likely you will have found at least one (if not five) interesting and exciting thing about the source that you otherwise would not have discovered.

Using Primary Sources

Research Help