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Excerpted
and adapted from http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/PrimarySources.html
4/2001 for LHHS Library
With a lot of focus
on using primary source material in research recently, it is important
that you know exactly what primary sources are and how to find them.
This is a guide to using primary sources.
Primary
sources enable the researcher to get as close as possible to the truth
of what actually happened during an historical event or time period.
Primary sources are the evidence left behind by participants or
observers. The following are generally considered primary sources:
- Diaries,
journals, speeches, interviews, letters, memos, manuscripts and
other papers in which individuals describe events in which they
were participants or observers.
- Memoirs
and autobiographies. These are generally less reliable since
they are usually written long after events occurred and may be
distorted by bias, dimming memory or the revised perspective that
may come with hindsight. On the other hand, they are sometimes the
only source for certain information.
- Records
of organizations and agencies of government. The minutes,
reports, correspondence, etc. of an organization or agency serve as
an ongoing record of the activity and thinking of that organization
or agency. Many kinds of records (births, deaths, marriages; permits
and licenses issued; census data; etc.) document conditions in the
society.
- Published
materials (books, magazine and journal articles, newspaper
articles) written at the time about a particular event. While these
are sometimes accounts by participants, in most cases they are
written by journalists or other observers. The important thing is to
distinguish between material written at the time of an event as a
kind of report, and material written much later, as historical
analysis.
- Photographs,
audio recordings and moving
pictures or video
recordings, documenting what happened.
- Artifacts
of all kinds: physical objects, buildings, furniture, tools,
appliances and household items, clothing, toys.
- Research
reports in the sciences and social sciences. Especially for
recent social history, the best evidence of broad developments in
society is often in the form of social science surveys or research
studies. This research is generally reported in book form,
government reports or most commonly in articles published in
scholarly journals.
- If
you are attempting to find evidence documenting the mentality or
psychology of a time, or of a group (evidence of a world view, a set
of attitudes, or the popular understanding of an event or
condition), the most obvious source is public
opinion polls taken at the time. Since these are generally very
limited in availability and in what they reveal, however, it is also
possible to make use of ideas
and images conveyed in the mass media (i.e. advertisements),
and even in literature,
film, popular fiction, self-help literature, textbooks, etc.
Again, the point is to use these sources, written or produced at the
time, as evidence of how people were thinking.
What
are Primary Sources? ° What
are Secondary Sources? °
Strategies for Finding Primary Sources ° Links
to Primary Sources
top of page
A secondary
source is a work that interprets or analyzes an historical event or
phenomenon. It is generally at least one step removed from the event. A
recent article that evaluates and analyzes the relationship between the
feminist movement and the labor movement in turn-of-the-century England
is an example of a secondary source; if you were to look at the
bibliography of this article you would see that the authors research was
based on both primary sources such as labor union documents, speeches
and personal letters as well as other secondary sources. Textbooks and
encyclopedias are also examples of secondary sources.
To find
secondary sources, look in the library catalogs (for books and other
monographs) or periodical indexes
What
are Primary Sources? ° What
are Secondary Sources? °
Strategies for Finding Primary Sources ° Links
to Primary Sources
top of page
1.
Look up the people, organizations, and agencies as authors.
Materials
that were written or produced by them either at the time of the event or
later will, in most cases, be primary sources.
Examples:
In the OPAC
or magazine/periodical databases, look up individual names as personal
author or author.
Sanger,
Margaret
Pankhurst, Christabel
Look up group
names or organizations as corporate
author or author.
American
Birth Control League
retrieves a collection of pamphlets they issued.
2.
Search using specific subject headings which indicate primary
source material
You should
know that the proper subject heading assigned to a book is not
necessarily intuitive or logical. For instance, the Library of Congress
Subject Heading for the Vietnam War is NOT "Vietnam War" but
rather "Vietnamese conflict, 1961-1975."
Once you have
identified the appropriate Subject
Heading, you can pair that heading with specific subheadings
that identify materials as
primary sources. Some of the subheadings are:
-
correspondence
-
diaries
-
early
works to 1800
-
interviews
-
pamphlets
-
periodicals
-
personal
narratives
-
sources
You can
append any of the subheadings listed above with a Subject Heading to
specifically search for primary source material. For example:
·
World
War, 1939-1945 England personal
narratives
·
student
movements Japan history sources
·
anarchism
united states pamphlets
·
france
revolution correspondence
·
Soviet
Union history revolution 1917-1921 pamphlets
·
women
suffrage United States history sources
etc.
What
are Primary Sources? ° What
are Secondary Sources? °
Strategies for Finding Primary Sources ° Links
to Primary Sources
top of page
- Eye
Witness History
- Illuminating the past through
personal narratives and other first -hand sources.
-
- Library
of Congress Primary Source Collections
- Links to primary source material
on the web.
-
- UC
Berkeley Oral Histories Online
- A collection of oral histories
from UC Berkeley.
-
- Trenches
on the Web
- Includes timelines, biographies,
maps, photos, and posters
Picturing
the Century
- "An exhibition of 20th
century photographs from the holdings of the National Archives and Records
Administration."
Culinary History
Timeline
-
- Contains many facsimilies of
menus and recipes from throughout history.
To Save a Life: Stories
of Jewish Rescue
- "True stories narrated
by six rescuers accompanied by the narratives of thirteen people whom
they rescued [from the World War II Holocaust]..."
The Advertising Artwork of Dr. Seuss - http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dsads/
Brief information and images of illustrations created
by Dr. Suess (born Theodore Seuss Geisel) before he "found fame as a
children's book author." Includes work created for oil, ball bearing,
beer, and sugar companies, bug spray ("Quick, Henry, the
Flit!"), and radio promotional spots. From the Mandeville Special
Collections Library at the University of California, San Diego.
Dismuke's Virtual Talking Machine: Vintage Phonograph Recordings,
1900-1939 http://dismuke.org/
"This site is devoted to vintage music from the
early decades of the 20th Century. All recordings have been transcribed
into streaming Real Audio from the original 78 rpm discs in my personal
collection." Includes Radio Dismuke, an online radio station; Hit of
the Week; and a browsable collection of recordings.
America at Work, America at Leisure: Motion Pictures from 1894-1915 - http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awlhtml/
A collection of 150 motion pictures illustrating
"work, school, and leisure activities in the United States."
Searchable by keyword, and browsable by title and subject. Includes films
of "the United States Postal Service from 1903, cattle breeding, fire
fighters, ice manufacturing, logging, calisthenic and gymnastic exercises
in schools, amusement parks, boxing, expositions, football, parades,
swimming...." Also contains related essays and a bibliography. From
the American Memory Project of the Library of Congress.
Life Magazine Covers - http://www.lifemag.com/Life/search/covers
Explore the covers of Life Magazine, published weekly
from 1936 to 1972. The covers
from this time period can be searched in two ways. The first is by date.
Enter a date and get the covers nearest that date, with the title and
photographer/artist. Click on the cover and you'll get a larger version.
The second way is to search by keyword. Keep it simple. A search
for "Nixon" found 16 results, from 1953 to1972. A search for
"Beatles" found two results. You can limit your keyword search
by date -- search for "Nixon" in 1953, for example.
Picturing the Century - http://www.nara.gov/exhall/picturing_the_century/home.html
"An exhibition of 20th century photographs from
the holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration."
The Emergence of Advertising in America - http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/eaa/timeline.html
A
timeline of the emergence of advertising in America from 1850-1920.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Category Descriptions
to view the actual advertisements.
Women of the Century: 100 Years of American Heroes http://school.discovery.com/schooladventures/womenofthecentury/
An annotated list of more than four dozen phenomenal
American women of the twentieth century "who left an indelible mark
on our nation." Browse decade by decade or in categories of
activists, reformers, politics and government, arts, media, space and
science, sports, and exploration. A DiscoverySchool.com site.
Photographs from the Chicago Daily News:
1902-1933 http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/ichihtml/cdnhome.html
"This
collection comprises over 55,000 images of urban life captured on glass
plate negatives between 1902 and 1933 by photographers employed by the
Chicago Daily News, then one of Chicago's leading newspapers." The
photos are from the collection of the Chicago Historical Society; over
one-third are related to sports. Search by keyword, or browse by names or
subjects. Another excellent site from the American Memory Project of the
Library of Congress.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/ichihtml/cdnhome.html
1943 Detroit Race Riots - http://www.detnews.com/history/riot/riot.htm
Overview of how overcrowding and competition for
defense jobs during World War II in the "Arsenal of Democracy"
erupted in "36 hours of rioting [that] claimed 34 lives, 25 of them
black. More than 1,800 were arrested for looting and other
incidents," most were African Americans. From The
Detroit News.
The Picture Collection Online – http://digital.nypl.org/mmpco/
From the New York
Public Library, this is a "collection of 30,000 digitized, public
domain images from books, magazines and newspapers as well as original
photographs, prints and postcards, mostly created before 1923. It consists
of images of New York City, Costume, Design, American History" and
more than 12,000 other subjects. It is searchable by "keyword or by
browsing a variety of indexes."
Library of Congress
Prints and Photographs Online Catalog - http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/pphome.html
A
collection of posters, photographs, cartoon drawings and daguerreotypes,
and baseball cards, many from the 20th century.
California in the 20's - http://www.lapl.org/photo/ca_in20s/
A collection of annotated photographs, including
"images of marathon dancing, state society picnics, silent films and
junk car races," taken in Southern California during the 1920s.
From the Los Angeles Public Library.
Photographs of Oscar Wilde and His Circle at the
Clark Library - http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/clarklib/wildphot/
"These pages show all original photographs of
Wilde and his circle owned by the Library." From the William Andrews
Clark Memorial Library, University of California Los Angeles.
J. R. R. Tolkien - http://www.tolkien.co.uk/
The site contains information about Tolkien, his
books, and the films, including interviews with the author, his drawings,
and maps of Middle Earth.
Culinary History Timeline - http://www.gti.net/mocolib1/kid/food1.html
This
culinary timeline contains many facsimilies of menus and recipes from
throughout history.
To Save A Life: Stories of Jewish Rescue – http://www.humboldt.edu/~rescuers/
"True stories narrated by six rescuers
accompanied by the narratives of thirteen people whom they rescued [from
the World War II Holocaust]....Contemporary photographic portraits of the
rescuers and people whom they helped were made by the author, while
vintage photographs and other documents relating to the individual rescue
stories were collected from the subjects' personal albums and historical
archives."
-
-
- TIME magazine's digital archive of their covers:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/coversearch
.
What
are Primary Sources? ° What
are Secondary Sources? °
Strategies for Finding Primary Sources ° Links
to Primary Sources
top of page
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