Tips for Finding Primary Sources

Primary sources are records created at the time of an event or experience, or as told by people who were present at the event such as:

• letters
• diaries
• government documents
• photographs
• oral histories
• artifacts
• films
• works of literature
• maps

You may want to take a look at Analyzing Primary Sources and Historical Documents to learn even more. 

The best databases for primary sources are the History Online and  Issues & Controversies in History databases, Salem History eBooks, Gale Primary Sources and OneSearch. They all have some great primary sources. 

The ones that are the easiest to use to find primary sources History Online and  Issues & Controversies in History databases. The others take a little more. work. You'll find tips for each below. 

The History Online and  Issues & Controversies in History databases are the easiest and quickest to use to find primary sources. 

1. Search for your topic. If it is a person, like Thomas Paine, or a phrase like American revolutions, use quotes around it when you enter your search. That will just help the database narrow your results to the most relevant ones. 
2. Once your results are showing, select the Primary Sources tab to see all primary sources. It's that easy!

1. Go to Gale Primary Sources and search for your topic. If it is person, like Thomas Paine, or a phrase like American revolutions, use quotes around it when you enter your search. That will just help the database narrow your results to the most relevant ones. 
2. Once your results list comes up, look for FILTER YOUR RESULTS. It will be on the top right of a large screen, or on the bottom of the result list on a smaller screen. 
3. Select Document Type, then select from the options below to get just the results that should have primary sources. As you can see from this very specific list, if you have a specific type of primary source in mind, this database may be your best bet. 

• Correspondence
• Congressional testimony
• Court testimony 
• Diary entry
• Excerpt
• Government document
• Interview
• Journal
• Lecture
• Legislation
• Letter
• Lyrics
• Memoir
• Primary source
• Proclamation
• Sermon
• Speech
• Treaty

1. Go to Salem Online History and search for your topic
2. Once you've got your results, you'll see a list of sources under History. It will be on the left side bar of a large screen, or hidden under Search on the top right on a small screen. 
3. Select these options to get just the results that should have primary sources.
   1. Defining Documents in American History: Eras
   2. Defining Documents in American History: Themes
   3. Defining Documents in World History
   4. Grey House: Milestone Documents
4. Hit search again, and select a result from the list. Just so you know, these results will also have some secondary information that give some historical content and explaining the significant of the primacy source. The primary sources are usually near the bottom of the page, so just scroll down until you see them. They will be listed under Document text, Historical Document, or there might instead be a link to the Full Text of the primary source sunder See Also on the side. 

Search OneSearch for primary sources in books, eBooks and other sources. There are a few things you can try to make it easier to pull up primary sources. Here's how:

Historical Figures

In OneSearch you can search to see if we have anything written by historical figures. These would be primary sources, as opposed to sources written about the historical figures.

1. Go to Advanced Search
2. Change Any field to Author/Creator and contains to is (exact)
3. Type in the name of the historical figure, with last name first like this: jefferson, thomas
4. Hit Search

Example: Try Author/Creator Thomas Jefferson

Historical Events

For events try adding the name of the event and one of the terms below.

Example: Try something like "american revolution" AND eyewitness or Dred Scott AND documents.

Use the terms below with of or from with the name of an individual or event.

• archives
• autobiography
• correspondence
• documents
• sources
• eyewitness
• first hand account
• journals
• narratives
• oral history
• papers
• writings

COM Library has Guides that include primary resources to make it easier for you to find for your subject.

The databases listed below have many or exclusively primary sources. Britannica Academic and MasterFile Premier have mainly secondary sources, but some primary sources can be found. Primary sources from our databases include maps, images, correspondence, journals, census records, archival films, newsreels and much more.