History

• “My professor says I need to use primary sources.”
• They are as close as we can get to the event, person, phenomenon, or other subject of your research.
• Primary sources do not speak for themselves. This is your chance to express your own opinions and interpretations based on the evidence you have assembled.
• Because primary sources are usually a small piece of a larger picture, you are encouraged to look for additional evidence through research and secondary sources in order to put the primary source in context.
• Research is more meaningful when it is founded on authentic evidence, empirical data, and original documents, rather than on others’ interpretations, explanations, and opinions.

Primary sources  include first-hand information from a person who witnessed or participated in an event. For subjects in history, it's FROM the time, not ABOUT the time. They are original materials, created at the time of an event or soon thereafter. Primary sources are found in a variety of formats, such as original documents in archives and libraries; materials reprinted in published sources, such as collections of letters, diaries, autobiographies; microforms; digitized on the web; recordings. A primary source can also be scientific data, statistics, or an official transcript of a government proceeding. 

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 is often based on primary sources.  Examples include: scholarly or popular books and articles, reference books, and textbooks. Secondary sources are those in which the author is reporting the observations of others and may be many times removed from the actual event.

Note: Adapted from: Library Research Guide for Finding Manuscripts and Archival Collection, Harvard University Libraries.

Advanced Google Searches 

General Google searches may yield very many results, and it may take much sifting through the results in order to find relevant items. Using Google Advanced Search with specific search terms can help yield more focused results.

• Within Google Advanced Search, use the “all of these words” and the “this exact word or phrase” to enter keywords for your subject, for example,
  • all these words: Mexican War
  • any of these words: archives manuscripts correspondence diaries scrapbooks sources letters
• Also try:
  • all these words: Mexican American War
  • this exact word or phrase: “archival collections” “manuscript collections”
• For any of these searches, use the “site or domain” box to search within just .edu, .org, or .gov sites.