Primary Sources
Primary Sources
Primary sources are generally considered to be firsthand accounts of an event or the actual documents associated with an event. Firsthand accounts can be found in diaries, memoirs, letters, speeches, autobiographies, scholarly articles giving the results of research, etc. Documents might be laws, treaties, transcripts of hearings, court cases, etc.
Here’s how to find them in the Library.
Firsthand accounts
Speeches, letters, journals, diaries, etc. of an individual may be found by looking in the Library Catalog for the name of that person as an author.
Books which are collections of personal stories or reminiscences of an event are listed with the subdivision PERSONAL NARRATIVES. Do a keyword search in the Library Catalog.
The Library also has a large microform collection containing primary source material such as dairies, oral histories and numerous political documents an records. Click to view the entire list of Microfilm Collections. Below are a few examples:
Documents
Books that are collections of various documents from a particular country will have the word SOURCES as part of the subject in the Library Catalog. Use s:sources as part of your keyword search. You can also search for a particular event in the same way.
Laws, hearings, court cases, congressional documents etc. can be found in HeinOnline* or ProQuest Congressional*.
*Must be on the Truman network to access.
Research Results
Results of research are published in scholarly journals. To find them you must use an appropriate subject periodical index. Look at the list of Research Guides to find databases appropriate for your topic.