Tips for Locating Primary Sources
Choose historically appropriate keywords. For example, use "Great War" instead of "World War I" to locate documents discussing the war during and just after it occurred. You may also consider different terms that might have been used to describe the same event from opposing sides or perspectives. Searching for the names of particular people or places may also be effective.
Think about what types of primary sources might have been produced that would be relevant to your topic; think also about which persons or organizations might have produced materials. Some possible types of sources:
| Books | Photographs and images |
| Magazine and newspaper articles | Cartoons and advertisements |
| Diaries and journals | Movies, videos, and DVDs |
| Memoirs and autobiographies | Audio recordings |
| Interviews | Public opinion polls |
| Letters | Fiction |
| Speeches | Research data and statistics |
| Documents produced by organizations | Documents produced by government agencies, including congressional hearings and census records |
To locate potential primary sources in the library's online catalog, look for subject headings that contain terms such as diaries, letters, correspondence, autobiography, interviews, or personal narratives following the main heading.
History & Social Science Librarian
Kathy Shields
she/her
Subjects: African American Studies, African Studies, American History, Area Studies, East Asian Studies, Ethnic Studies, History - General, Latin American & Latino Studies, Medieval & Early Modern Studies, Middle East & South Asia Studies, Primary Sources, Psychology, Russian & East European Studies, Social Sciences - General, World History
Primary source databases and digital archives
ONLINE PRIMARY SOURCE COLLECTIONS
The resources listed below are just a few of the online primary source resources available through ZSR Library and on the web. If you are unable to find information on your topic, schedule a personal research session with a librarian for more help!
BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS
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Early English Books Online - EEBO This link opens in a new windowFull text of books, pamphlets and broadsides published in England or in English between 1475 and 1700. Includes many of the items indexed in the English Short Title Catalogue. Corresponds to the Pollard and Redgrave, and Wing Short-Title Catalogues, as well as Thomason Tracts. Coverage: 1473-1700
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Eighteenth Century Collections Online - ECCO This link opens in a new windowContains books, pamphlets and broadsides published in England or in English between 1701 and 1800. Includes many of the items indexed in the English Short Title Catalogue. Coverage: 1701-1800
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HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new windowFull-text seachable library of high-quality digitized materials such as books, articles, government information, and more from libraries around the world. Includes public domain and in-copyright content. Log in as a WFU user to download PDFs and access additional features. Coverage: Varies
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British Pamphlets Collections (JSTOR)Explore this collection of more than 26,000 pamphlets. While the primary focus of the collection is on the 19th century, several collections stretch back to the 16th and 17th centuries, including the Cowen Tracts and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Collection.
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English Short Title CatalogueThe 'English Short Title Catalogue' (ESTC) is a comprehensive, international union catalogue listing early books, serials, newspapers and selected ephemera printed before 1801. It contains catalogue entries for items issued in Britain, Ireland, overseas territories under British colonial rule, and the United States. Also included is material printed elsewhere which contains significant text in English, Welsh, Irish or Gaelic, as well as any book falsely claiming to have been printed in Britain or its territories. The database contains over 480,000 entries, and represents the holdings of some 2,000 libraries world-wide.
NEWSPAPERS/PERIODICALS
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British Periodicals This link opens in a new windowProvides searchable, full page image digital access to British journals published between the late 1600s and early 1900s. Topics covered include, literature, art, music, architecture, drama, history, science, and more. Includes access to collections I & II. Coverage: 1680s-1930s
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Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection This link opens in a new windowCollection of 17th and 18th century English newspapers and news pamphlets. Published mostly in London, but there are also some English provincial, Irish and Scottish papers, and a few examples from the American colonies, Europe and India. Includes page images. Coverage: 1604-1804
GOVERNMENT INFORMATION
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Old Bailey OnlineThe Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913 is a fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.
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State Papers Online: The Government of Britain, 1509-1714 This link opens in a new windowCovers two hundred years of British and European history, from the reign of Henry VIII to the end of the reign of Queen Anne. Gathers together sixteenth- and seventeenth-century British State Papers and links these rare historical manuscripts to their fully text-searchable calendars. Coverage: 1509-1714
SPECIALIZED COLLECTIONS
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Empire Online This link opens in a new windowBrings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of 'Empire' and its theories, practices and consequences. The materials span across the last five centuries and are accompanied by a host of secondary learning resources including scholarly essays, maps and an interactive chronology. Coverage: 1400s-present
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Making of the Modern World This link opens in a new windowProvides full-text, searchable access to primary source materials that track the development of the modern, western world through the lens of trade and wealth from the period 1450-1914. Coverage: 1450-1914
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Early Stuart LibelsA web-based edition of early seventeenth-century political poetry from manuscript sources. It brings into the public domain over 350 poems, many of which have never before been published.
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UCSB English Broadside Ballad ArchiveThe EBBA is an ongoing project attempting to create a digital archive all of the surviving ballads published during the heyday of the black-letter ornamental broadside ballad of the 17th century—currently estimated to stand at some 11,000 extant works.
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British Museum online research collectionsThe British Museum online collections provide records and some images for a portion of the museum's comprehensive collections documenting human art, culture, and history.
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Lewis Walpole Library digital collectionsThe Lewis Walpole Library is a research center for 18th-century studies and an essential resource for the study of Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill. Digitized collections include an electronic version of the Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's correspondence; a Digital Images Collection that includes the majority of the Library's world-renowned collection of English caricatures and political satirical prints from the late-17th through the mid-19th centuries; and prints, drawings, and watercolors related to Horace Walpole's collection and house at Strawberry Hill.