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American Indian Studies

Your guide to American Indian research at UCLA: Find articles, books, primary sources, and more

What Are Primary Sources?

Primary sources are documents from the time period, people, and events of the time under consideration. Primary sources can be:

  • diaries or correspondence
  • photographs
  • illustrations
  • newspaper articles (from the time period)
  • manuscripts
  • pamphlets, broadsides, or other ephemera

Finding Primary Sources

Many primary sources can be found in UC Library Search or Worldcat, but there are other avenues for seeking out these kinds of materials.

  • Archive Finder: describes over 220,000 collections of primary source material housed in thousands of repositories across the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland.
  • Archive Grid: Nearly a million collection descriptions from a variety of museums, universities and other repositories.
  • OAIster: Millions of records harvest from open archival collections around the world.
  • Repositories of Primary Sources : Listings for over 5000 websites around the world that describe and catalog primary source collections.