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Primary Sources
A primary source is "first-hand" information, sources as close as possible to the origin of the information or idea under study. Primary sources are contrasted with secondary sources, works that provide analysis, commentary, or criticism on the primary source. In literary studies, primary sources are often creative works, including poems, stories, novels, and so on. In historical studies, primary sources include written works, recordings, or other source of information from people who were participants or direct witnesses to the events in question. Examples of commonly used primary sources include government documents, memoirs, personal correspondence, oral histories, and contemporary newspaper accounts.
Primary Source Analysis
UCLA Special Collections
Below are links to primary locations for print special collections of relevance to the study of literature at UCLA. Select online finding aids are also available via the Online Archive of California.
- UCLA Library Special CollectionsCollections include a wide variety of literary rare books, as well as manuscripts and archival collections relating to specific authors and poets.
Selected Primary Source Resources
- Early English Books Online (EEBO) This link opens in a new windowCitations from early English texts from 1475 to 1700, presented as digital images. Includes works by Malory, Bacon, More, Erasmus, Boyle, Newton, Galileo; musical exercises by Henry Purcell and novels by Aphra Behn; prayer books, pamphlets, and proclamations; almanacs, calendars, and many other primary sources.
- Early European Books This link opens in a new windowTraces the history of printing in Europe from its origins through to the close of the 17th century, offering full-color, high-resolution facsimile images of rare and hard-to-access printed sources.
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new window
Thousands of books, pamphlets, essays, broadsides and more, based on the English Short Title Catalogue. A comprehensive digital edition of The Eighteenth Century microfilm set, which aimed to include every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with major works from the Americas, between 1701 and 1800.
- Empire Online This link opens in a new windowPrimary source manuscripts and secondary essays relevant to Empire Studies. The sections cover Cultural Contacts, 1492-1969; Empire Writing and the Literature of Empire; The Visible Empire; Religion & Empire; and Race, Class & Colonialism, 1783-1969.
- HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new windowA repository of scanned books contributed from academic institutions across the United States, including UCLA. Books still in copyright are scanned and searchable, but the full text scans will not become available online until their copyright expires.
- Medieval Travel Writing This link opens in a new windowPresents manuscripts of some of the most important works of European travel writing from the later medieval period. The chief focus is on journeys to central Asia and the Far East, including accounts of travel to Mongolia, Persia, India, China and South-East Asia. The collection also includes a number of important accounts of travels to or through the Holy Land although in this it makes no claims to full or even broad coverage: a separate collection, covering crusading and pilgrimage narratives, would be required for that.
- Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History This link opens in a new windowHundreds of accounts by women of their travels across the globe from the early 19th century to the late 20th century. Sources cover topics including the arts, the British Empire, exploration, race, and more. Contents also include manuscripts, diaries and correspondence, drawings, guidebooks and photographs.
- World Folklore and Folklife This link opens in a new window
Thousands of classic folk tales, including the complete Hans Christian Andersen stories, Grimms' fairy tales, and folktales from around the world. Contextual material adds new depth to familiar stories.
General Catalogs and Finding Aids
- ArchiveGrid This link opens in a new windowSearches finding aids for historical documents, personal papers, and family histories held in libraries, museums, and archives around the world. Researchers searching ArchiveGrid can learn about the items in each of these collections, contact archives to arrange a visit to examine materials, and order copies.
- C19: Nineteenth Century Index This link opens in a new window19th century books, journals, magazines, official documents, newspapers, and archives. Includes The Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, The Wellesley Index, Poole's Index, Palmer's Index to the Times, and Periodicals Index Online.
- National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC)Gateway for searching OCLC WorldCat manuscripts.
- Online Archive of California (OAC) This link opens in a new windowFinding aids for primary source collections in all UC campuses and other contributing institutions, including libraries, special collections, archives, historical societies, and museums throughout California.
- Subject CollectionsLast updated in 1993, this still-useful print source identifies special collections in the U.S. by broad subject.
- WorldCat (OCLC FirstSearch) This link opens in a new window
OCLC FirstSearch catalog includes citations for books, journals, manuscripts, maps, music scores, sound recordings, films, computer files, newspapers, slides, videotapes, archival material, etc., in libraries around the world.
Images
Images are becoming easier to find these days, thanks to the Internet. However, you do need to think about copyright if you are going to use images in publications, on web sites, and so on.
The easiest source for images is to do a Google search and click on Images link near the top of the page. Be careful about trusting the descriptions of these images--they may not be historically accurate. Here are some other, more reliable sources:
- ARTstor This link opens in a new windowHigh-resolution Images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and social sciences. Includes a suite of software tools to view, present, and manage images for research and teaching purposes. Images are contributed by museums, photographers, libraries, scholars, photo archives, artists, and estates, from a variety of sources including the Hartill Archive of Architecture and Allied Arts. UC campuses contribute additional images including: the Archivision Library, Saskia Art & Architecture images, the Visual Resources Collections from UCB, UCSB, UCI, UCLA, UCR, and the UCSC Library Instructional Collection. Now hosted on the JSTOR platform.
- Calisphere This link opens in a new windowOver one million photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more from the collections digitized and contributed by all ten campuses of the University of California and other important libraries, archives, and museums throughout the state.
- UCLA Library Digital Collections This link opens in a new windowRare and unique digital materials developed by the UCLA Library to support education, research, service, and creative expression, including the AIDS Poster Collection, the Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive and more.
- Empire Online This link opens in a new windowPrimary source manuscripts and secondary essays relevant to Empire Studies. The sections cover Cultural Contacts, 1492-1969; Empire Writing and the Literature of Empire; The Visible Empire; Religion & Empire; and Race, Class & Colonialism, 1783-1969.
- Oxford Art Online This link opens in a new windowCombines Grove Art Online, the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, the Oxford Companion to Western Art, Benezit Dictionary of Artists, and the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms. Includes image partnerships with ARTstor, the British Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art Images for College Teaching, Art Resource, Artists Rights Society, and numerous international art galleries and artists.
Newspapers
For current newspaper access, your best bet is either to look up the newspaper title in our catalog or search Nexis Uni or Factiva. For alternative press, you can also try Alt-Press Watch and Ethnic NewsWatch.
Historical newspapers can be more tricky to access. Many have not been digitized, so you may have to look at microfilm or print copies. Some have not even been indexed which means you have to figure out a date or range of dates and browse manually for information.
Here are some good historical newspapers available online:
- id="s-lg-content-5617287">Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new window class="s-lg-icons pad-left-sm">
- id="s-lg-content-6787122">Boston Globe Historic Archives class="s-lg-link-desc" id="s-lg-link-desc-6787122">Online database to the Boston Globe, 1872-present. UCLA does NOT have online access to the articles. Once you locate articles, check the UCLA Library Catalog to see if we have the dates you need on microfilm. If we don't have it, UCLA students, staff and faculty can request it on Interlibrary Loan.
