What Is A Primary Source?
A primary sources is a first-hand or contemporary account from the people who experienced or witnessed an event or original documents from the time period of the event or topic being studied. Primary sources include but are not limited to:
- written or signed documents, such as: diaries, letters, contracts, records, manuscripts
- audiovisual materials, such as: photographs, illustrations, oral histories, audio recordings, video recordings, films
- published materials (from the time period), such as: newspapers, pamphlets, broadsides
- government documents
- artifacts
- data
- 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.
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ArchiveGrid This link opens in a new windowSearches finding aids for historical documents, personal papers, and family histories held in libraries, museums, and archives around the world.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.
On the Internet
There are many sources for digitized primary sources related to Asian American. Here are a few important collections to get you started.
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American West This link opens in a new windowThe Graff Collection at the Newberry Library presents tales of frontier life, Native Americans, vigilantes and outlaws, the growth of urban centers, the environmental impact of westward expansion and life in the borderlands through a mixture of original manuscripts, maps, ephemeral material, and rare printed sources.
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Digital Collections / Library of CongressA wide range of primary source material from the Library of Congress documenting American history and culture, including text, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music. Of particular interest are the following collections:
- Ansel Adams' Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar
- Immigration and American Expansion
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Archive of AmericanaThousands of newspapers, books, ephemera, broadsides, pamphlets, government publications, and more, detailing life in 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century America. Includes America's Historical Imprints; Early American Newspapers, 1690-1876; America's Historical Newspapers; Caribbean Newspapers, 1718-1876; American State Papers, 1789-1838; and U.S. Congressional Serial Set, 1817-1980.
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California Heritage CollectionAccess to over 30,000 images from UC Berkley's Bancroft Library.
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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.
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Digital History : Asian Voices / University of HoustonThis resource details key events from the 16th to the 20th centuries.
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Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930 / Harvard LibraryWeb-based collection of historical materials that documents voluntary immigration to the United States from the signing of the Constitution to the beginning of the Great Depression.
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Survey of Race RelationsData from an early 20th century study at Stanford University into the economic, religious, educational, civic, biological, and social conditions among Chinese, Japanese, and other non-European residents of the US and Canadian Pacific Coast. The collection has been digitized and is freely available.
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Chinese Historical Society / USC Digital LibraryType "Chinese American" into the search box to see 1100 images and thousands of documents.
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Chinese in California / CalisphereThis collection includes more than 10,000 images and more than 2400 texts.
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Densho : Preserving Japanese American stories of the past for the generations of tomorrowFirst-hand accounts and teaching resources related to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
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Final Accountability Rosters of Japanese-American Relocation Centers, 1944-1946 (Archives Unbound) This link opens in a new windowThis collection provides demographic information on the "evacuees" resident at the various relocation camps.
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Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records / University of California, BerkeleyOver 100,000 digitized documents from The Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study (JERS), a research project initiated in 1942 at the University of California, Berkeley. It aimed to document and examine the mass internment of Japanese Americans by embedding Nisei social science students recruited from the Berkeley campus into selected internment sites. The Study also documented the resettlement phase in the city of Chicago. The collection is comprised of daily journals, field reports, life histories, and secondary research materials collected and compiled by the research staff. There is also extensive correspondence between staff, evacuees, and others. These records were deposited in the University Library in August 1948 by sociologist and Director of JERS, Dorothy Swaine Thomas.
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Japanese American Internment: Records of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library (Archives Unbound) This link opens in a new windowThis collection provides the background for a reassessment of how a leader and his advisors, who were fighting a war to preserve democracy, could have implemented such a profoundly unjust and undemocratic policy.
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Japanese-American Relocation Camp Newspapers: Perspectives on Day-to-Day Life (Archives Unbound) This link opens in a new windowThis collection, consisting of 25 individual titles, documents life in the internment camps.
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Japanese American Relocation Collection / USC Digital LibraryType "Japanese American Relocation" into the search box to see more than 2300 resources.
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Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive (JARDA) / CalisphereA portal for thousands of primary sources related to the internment of Japanese Americans.
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Online Archive of the Japanese American Relocation during World War II / Occidental College Special Collections & College ArchivesArticles, newspapers, pamphlets, and other items related to the forced internment of persons of Japanese ancestry along the West Coast.
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Korean American Digital Archive / USC Digital LibraryThis collection brings more than 22,000 images and 290 sound files together in one searchable collection that documents the Korean American community during the period of resistance to Japanese rule in Korea and reveal the organizational and private experience of Koreans in America between 1903 and 1965.
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SEAAdoc: Documenting the Southeast Asian American Experience / Southeast Asian Archive at the University of California, Irvine1,500 visual images and 4,000 pages of searchable text focusing on post-1975 refugees and immigrants from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam and the communities they have developed in the United States.
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South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)Documents the South Asian diaspora communities from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and many other nations in the United States. It includes rare materials from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
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The Vietnamese American Heritage Project / Texas Tech University"Provides documentation of the post-war social and political history of Vietnamese Americans who immigrated to the United States during and after the Vietnam conflict."
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Viet Stories : The Vietnamese American Oral History Project / Southeast Asian Archive at the University of California, IrvineMore than 200 oral histories of Vietnamese Americans in Southern California. Searchable by name, subject, language, etc.