What Is a Primary Source?
Primary sources are "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 art, literature, and cultural studies, primary sources include original creative works, such as paintings, architectural plans, music, poems, novels, movies, television shows, and even advertisements.
- In historical studies, primary sources include written works, recordings, or other sources of information from people who were participants or direct witnesses to the events in question. Examples of commonly used historical primary sources include government documents, memoirs, personal correspondence, oral histories, and contemporary newspaper accounts.
- In the sciences, primary sources are usually articles or data resulting directly from experiments, fieldwork, or clinical trials.
Note that the "primacy" of a source can be relative. In cases where original records were lost or a live performance was never recorded, a review or commentary from a third party may be the most primary source available.
On the Internet
- American MemoryA 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:
- The Chinese in California
- Ansel Adams: Japanese-American Internment Photographs
- Immigration and American Expansion
- California Heritage CollectionAccess to over 30,000 images from UC Berkley's Bancroft Library.
- 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.
- DenshoFirst-hand accounts and teaching resources related to the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII.
- Digital History of Asian-American HistoryFrom the University of Houston, details key events from the 16th to the 20th centuries.
- Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930Web-based collection of historical materials from Harvard's libraries, archives, and museums that documents voluntary immigration to the United States from the signing of the Constitution to the onset of the Great Depression.
- 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.
- Japanese American Relocation CollectionThis collection of over 200 photographs from the Hearst collection documents the relocation of Japanese Americans in California during World War II. Courtesy of the University of Southern California Digital Library.
- JARDA: Japanese American Relocation Digital ArchivesA portal for thousands of primary sources related to the internment of Japanese Americans. Courtesy of the Online Archive of California.
- Korean American Digital ArchiveThis collection brings more than 13,000 pages of documents, over 1,900 photographs, and about 180 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. Courtesy of the University of Southern California Digital Library.
- 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.
- 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.
- The Vietnamese American Heritage Project"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." From Texas Tech University.
- Viet Stories: Vietnamese American Oral History ProjectViet Stories: Vietnamese American Oral History Project at the University of California, Irvine actively assembles, preserves, and disseminates the life stories of Vietnamese Americans in Southern California. The project contributes to expanding archives on Vietnamese Americans with the primary goal of capturing first-generation stories for students, researchers, and the community.
- 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.
- Visual Communications: HistorypinThe Visual Communications collective has documented Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities since the 1970s through film. Holdings include documentation of anti-war movements, cultural events, holidays and family life, the inception of now-established community organizations, the creation of the Asian American Studies department at UCLA, Asian American artists and musicians, political events, and labor and public housing demonstrations.