What is a primary source?
To find primary sources held at the the Moorpark College Library, perform a keyword search for your subject terms in the Library Catalog and add one of the following keyword(s): Archives, diaries, personal narratives, sources, and/or correspondence.
Example: African Americans sources, African American correspondence, etc.
Think of primary sources as original materials and observations. They are information sources that are close to an event, individual, or time period. Examples include:
- Diaries, letters, works of literature, original documents like a patent or an invention, birth certificate, scientific journal reporting original research, interview, speech, painting, treaty, raw data, film, novel, autobiography, blogs, email, discussion threads, minutes to a meeting,survey, photographs, manuscripts, journals, newspapers, memoirs, recordings, films, artifacs, tools, weapons, poem, short story.*
*American Library Association. Instruction & Research Services Committee of the Reference and User Service Association History Section. http://www.ala.org/rusa/sections/history/resources/primarysources
What is a secondary source?
Secondary sources review, comment, edit, interpret, analyze or summarize primary sources. The information has been created after an event and comment on the event or the original work itself. Be sure to examine secondary sources to insure that the information is reliable and credible.
Selected Primary Sources on the Web
- U.S. Library of Congress. American Memory TimelineProvides primary sources from colonial settlement, 1600-1763 to postwar United States, 1945-1968.
- Digital History; Landmark Documents Organized by EraA list of landmark documents.
- Primary Documents in American History"This Web site provides links to materials digitized from the collections of the Library of Congress. The initial release of this Website contains documents from the years 1763 to 1877. Updates will be made on a regular basis, including the addition of documents from the 20th Century."
- The National ArchivesThey feature a daily historical document relating to an event from that day in history.
- The Avalon Project (Yale University)The Avalon Project will mount digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government.
- Life Magazine Photo Archives"Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google."
Key Databases for Primary Sources
- Gale Nineteenth Century US Newspapers This link opens in a new windowA full-text searchable, image database containing newspaper publications from rural and urban areas across the U.S. Includes topics relating to the the American Civil War, African-American culture and history, Western migration and Antebellum-era life.
- Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new windowGale Primary Sources is an integrated research environment that allows users to search across all of their Gale primary source collections.
- ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database This link opens in a new windowThe Coronavirus Research Database is a collection of journal articles, preprints, conference proceedings, dissertations and more related to COVID-19 and other coronaviruses. It includes comprehensive research background coverage of past pandemics and epidemics, like MERS and SARS, to give researchers and students context around the current global crisis.
- Gale Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive This link opens in a new windowConsists of pages sourced from books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, legal documents, court records, monographs, manuscripts, and maps from many different countries. Topics include the history of slavery and it’s legal issues, the Caribbean, children and women under slavery, and modes of resistance.
- The Times Digital Archive, 1785-2013 This link opens in a new windowThis database contains more than 200 years of the Times, with every page of every issue from 1785 to 2013. Research spans multiple areas of interest, including business, humanities, political science, philosophy, and numerous other subjects with coverage of all major international historical events.
- ARTstor This link opens in a new windowThis rich digital library includes more than 500,000 images from the areas of architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, design, and other forms of visual culture. Images are drawn world-wide from such sources as museums, archaeological teams, photo archives, slide collections, and art reference publishers. Descriptive information is given for the individual images. The mission of ARTstor is to assemble image collections across many time periods and cultures and to create an organized resource that supports the noncommercial use of images for research, teaching, and scholarship.
- New York Times Online (NYTimes.com) This link opens in a new window
A New York Times digital edition subscription is available to all MC faculty, students, and staff. The New York Times website covers a variety of topics with unsurpassed quality and depth through breaking news articles, blogs, videos and interactive features. The New York Times is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. The New York Times covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews.
- Digital Public Library of America This link opens in a new windowThe Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is a US project aimed at providing public access to digital holdings of images, texts, videos, and sounds from across the United States.
- HeinOnline Social Justice Suite This link opens in a new windowThe Social Justice Suite includes four databases: Slavery in America and the World, Gun Regulation and Legislation in America, Civil Rights and Social Justice, and the Open Society Justice Initiative.
- Daily Life Through History This link opens in a new windowExamines numerous facets of societal life across cultures and time periods. Areas of life explored include: domestic, economic, intellectual, material, political, recreational, religious, and geographic. Information gathered from reference works, books, and primary documents. Searching can be by topic or by topic combined with other concepts such as time period and area of the world. Information may be emailed or printed.
- Calisphere This link opens in a new windowCalisphere is developed and maintained by the California Digital Library. It provides free access to artifacts, photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more.
Selected Reference Books & eBooks for Primary Sources
- American Decades Primary Sources
- Crime and Punishment: Essential Primary Sources
- Dictionary of American History
- Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy
- Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity
- Environmental Issues: Essential Primary Sources
- Family in Society: Essential Primary Sources
- Gender Issues and Sexuality: Essential Primary Sources
- Government, Politics, and Protest: Essential Primary Sources
- Roaring Twenties Almanac and Primary Sources (Ref E 784 .H69 2006)
- Human and Civil Rights: Essential Primary Sources
- Immigration and Multiculturalism: Essential Primary Sources
- Medicine, Health, and Bioethics: Essential Primary Sources
- Milestone Documents in African American History
- Milestone Documents in World History: Exploring the Primary Sources That Shaped the World
- Sixties in America: Primary Sources (Ref E 841 .P383 2005)
- Social Policy: Essential Primary Sources
- Television in American society (Ref PN 1992.6 .H53 2007)
- Terrorism: Essential Primary Sources