Primary Sources
Primary sources provide first-hand testimony or direct evidence about a subject. They are created by witnesses or recorders who experienced the events or conditions being documented. Often these sources are created at the time when the events or conditions are occurring, but primary sources can also include autobiographies, memoirs, and oral histories recorded later.
Examples of Primary Sources:
- Art (paintings, drawings, sculpture, etc.)
- Autobiographies
- Books and, journal and newspaper articles, written at the time
- Court cases
- First hand accounts
- Films/Videos
- Government documents (hearings and debates of legislative bodies; the official text of laws, regulations and treaties; records of government expenditures and finances; statistical compilations such as census data; investigative reports; scientific data)
- Letters
- Maps
- Novels
- Official memoranda
- Oral histories
- Original research articles
- Performances and plays
- Photographs
- Poems
- Posters
- Public opinion
- Short stories
- Speeches
- Television shows
- Statistics
Newspapers, Journals, and Magazines
Historical Newspapers
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times 1851-recentThe historic New York Times provides researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time. It provides search capability using subject terms and topics for focused and targeted results in combination with searchable full text, full page, and article-level images from the Historical New York Times.
- San Francisco Chronicle 1865-presentThe San Francisco Chronicle provides researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the San Francisco Bay Area, California, and the world.
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles TimesThe Los Angeles Times delivers unique coverage of the development of Southern California and the American West from 1881-2010, including news articles, photos, advertisements, classified ads, obituaries, cartoons, and more.
- California Historical NewspapersFull text of more than 100 historical California newspapers from as early as 1845.
- Historical American NewspapersFull text of more than 100 historical American newspapers from 1690 to 1922.
- Times Digital ArchiveAs the “world’s newspaper of record,” The Times of London has covered all major international events from the French Revolution to the War in Iraq. The Times Digital Archive, 1785–2011 makes 200 years of this highly regarded resource available for students and researchers.
Historical Journals and Magazines
- JSTORFull text of older issues of journals. Access includes Arts & Sciences I-XV, Business I Collection, Health & General Sciences Collection, and the Life Sciences Collection.
- American Periodicals Series OnlineAmerican Periodicals Series Online (APS Online) includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century. Titles range from Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine and America's first scientific journal, Medical Repository; popular magazines such as Vanity Fair and Ladies' Home Journal;regional and niche publications; and groundbreaking journals like The Dial, Puck, and McClure's.
- Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982Readers’ Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982 provides indexing of over three million articles from more than 550 leading magazines, including full coverage of the original print volumes of Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature.
Current News
- Access World NewsThrough nearly 7000 news sources, find diverse global, local, regional, and national perspectives on topics related to controversial issues, the environment, health, education, science, the arts, literature, business, economics, criminal justice, and more.
- Nexis UniReplaces LexisNexis Academic.
More than 15,000 news, business, and legal sources from LexisNexis—including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790. - Newspaper SourceProvides cover-to-cover full text for more than 40 U.S. & international newspapers. The database also contains selective full text for 389 regional U.S. newspapers. In addition, full text television & radio news transcripts are also provided.
Books
- EEBO: Early English Books OnlineEEBO: Early English Books Online contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700 -- from the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War
- Eighteenth Century Collections OnlineDigital images of every page of 150,000 books published during the 18th Century. With full-text searching of approximately 33 million pages--in essence, every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas.
- Sabin Americana, 1500-1926Based on Joseph Sabin's landmark bibliography, this collection contains works about the Americas published throughout the world from 1500 to the early 1900's.
- South Asia ArchiveCulturally and historically significant literary material produced from within — and about — the South Asian region. Subjects included archaeology, industry, parliamentary debates and concerns, and law case reports. Other reports include a near complete set of the Calcutta riots of 1946 and gazetteers from a range of districts and territories, providing insight into colonial India.
- Chinese Pamphlets: Political Communication & Mass EducationConsists of mass education materials published in Hong Kong and in Mainland China, particularly Shanghai, in the years 1947-1954. These include approximately 200 cartoon books, pamphlets, postcards, and magazines, heavily pictorial in content, on such topics as foreign threats to Chinese security, Chinese relations with the Soviet Union, industrial and agricultural production, and marriage reform. The materials were produced by both Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist) and Communist regimes, and appear to be directed at the general youth and adult populations of China.
Search the library catalog by keywords using one of following subject terms
Example: Catholic Church China Sources
- Archives
- Biography
- Autobiography
- Correspondence
- Court records
- Description and travel
- Diaries
- Imprints
- Interviews
- Manuscripts
- Maps
- Oratory
- Personal narratives
- Pictorial works
- Public opinion
- Sources
- Speeches
- Transcripts
Statistics
Also try searching the Web with the keyword statistics. For example,"birth rate" china statistics.
Government Documents
- China: Government Information. Various sources.
- National Diet Library / 国立国会図書館 Includes many databases: debates (1947-), laws (1886-), official gazette, historic digital collections and more.Provides compilations of laws and the proceedings of the Japanese National Assembly (Diet).
- Korea: Government Information. Various sources.
U.S. Government Documents
- ProQuest CongressionalProQuest Congressional is especially useful for performing legislative histories and locating Congressional documents. It is also very useful for tracking legislation and major public policy issues, locating recent Congressional documents and related material in full text, and learning more about Congress and the legislative process.
- ProQuest Legislative InsightCongress produces a variety of publications as a bill moves through the legislative process on its way to becoming a law. A compilation of these full text primary source publications produces a legislative history that is valuable to a wide variety of researchers. Legislative Insight offers a research citation page that not only links to the full text of the associated primary source publications, but allows the user to do a Search Within from that very page that searches the full text of all the associated publications with one-click.
- Congress.govCongress.gov is the official website for U.S. federal legislative information. The site provides access to accurate, timely, and complete legislative information for Members of Congress, legislative agencies, and the public.
- Congressional Research Service ReportsProvides non-partisan analysis of issues under debate.
- Digital National Security ArchiveThe Digital National Security Archive contains the most comprehensive set of declassified government documents available. The resource now includes 44 collections consisting of over 104,000 meticulously indexed documents, with more than 733,000 total pages.
See more in our United States government information guide
.Videos
- Asian Film OnlineAsian Film Online offers a view of Asian culture as seen through the lens of the independent Asian filmmaker. Through a selection of hundreds of narrative feature films, documentaries and shorts curated by film scholars and critics, the collection offers highly relevant perspectives and insights onto themes relevant across Asia, including modernity, globalization, female agency, social and political unrest, and cultural and sexual identity.
- KanopyThousands of streaming documentaries and feature films available by faculty advance request, usually for one-year licenses. Order directly from the Kanopy link or contact your library liaison for assistance. License expiration dates are noted in our catalog records.
- Films On DemandFilms On Demand delivers more than 90,000 educational online videos ideal for students and faculty.
- Filmakers Library OnlineFilmakers Library Online provides award-winning documentaries with relevance across the curriculum—race and gender studies, human rights, globalization and global studies, multiculturalism, international relations, criminal justice, the environment, bioethics, health, political science and current events, psychology, arts, literature, and more.
- Search the library catalog for all streaming videos and DVDs at USF.
Photographs and Illustrations
- ArtstorArtstor features an unparalleled range of images from some of the world’s leading museums, photo archives, scholars, and artists in one easily-navigated repository. Artstor has moved to JSTOR. Registration on JSTOR is required to access your personal Workspace to save images and articles, organize your saved items with folders, share folders, and export your research.
- AP ImagesAP Images, a division of the Associated Press, is the essential source of editorial and creative photographs, videos, graphics and interactives. The unrivaled heritage of AP's groundbreaking photography is celebrated by winning 30 Pulitzer Prizes over the past 90 years.
- Search the library catalog for books containing photographs and illustrations. In the catalog record, look for ill. or illustrations in the Descript field. Also try searching using the phrase pictorial works.
Digital Archives
- Digital Archives (Taiwan) Traditional Chinese interface. English interface
- National Archives of Japan (online catalog, some including digital images)
- National Diet Library Digital Collections (Japan)
- National Archives of Korea 국가기록원 Provides important records in Korea and abroad such as the Korean Empire official documents, Japanese colonial regime official documents, and records generated by the central and local governments such as presidential approval documents after the government establishment, including the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty, which were registered as Memory of the World.
- Korean History On-line 한국역사정보통합시스템 Integrated digital library on Korean history. Includes classical works, ancient documents, historical maps, official court records of the Choson Dynasty such as the Sungjongwon ilgi (Diary of the Royal Secretariat), materials related to anti-Japanese movement during the colonial period, important modern literature, newspapers and magazines, Korean translations of the works in Classical Chinese, and a basic dictionary of Korean history among many other items.
Primary Texts
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Japanese
Aozora Bunko. Japanese interface
Japanese Historical Text Initiative (UC Berkeley)
Japanese Text Initiative (University of Virginia) -
Chinese
Academia Sinica Digital Center -
Korean
National Digital Library. Korean interface
For more sources, see UC Berkley Primary Sources on East Asia. Content from Yale University Library and Sonoma State University Library was used in this guide.
- CalisphereWelcome to Calisphere: your gateway to California’s remarkable digital collections. Calisphere provides free access to unique and historically important artifacts for research, teaching, and curious exploration. Discover over one million photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more.
The collections on Calisphere have been digitized and contributed by all ten campuses of the University of California and other important libraries, archives, and museums throughout the state. - Claremont Colleges - Asian Studies Digital CollectionsThe Asian studies digital collections range from Chinese manuscript and archival collections, Korean rare books, Japanese traditional woodblock prints, to oral history interviews on key figures of the American occupation government in postwar Japan.
- Indiana University - Archives and Primary Sources for South Asian StudiesThis guide describes how to conduct archival work, and how to find archival resources for South Asian Studies. It includes lists of relevant archives, both in South Asia and elsewhere, and provides access to digital archival sources where available.
- The Southeast Asia Digital Library (SEADLThe Southeast Asia Digital Library (SEADL) exists to provide educators, students, scholars and members of the general public with a wide variety of materials published or otherwise produced in Southeast Asia. Drawn largely from the collections of universities and scholars in this region, SEADL contains digital facsimiles of books and manuscripts, as well as multimedia materials and searchable indexes of additional Southeast Asian resources. Nations represented in the collection include Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.