Primary sources are first-hand accounts, that serve as original evidence documenting a period, event, people, idea or work. 

Primary sources can be printed materials like books or newspapers, manuscript and archival materials like diaries and documents, artifacts, and audio/visual materials. Primary materials can be found in analog, digitized, and born-digital forms. 

Some examples of primary sources include:

• Memoirs, speeches, writings, correspondence
• Papers of a political party, agency, or association
• Official documents such as congressional hearings and reports
• Contemporary magazine and newspaper articles
• Contemporary art, films, literature, and music
• Contemporary artifacts, such as buildings and monuments

When looking for primary sources, you need to consider:

• Who would create the documents? Who would preserve the documents?
  • Who can be individuals or groups, such as local, regional, or international organizations, associations, and governmental agencies.
• How would the documents be preserved and accessed? Would they have been
  • Formally published/produced, such as books, newspapers, magazines, films, music, court cases, etc.? You are likely to find these items in library databases.
  • Informally published/produced web documents, such as press releases, reports, policy statements, etc.? You may find recent documents through Google or the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine (going back to 1996). 
  • Personal or internal documents? If these materials were preserved, they may only be available through visiting private collections, library archives, museums, historical sites, or corporate/organization archives. A national library, public library, historical society, or university/college library may have digitized some of these materials. Interviews and oral histories produced as part of a scholarly research project are often only available from the researcher.