What is a primary source?
There's no one thing, but for historians, it's generally something that was created at the time of the event. Try searching using terms like: biography [also use for autobiographies], newspapers, "personal papers" [use for archival material], correspondence [use for letters], personal diaries, photographs, videos, interviews, pamphlets, artwork, sources [a common one!], and many other types of things!
Digital Collections
- Centro Nacional de Memoria HistóricaFree and full access to ebooks published by the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica.
- Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
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(Searches through citations and the full text)
Search across newspapers and digitized collections of primary sources from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, including ECCO: Eighteenth Century Collections Online, NCCO: Nineteenth Century Collections Online, The Making of the Modern World, The Times of London, The Illustrated London News, the Times Literary Supplement, The Economist, and many more. Covers 1604 - present (varying by source). - Readex AllSearch This link opens in a new window
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Search across all of Carleton's Readex collections at once. Includes historical newspapers, government documents, books, ephemera, history of science and artificial intelligence, and the like. - Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969 This link opens in a new window
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A collection of documents generated by the UK Foreign and Colonial Offices in countries and regions of Latin America. Covers 1833 - 1969. - ProQuest History Vault This link opens in a new window
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Fully searchable, digitized archival collections having to do with American history. Carleton has collections available in these topic areas: American Indians and the American West; American Politics and Society; Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle; International Relations and Military Conflicts; Latinx History; Revolutionary War and Early America; Southern Life, Slavery, and the Civil War; and Women's Studies. Browse full contents. - Digital National Security Archive This link opens in a new window
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A comprehensive set of declassified government documents, 1942-current.
- Avalon ProjectContains documents relating to law, economics, history, and diplomacy. Collection is browsable by topic and time period and searchable by keyword.
- Women and Social Movements, International - 1840 to Present This link opens in a new window
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An archive of digitized primary documents and teaching tools on International Women and Social Movements. Covers 1840 - current. - Historic Mexican and Mexican-American Papers This link opens in a new window
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The Historic Mexican and Mexican American Press collection documents and showcases historic Mexican and Mexican American publications published in Tucson, El Paso, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sonora, Mexico from the mid-1800s to the 1970s.
- Dumbarton Oaks Research LibraryDumbarton Oaks supports and publishes scholarship in the three areas of study supported by Robert Woods Bliss and Mildred Barnes Bliss: Byzantine Studies, including related aspects of late Roman, early Christian, western Medieval, Slavic, and Near Eastern Studies; Pre-Columbian Studies of Mexico, Central America, and Andean South America; and Garden and Landscape Studies, including garden history, landscape architecture, and related disciplines.
- Bancroft Library at UC BerkeleyThe Bancroft Library's Latin Americana Collection grew out of Hubert Howe Bancroft's publishing enterprises related to the "Pacific States," covering the region from Panama to Alaska. Building on Hubert Howe Bancroft’s original 19th-century holdings of important Mexican collections, the Bancroft Collection of Latin American manuscripts, imprints, newspapers, broadsides, and pamphlets is one of the world's great repositories for historical and contemporary research on Mexico and Central America. As a specialized area collection, it contains all forms of primary and secondary sources, including printed material, microfilm bibliographical and reference sources, and critical editions of major historical texts.
- Arte Público Hispanic Historical Collection This link opens in a new window
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Digital collection of historical content pertaining to U.S. Hispanic history, literature, political commentary, and culture.
Historical Newspapers
- Readex AllSearch This link opens in a new window
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Search across all of Carleton's Readex collections at once. Includes the collections: World Newspaper Archive (Latin American Newspapers), Hispanic American Newspapers (1808-1980), and various translated news and radio sources in FBIS/JPRS. - Newspapers.com This link opens in a new window
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Newspapers dating from the early 1700s into the 2000s. Contains full runs and portions of runs of well-known, regional, and state titles as well as small local newspapers in the United States and other countries. - CRL Newspapers This link opens in a new window
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A collection including foreign newspapers on microfilm, on paper, and digital. Filmed material may be borrowed through Interlibrary Loan.
Latin America Readers (series)
The Latin America Readers (13 JSTOR ebooks)Call Number: Online & paper booksMore info in Catalyst about ebooks and paper books...
Contains 13 of 17 Latin America Readers [primary sources translated into English]: Bolivia - Brazil - Chile - Colombia - Cuba - Dominican Republic - Ecuador - Guatemala - Haiti - Jamaica - Lima - Paraguay - Rio de Janeiro
The Argentina Reader by Call Number: Online & F2810 .A646 2002ISBN: 9780822328858Publication Date: 2002-12-25
The Costa Rica Reader by Call Number: ONLINE & F1546 .C765 2004ISBN: 9780822333722Publication Date: 2004-10-29
The Mexico Reader by Call Number: ONLINE & F1226 .M53 2002ISBN: 0822330423Publication Date: 2003-01-16
The Peru Reader by Call Number: ONLINE & F3431 .P478 2005ISBN: 9780822336495Publication Date: 2005-12-14
- The Latin America readersLooking for paper? In Catalyst you can find many of these Readers also available on our shelves.
Search CRL
The Center for Research Libraries has a number of microfilmed collections, international newspapers, and official documents from countries outside the U.S.
- CRL: Center For Research Libraries This link opens in a new window
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This collection includes microfilm for foreign newspapers and foreign dissertations. You may borrow microfilm reels and other materials through Interlibrary Loan.
- CRL Topic GuidesEach guide includes a short writeup on the landscape of the field of study, links to relevant primary source collections at CRL, and links out to related sources.
- FOCUS on Global Resources (CRL Newsletter)CRL's quarterly newsletter with themed issues.
Reprinted Primary Sources (Catalyst)
Primary sources can be located in Catalyst a number of ways. Below are a list of ADVANCED SEARCH strategies to try. Be creative and flexible when searching for primary sources.
- Do an author search for persons, organizations, or group central to your topic.
- Author/Creator (contains) Bolívar, Simón
- RESULT: The Bolívarian Revolution (English translations of letters and other selections)
- Do an advanced search for words that signify primary source (source, letters, narrative, laws) and words that represent your topic
- Subject (contains) Cuba History sources
- RESULT: Voices of the enslaved in nineteenth-century Cuba : a documentary history (translation of original into English)
- PROTIP: just adding History Sources onto the end of a country can often get good results!
- Do a subject search using a subject term you've discovered while searching. Refine your search to publications produced during the era you are researching.
- Subject (is exact) Brazil--Commerce, Sort by Date - Oldest
- Report of the commissioners from British North America appointed to inquire into the trade of the West Indies, Mexico & Brazil (1866)
