Primary Sources are materials produced by people or groups directly involved in the event or topic under consideration, either as participants or as witnesses. These sources provide the evidence on which historians rely in order to describe and interpret the past.
Some primary sources are written documents, such as letters; diaries; newspaper and magazine articles; speeches; autobiographies; treatises; census data; and marriage, birth, and death registers.
In addition, historians often examine primary sources that are not written, like works of art, films, recordings, items of clothing, household objects, tools, and archaeological remains.*
* Rampolla, Mary Lynn. A Pocket Guide to Writing in History. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's Press, 2012. Print.
Image: The Two Friedas. Frida Kahlo, 1939
Here are some select databases the Mardigian Library subscribes to that help you locate primary resources and materials:
17th and 18th Century Burney Collection - The newspapers and news pamphlets gathered by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757 - 1817) represent the largest single collection of seventeenth and eighteenth century English news media. The 700 or so bound volumes of newspapers and news pamphlets were published mostly in London, however there are also some English provincial, Irish and Scottish papers, and a few examples from the American colonies, Europe, and India.
19th Century U.S. Newspapers - Includes digital facsimile images of both full pages and clipped articles for hundreds of nineteenth century U.S. newspapers and advanced searching capabilities. For each issue, the newspaper is captured from cover-to-cover, providing access to every article, advertisement, and illustration.
Arab-Israeli Relations, 1917-1970: The Middle East Online, Series I - More than 137,000 pages of original source material from the Foreign Office, Colonial Office, War Office, and Cabinet Papers from the 1917 Balfour Declaration through to the Black September war of 1970-71.
Black Studies Center - A gateway to historical and current material for researching the past, present, and future of African-Americans, the wider African Diaspora, and Africa itself. It combines: Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, International Index to Black Periodicals (IIBP) Full Text, The Chicago Defender historical backfile (1909 - 1975), and Black Literature Index (1827 - 1940).
Declassified Documents Reference System - Full text of declassified Presidential, Executive Branch, and Congressional documents since World War II. Subjects include foreign relations, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, civil rights movement, assassinations, and more.
Early American Imprints, Series I Evans, 1639-1800 - Page images and searchable full-text of most books and pamphlets published in the U.S./American colonies before 1801. Covers every aspect of American life including history, literature, religion, and foreign affairs. Includes 36,000 titles.
Early American Imprints, Series II, Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819 - Provides full-text access to the 36,000 American books, pamphlets, and broadsides published in the first nineteen years of the nineteenth century, covering every aspect of American life during the early decades of the United States.
Early American Newspapers, 1690-1876 - Cover-to-cover reproductions of hundreds of historic newspapers, providing more than one million pages as fully text-searchable facsimile images. Based largely on Clarence Brigham's History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820.
The Michigan Middle East Travelers Oral History Project - The Michigan Iranian American Oral History Project began recording the stories of Iranian Americans in Michigan in 2016. Each interview is indexed for convenient navigation to topics of interest. Transcripts and captions include translations and other contextual information to facilitate further inquiry and study
ProQuest Historical Black Newspapers - Full-text searchable access to the complete backfiles for five major African American community newspapers:
• Atlanta Daily World (1931-2003),
• The Chicago Defender (1909-1975),
• Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005),
• New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993), and
• Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2002).
For all titles except The Chicago Defender, one year of additional content is added to the backfile annually. This link takes you to the Library's Newspaper database list and you need to scroll to and select a newspaper from the list.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers - Full-text searchable access to the complete backfiles of the Chicago Tribune (1849 - 1985), Chicago Defender (1905 - 1975), Los Angeles Times (1881 - 1985), New York Times (1851 - 2003), Wall Street Journal (1889 - 1989), and the Washington Post (1877 - 1990). This link takes you to the Library's Newspaper database list and you need to scroll to and select a newspaper from the list.
Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive - Dr. Sid Bolkosky, Professor of History at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, has interviewed over 150 survivors of the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews. His interviews with these survivors are recorded on about 330 hours of audio tapes and 60 hours of video tapes. These tapes are being transcribed and entered into the online catalog of the Mardigian Library at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.
Archive of Americana - Books, pamphlets, broadsides, and other publications from 1639-1876. A combined search of Early American Imprints Series I, Early American Imprints Series II, and Early American Newspapers Series I.
Readex All Search - Readex AllSearch is a single page that allows searches across all Readex collections, including newspapers, books, pamphlets, government publications, and more.
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