Starting Your Research
How to begin your primary source research
Keyword searching can be effective, but if you're struggling to find materials try asking yourself these questions:
- Who are some notable people relevant to my research topic?
- Are there any notable geographic locations relevant to my research topic?
- Is there a relevant time period to my research topic?
- What are some significant organizations relevant to my research topic?
- Was there a major event associated with my research topic?
Answers to these questions is often the most effective strategy to use when doing archival research.
Definitions
Research involves collecting a diverse range of materials that may include primary, secondary, and tertiary sources.
What does this mean?
Primary Sources are original materials created during a given historical period and represent the ideas, thoughts, and attitudes of individuals, organizations, and government. Original sources record actual experience and are the foundation for scholarly research. Primary sources vary widely by format and definition of a primary source will vary by discipline.
Examples of Primary Sources:
- Autobiographies, memoirs, books, and monographs
- Theses and Dissertations
- Diaries, Journals, Scrapbooks, Ephemera
- Correspondence including letters, email, text messages, and postcards
- Government documents, census data, and published reports
- Newspapers, periodicals, magazines, scholarly journals
- Machine readable data files
- Music, maps, architectural records
- Visual materials that include art work, photographs, posters, prints, and digital images
- Moving images and sound recordings that include film and oral histories
- Printed ephemera, objects, and artifacts
Secondary Sources:
- Use primary sources to answer research questions, solve problems, and to interpret the past
- Secondary sources include books, monographs, and articles
- Some secondary sources may be considered primary for the artifactual nature or research value of the work.
Tertiary Sources:
Sources that interpret or present information for general readers. Examples include textbooks, encyclopedia articles, and digital resources such as Wikipedia.
The way in which scholars use primary and Secondary Sources varies greatly. While a book or monograph is generally treated as secondary source, it may have artifactual value, while visual (photographic) materials are frequently treated as documents. Likewise, oral histories and memoirs are treated as primary sources even though the recording or publication takes places many years after the events transpired.
See Robert C. Williams, The Historian's Toolbox: A Student's Guide to the Theory and Craft of History (M.E. Sharpe, 2007)
Archival terminology
Primary Source Formats come in all different shapes and sizes and include:
Books, periodicals, newspapers, magazines, maps, art, government documents, visual materials, sound recordings, moving images, manuscripts and archives from individuals and organizations, correspondence in print and electronic formats (email, text messages, and postcards).
Some commonly used terms you should familiarize yourself with when doing your research are:
Archives: records created or received by a person, family, or organization and preserved because of their continuing value inactive records of continuing value the organically created records of continuing value, particularly when the organization itself maintains the records non-record material selected, preserved, managed, presented, and used in the same manner as archives.
Manuscripts: A collection of personal or family papers. Although manuscript literally means handwritten, 'manuscript collection' is often used to include collections of mixed media in which unpublished materials predominate. They may also include typescripts, photographs, diaries, scrapbooks, news clippings, and printed works.
Personal Papers: 1. Records created and originally kept by an individual. 2. Documents unrelated to work but maintained at a place of work by an employee of the United States federal government.
Finding Aids: a description that typically consists of contextual and structural information about an archival resource.
- Dictionary of Archival and Records TerminologyPublished by SAA in 2005 as one of seven volumes in the Archival Fundamentals Series II, the Glossary, by Richard Pearce-Moses, contains more than 2,000 defined entries, more than 600 lead-in terms, and nearly 700 citations from some 280 sources, and is based primarily on archival literature in the United States and Canada.
What are Archives?
- What are Archives? | Animating the ArchivesThis video series examines some of the stories behind Tate’s archives of British art, exploring questions and processes that are emerging from their collection, conservation and use.
What does the word archive mean to you? Hear from artists, gallery volunteers, and history experts about the sorts of things you can find in archives. What secrets do archives hold and how can your own experiences and possessions be of archival value?
Video tutorials on primary sources
- What is a Primary Source? by ShmoopThis video defines a primary source and what makes it different from a secondary source. What counts as original material? And where can we find these primary sources now?
- Teaching with Primary SourcesShort video from the Library of Congress: This film defines primary and secondary sources and explores the value of using primary sources in instruction.
Citing archival sources
- Purdue Libraries: Citing Archival SourcesCiting a primary source document, from an archives, varies depending on the preference of your instructor, the publication you are submitting the article, or the discipline in which you are operating. You may wish to consult the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) for further information.

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