Primary Sources - Historical Newspapers and Periodicals
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What are Primary Sources
Primary sources are the historical documents used by historians as first-hand evidence. Examples of primary sources include diaries, personal journals, government records, court records, property records, newspaper articles, military reports, and military rosters, among many other things.
In contrast, a secondary source is the typical historical account which discusses a person, event or other historical topic. A good secondary source uses primary sources as evidence.
The key to determining whether an item may be considered to be a primary source is to ask how soon after the event was the information recorded. This can be a problem with an autobiography, memoir, reminiscence, etc. if the author is working several years with only the memory of what happened. Your history professor will disallow most or all of these as primary sources. However, the rule of thumb should always be: if you're not sure whether something is an acceptable primary source, ask your professor.
Most Used Resources in History
Of these, only Academic Search Ultimate will have articles considered to be primary sources for more recent events. Both America History & Life and Historical Abstracts lead mainly to secondary sources in history journals.
- Academic Search Ultimate This link opens in a new window
A multidisciplinary periodical index which provides access to popular press magazines and scholarly (including peer-reviewed) journals from nearly every academic discipline. Includes content from international publishers, a growing collection of open access journals, and a large historic collection of video recordings from the Associated Press.
- America: History and Life with Full Text
America: History and Life with Full Text is comprised of journal articles, books and book reviews in the social sciences and humanities on the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present time.
- Historical Abstracts with Full Text
Database covers the history of the world, excluding the United States and Canada, from 1450 to present with indexing to historical articles from more than 1800 journals in over 40 languages published since 1955. Citations to books, dissertations and theses are included plus the full text of more than 349 journals and more than 120 books. The related disciplines of archeology, anthropology and sociology are also covered.
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