Primary Sources
- What are Primary Sources?
- Primary Sources at Kenyon
- Newspapers and Periodicals
- History Collections
- Literature Collections
- Audio and Visual Collections
- Data Sets
- Contact a Librarian
What are Primary Sources?
Primary sources vary from one discipline to another. For the historian, primary sources might include diaries, correspondence, or census data; for the literature researcher, poems, stories, or manuscripts; for the musician, sheet music, recordings, or instruments. While secondary sources analyze an event or interpret a creative work, primary sources provide the raw materials for scholarship.
For more examples of primary sources, consult this brief guide from the Bowling Green State University Libraries, or this tutorial from Yale University.
If you have any questions about finding and using primary sources in your research, please contact a librarian.
Primary Sources at Kenyon
In addition to the Greenslade Special Collections and Archives and the government documents collection, the library provides access to numerous types of primary sources in a variety of ways:
- Begin with Research Guides by Subject and Course for suggestions of primary sources in a particular subject area.
- Use Library of Congress subject headings in the CONSORT catalog--identify the subject heading for a person, event, or topic, and then add one of the following subheadings:
- correspondence
- diaries
- early works to 1800
- interviews
- pamphlets
- personal narratives
- sources
- Limit your CONSORT search by year of publication, e.g., between 1932 and 1945.
- Try the selected print and electronic resources listed below.
Newspapers and Periodicals
New York Times: microfilm, 1851-present; to locate articles, use the New York Times Index (REF AI21. N45)
Times (London): available in microfilm, 1785-Nov. 1978 and Nov. 1979-present; to locate articles, use the Times Index (REF AI21. T46)
Times of India: available in microfilm, 1861-1895 and 1897-1978
American Periodicals Series Online 1740-1900
America's Historical Newspapers, 1690-1922
HarpWeek: The Civil War Era and Reconstruction (1857-1871) (Harper's Weekly)
Illustrated Civil War Newspapers and Magazines
19th Century British Library Newspapers
Readers' Guide Retrospective (index to U.S. periodicals, 1890-1982)
17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers
Women's Periodials (microfilm collection)
Other newspapers (including local papers) and periodicals are available in print and microfilm.
History Collections
American Civil War Letters and Diaries
American Civil War Research Database
American Broadsides and Ephemera
American Radicalism (microfilm collection)
Census Data (on microfilm)
Congressional Research Digital Collection - Committee Prints
Congressional Research Digital Collection - CRS Reports
Congressional Universe / U.S. Serial Set
Congressional Universe / U.S. Serial Set Maps
Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800
Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, 1800-1819
Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports
Gerritsen Collection of Women's History, 1543-1945 (microfilm collection)
Herstory (microfilm collection)
Historical Census Publications
Historical Statistics of the United States
Images of the American Civil War
Primary Sources in African American History
Primary Sources in American Women's History
Slavery and Anti-Slavery Archive
Vanderbilt Television News Archive
Women, War, and Society 1914-1918
Additional African American Studies Resources (microfilm)
Literature Collections
African-American Poetry, 1760-1900
ARTFL (French literature)
Columbia Grangers' World of Poetry
Early English Books Online (EEBO) - 1473-1700
Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare
Eighteenth Century Collections Online
20th-Century African-American Poetry
William Butler Yeats Collection
Audio and Visual Collections
DRAM (Database of Recorded American Music)
Data Sets
Historical Statistics of the United States
ICPSR (Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research
Need Help?
Contact a librarian or visit the Information Desk.