Finding Primary Sources: A Web-Based Guide
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A photograph can be a primary source |
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Antietam, Md. President Lincoln with Gen. George B. McClellan
and group of officers. [October 3, 1862]
Gardner, Alexander, 1821-1882, photographer.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs
Division, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-B8184-3287]
American Memory
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What is a Primary Source?
A definition from Cornell: Primary sources are the main text or work that you are discussing (e.g. a sonnet by William Shakespeare; an opera by Mozart); actual data or research results (e.g. a scientific article presenting original findings; statistics); or historical documents (e.g. letters, pamphlets, political tracts, manifestoes). ["What is a Source?" Recognizing and Avoiding Plagarism. Cornell University. College of Arts and Sciences.]
A definition from Yale: "A primary source is firsthand testimony or direct evidence concerning a topic under investigation. The nature and value of a source cannot be determined
without reference to the topic and questions it is meant to answer. The same document,
or other piece of evidence, may be a primary source in one investigation and secondary
in another. The search for primary sources does not, therefore, automatically
include or exclude any category of records or documents." [Yale
University Library Primary Sources Research Colloquium in History]
Examples of Primary Sources:
Secondary Sources
Secondary sources are books, periodicals, web sites, etc. that people write using the information from primary sources. They are not written by eyewitnesses to events, for instance, but use eyewitness accounts, photographs, diaries and other primary sources to reconstruct events or to support a writer's thesis about the events and their meaning. Many books you find in the Cornell Library Catalog are secondary sources.
Tertiary Sources
Tertiary sources are publications that summarize and digest the information in primary and secondary sources to provide background on a topic, idea, or event. Encyclopedias and biographical dictionaries are prime examples of tertiary sources.
Examples of Tertiary Sources:
- American National Biography. [New York]: Oxford UP, 2000. (Library Gateway, Find Databases)
- Cayton, Marx Kupiec, ed. Encyclopedia of American Social History. 3 vols. New York: Scribner's, 1992.
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- Uris Library Reference HN 57 .E56 1992; also Olin Reference
- Current, Richard N., ed. Encyclopedia of the Confederacy. 4 vols. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.
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Uris Library Reference E 487 .E56
- Finkelman, Paul, ed. Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century. 3 vols. New York: Scribners, 2001.
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Uris Library Reference E 169.1 .E626x 2001
- Heidler, David S. and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds. Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History. 5 vols. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2000.
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Uris Library Reference E 468 .H47x 2000
- Jessup, John E., ed. Encyclopedia of the American Military: Studies of the History, Traditions, Policies, Institutions, and Roles of the Armed Forces in War and Peace. 3 vols. New York: Scribners, 1994.
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Uris Library Reference UA 23 .E56
- Salzman, Jack, David Lionel Smith and Cornel West, eds. Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History. 5 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1996.
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- Uris Library Reference E 185 .E54 1996; also Africana Reference
02 November 2005
Michael Engle
Reference Department
URL: http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/primary.html
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