LibGuides: HIST 674- Seminar Recent U.S. History: Primary Sources

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Subjects: American Indian Studies, California Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, History, Jewish Studies, Queer Studies

What are Primary Sources?

Primary sources are materials created at the time of the topic you are researching, or by an eyewitness to the topic/event. Primary sources enable historians to get as close as possible to documentation of what likely actually happened during a historical period or event. For the purposes of History 630, you are working to identify chronicles or annals, that document what an eyewitness experienced during your topic focus.

Examples of Primary Sources

Primary sources are first-hand accounts of an event or time in history that has yet to be interpreted by another person.

Examples of primary sources include:

diaries, journals, letters, interviews, speeches, memos, manuscripts and other first-person accounts
memoirs and autobiographies
official records such as government publications, census data, court reports, police records
minutes, reports, correspondence of an organization or agency
newspaper and magazine articles written during the time of the event
photographs, paintings, film and television programs, audio recordings which document an event
research such as opinion polls which document attitudes and thought during the time of an event
artifacts such as objects, tools, clothing, etc. of the time period or eve+

Primary Sources via Library Databases & Beyond

US Diplomatic Documents and other Government Documents

U.S. Congressional Serial Set This link opens in a new window
The United States Congressional Serial Set contains reports, documents, and journals of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives from the 15th Congress (1817) through the 103rd Congress (1994). Provides access to full text primary source material on U.S. political, social, cultural, military and ethnic history, as well as international relations, explorations, genealogy, commerce, and industrial development.

The State Department Office of the Historian (Links to an external site.)
The Office of the Historian is responsible, under law, for the preparation and publication of the official documentary history of U.S. foreign policy in the Foreign Relations of the United States series.
American Presidency (primary documents)
The core of the APP document collection is based on published collections of presidential documents. Except for recent presidents, these collections omitted many documents such as proclamations, vetoes and orders. So, prior to 1945, the number of documents in the APP collection in any specific category may be smaller than the total in existance. So, based simply on document frequencies, our collection overstates the activity level of the post-FDR presidency compared to earlier years.
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You can and should try to identify and also check each Presidential Library and Archive for more digitized documents