How Do I Find Primary and Secondary Sources?

Selected resources from other libraries:

• Library Research Using Primary Sources
• Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Sources
• How do I Identify Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Sources?

Definitions

Examples

• To search for items held by the Osterlin Library, search the Online Catalog (WebCat) with any of the above examples combined with the subject heading for your topic. Once you have identified the appropriate Library of Congress Subject Heading for your topic, you can pair that heading with specific subheadings that identify materials as primary sources. Some of the subheadings are:
  • correspondence
  • diaries
  • early works to 1800
  • interviews
  • pamphlets
  • periodicals
  • personal narratives
  • sources
• You can add any of the subheadings listed above with a Library of Congress Subject Heading to specifically search for primary source material. For example:
  • world war 1939-1945 england personal narratives
  • student movements japan history sources
  • anarchism united states pamphlets
  • france revolution correspondence
  • soviet union history revolution 1917-1921 pamphlets
  • women suffrage united states history sources
  • etc.

Adapted from Ohio University Libraries "How do I Identify Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Sources?" http://www.library.ohiou.edu/libinfo/howto/sources.htm