Primary sources enable the researcher to get as close as possible to what actually happened during an historical event or time period.  A primary source reflects the individual viewpoint of a participant or observer.  Undergraduates are sometimes allowed to use a broader definition of primary sources, which may include some of the types of materials listed below. If in doubt, ask your instructor.

• Diaries, journals, speeches, interviews, letters, memos, manuscripts and other papers in which individuals describe events in which they were participants or observers.
  
  
• Memoirs and autobiographies. These may be less reliable than diaries or letters since they are usually written long after events occurred and may be distorted by bias, dimming memory or the revised perspective that may come with hindsight.  On the other hand, they are sometimes the only source for certain information.
  
  
• Records of or information collected by government agencies.  Many kinds of records (births, deaths, marriages; permits and licenses issued; census data, etc.) document conditions in the society.
  
  
• Records of organizations.   The minutes, reports, correspondence, etc. of an organization or agency serve as an ongoing record of the activity and thinking of that organization or agency.
  
  

• Published materials (books, magazine and journal articles, newspaper  articles) written at the time about a particular event.  While these are sometimes accounts by participants, in most cases they are written by journalists or other observers.  The important thing is to distinguish between material written at the time of an event as a kind of report, and material written much later, as historical analysis.

• Photographs, audio recordings and moving pictures or video recordings,  documenting what happened.

• Materials that document the attitudes and popular thought of a historical  time period. If you are attempting to find evidence documenting the mentality or psychology of a time, or of a group (evidence of a world view, a set of attitudes, or the popular understanding of an event or condition), the most obvious source is public opinion polls taken at the time.  Since these are generally very limited in availability and in what they reveal, however, it is also possible to make use of ideas and images conveyed in the mass media, and even in literature, film, popular fiction, textbooks, etc.  Again, the point is to use these sources, written or produced at the time, as evidence of how people were thinking.

• Research data such as anthropological field notes, the results of  scientific experiments, and other scholarly activity of the time.

• Artifacts of all kinds: physical objects, buildings, furniture, tools, appliances and household items, clothing, toys.

Some primary sources, such as diaries or letters, are original manuscripts which exist in only one place in the world. Others, such as newspaper articles or transcripts of speeches, exist in multiple copies but may be hard to find.  Look for reprinted primary source materials that are available on campus, such  as books that collect speeches, letters, or government documents; microfilm collections of the papers of an organization; or videos of archival newsreel  footage.  These materials are often more accessible and easier to use than the original materials. You can search for these primary sources in library catalogs using primary source subheadings.  See Use the JHU Libraries Online Catalog for more information about using the catalog to find primary sources.

PRINT:  Some compilations of reprinted primary source materials appear in books which can often be found in reference collections, or which can be checked out from campus libraries:

• Documents of American History
• Speeches of the American Presidents
• The Kissinger Transcripts: The Top Secret Talks with Beijing and Moscow
• A Woman Doctor's Civil War:  Esther Hawks' Diary
• The Letters of Frida Kahlo

MICROFILM:  The Library maintains a rich microform collection of primary sources, all of which are accompanied by guides or indexes.  These microform collections may be compilations of letters, manuscripts, and other documents of a particular topic.  Among the types of collections you will find are:

• Papers of the NAACP
• American Immigrant Autobiographies
• Gay Activists Alliance
• Emma Goldman Papers

VIDEOTAPES/DVD.  The JHU Libraries may have documentary footage of historical events on video or DVD.  To see whether the library has a videorecording on a particular topic, go to the advanced keyword search in the JHU Libraries Catalog and limit your search by format.  [Example: Subject: world war, 1939-1945  Type of material: DVDs, videos, films, slides, etc]

INTERNET.  Increasingly, libraries are digitizing archival resources and providing access to these special collections through the Web.  Many digital library collections contain excellent primary resources such as photographs, scanned images of letters or the full-text of books and journals.  For more information: Using Primary Sources on the Web.  Reference & User Services Association.  History Section.

A secondary source is a work that interprets or analyzes an historical event or phenomenon.  It is generally at least one step removed from the event.  A recent article that evaluates and analyzes the relationship between the feminist movement and the labor movement in turn-of-the-century England is an example of a secondary source; if you were to look at the bibliography of this article you would see that the author's research was based on both primary sources such as labor union documents, speeches and personal letters as well as other secondary sources.  Textbooks and encyclopedias are also examples of secondary sources.  To find secondary sources, look in the  JHU Libraries Catalog (for books and other monographs) or in historical periodical indexes such as: 

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