Primary sources are materials that provide firsthand testimony to a subject under investigation. Researchers often use these firsthand accounts of specific events to understand events from the viewpoint of people living during that time period. Primary sources include letters, diaries, photographs, newspaper articles, and pamphlets. Primary sources also include writings and recordings by witnesses who experienced the events or conditions being documented. For example, oral histories, autobiographies, and memoirs are primary sources.
Primary source materials can be found in a variety of locations, including within books, newspapers, article bibliographies, and archives or manuscripts collections.
Search full text and images 1851-2020 including news, illustrations, editorials, and advertisements.
Early English Books Online (EEBO) is the definitive online collection of early printed works in English. With over 125,000 titles from before 1700, the EEBO contains virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700.
This HeinOnline collection brings together a multitude of essential legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery.
To find primary sources via Google, try adding keywords like journals, papers, letters, documents, primary sources, or documentary history to your search terms. Primary sources can often be found on library, museum, and government websites.
WPI's Archives and Special Collections offer great resources for primary sources. To learn more about the Archives' collections or to schedule a visit to the Archives, please fill out their contact form or e-mail archives@wpi.edu.
Many primary source documents are republished in books, or even referenced within books on historical topics. To find these books, search WPI Library Search for books about your topic and add keywords like sourcebook, documents, primary sources, or documentary history to your search terms.
Here are some examples of books containing primary sources:
History of Science and Technology:
Candid Science: Conversations with Famous Chemists by 
Candid Science III: More Conversations with Famous Chemists by 
A Documentary History of Biochemistry, 1770-1940 by 
Environmental Issues in American History by 
A Hammer in Their Hands: A Documentary History of Technology and the African-American Experience by 
Media Revolution: Early Prints from the Sheldon Museum of Art by 
Object Lessons: The Visualisation of Nineteenth-Century Life Sciences by 
The Scopes Trial: A Brief History with Documents by 
Stripped Bare: The Art of Animal Anatomy by American History:
Debating the Issues in Colonial Newspapers: Primary Documents on Events of the Period by 
Documenting American Violence: A Sourcebook by 
The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader: Documents, Speeches, and Firsthand Accounts from the Black Freedom Struggle by European History:
The Great Exhibition, 1851: A Sourcebook by Paris under the Commune The Seventy-Three Days of the Second Siege; with Numerous Illustrations, Sketches Taken on the Spot, and Portraits (from the Original Photographs) by Asian History:
New Women in Colonial Korea: A Sourcebook by 
Sourcebook in Shinto: Selected Documents by Social History:
Documenting First Wave Feminisms: Vol. 1, Transnational Collaborations and Crosscurrents by 
Documenting First Wave Feminisms: Vol. 2, Canada - National and Transnational Contexts by 
Human and Civil Rights: Essential Primary Sources by 
