Primary sources are materials that provide firsthand testimony or the closest evidence to a subject under investigation. Researchers often use these firsthand accounts of specific events, or direct investigations to understand events from the viewpoint of people living during that time period. Primary sources include letters, diaries, photographs, newspaper articles, and pamphlets.
Explore Artstor’s collections of high-quality images, curated from leading museums and archives around the world. Artstor’s diverse collections are rights-cleared for education and research, and include Open Access content as well as rare materials not available elsewhere. Currently there are over 851,000 images in over 300 collections. Artstor supports and enriches study across disciplines, including world events from Magnum Photos, anthropology from Harvard’s Peabody Museum, and archaeology from Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Art Archives. The images in Artstor are curated from reliable sources and have been rights-cleared for use in education and research — you are free to use them in classroom instruction and handouts, presentations, student assignments, and other noncommercial educational and scholarly activities. [Artstor is provided by the generous support of the Olive Higgins Prouty Fund, a library endowment dedicated to the humanities.]
Search full text and images 1851-2020 including news, illustrations, editorials, and advertisements.
The Gordon Library Archives are a great resource for primary sources. To learn more about the Archives' collections or to schedule a visit to the Archives, please e-mail archives@wpi.edu or fill out their contact form.
To find primary sources via Google, try adding keywords like journals, papers, letters, documents, primary sources, documentary history, maps, or archives to your search terms.