Guides: Ethnic Studies: Primary Sources

Newspaper Articles

Find a specific newspaper
Search by title.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers
Search the archives of several United States newspapers. Earliest is 1851.

Newspaper Research Guide
Detailed assistance finding current and historical newspaper resources.

Periodicals

Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982 (H.W. Wilson) This link opens in a new window
Indexes articles in approx. 375 leading general magazines (mainly popular literature). Available in print as Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. Includes book, film, and television reviews.
Print volumes: Davis Family Library Reference AI3 .S6 (1900 - present)
National Geographic Magazine, 1888 - present This link opens in a new window
The complete archive of the magazine from 1888 to the present, including every page and every photograph. (Later issues will be added in the upcoming months and years.)
American Periodicals Series Online - 1740-1940 This link opens in a new window
APS collection contains digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals that originated between 1741, when Andrew Bradford's American Magazine and Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine were launched, and 1940. Derives from the American Periodicals Series microform collection and features over 1,100 periodicals spanning nearly 200 years. Includes publications such as Vanity Fair, Life, and Ladies Home Journal.

Archival Collections

American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I, 1760-1900 This link opens in a new window
This family of historical collections contains books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, government documents and ephemera printed in America over three centuries.
Archives Unbound This link opens in a new window
Archival collections including:
"We Were Prepared for the Possibility of Death:" Freedom Riders in the South, 1961
Confederate Newspapers: A Collection from Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and Alabama
Fannie Lou Hamer: Papers of a Civil Rights Activist, Political Activist, and Woman
Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984
Japanese-American Relocation Camp Newspapers: Perspectives on Day-to-Day Life
The Civil War in Words and Deeds

CRL: Center for Research Libraries Catalog
Online catalog of the holdings of the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), which includes over 5 million items including U.S. and international newspapers; foreign journals and dissertations; government documents, and a wide range of other primary source material. Middlebury's membership in CRL allows us unlimited borrowing of CRL material via Interlibrary Loan (put a note in your request if the item is available from CRL).

Primary Sources on the Web

HathiTrust Digital Library
Search the digital collections (including scanned books) from major research university libraries. View full-text available only for items no longer in copyright. Also check Internet Archive and/or Digital Public Library of America (Similar coverage. Allows downloading of full documents no longer in copyright).
Internet Archive (Archive.org)
This website includes not only a way to search for websites that are no longer visible, but also a number of digital texts and other materials. Search by title or author, and choose a genre from the menu tab on the right.

Digital Public Library of America dpla This link opens in a new window
The DPLA contains over 2.5 million records for photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more from libraries, archives, and museums around the United States. Each record links to the original object on the content provider’s website.

Europeana
Multi-lingual online collection of digitized items from European museums, libraries, archives and multi-media collections.
Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930
A web-based collection of historical materials from Harvard's libraries, archives, and museums that documents voluntary immigration to the United States from the signing of the Constitution to the onset of the Great Depression.
National Archives: Ethnic Heritage Research
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the nation's record keeper. Explore research resources, online collections, and more. Browse materials on African American, Chinese, Hispanic, Japanese, and Native American heritage.
Avalon Project: Digitized Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy (Yale)
Collections include "African-Americans - Biography, Autobiography and History", "Slavery: Statutes and Treaties", "Treaties Between The United States and Native Americans", "United States Statutes Concerning Native Americans", and "United States Statutes Concerning Slavery".

Find Memoirs, Letters, Interviews, & More

Add Primary Source Keywords to Your Search Terms

autobiography
memoir
sources
personal narrative*
letters
correspondence
diaries
diary
interview*
oral history
archives
speeches
notebooks, sketchbooks

Example:
Kenya and history and (letters or correspondence or narratives)

This technique can be used in LibrarySearch, or other databases.

Primary vs. Secondary Sources

Primary sources were created at the time of an event or period. They are often the product of an eyewitness or an original creator. They might be original reports of an event, artifacts from an event or time period, or creative works, and include:

memoirs
letters
interviews
pottery
novels
poems

Secondary sources interpret, analyze, or contextualize primary sources. They are second-hand interpretations. They might include:

documentaries
biographies
textbooks
research articles

How Do I Find Primary Sources?

Searching for Primary Sources - Questions to Ask
Types of primary sources and how to search for them.