Primary Sources Guide

You can find primary sources online through the Central Piedmont Databases as well as through the digital collections of museums, archives, historical societies, and other institutions.

First, you would need to figure out what kind of primary sources you want to look for. Primary sources can be divided into two types of information: quantitative and qualitative. See the infographic below to learn more about quantitative and qualitative information.

To find primary sources related to African American Studies, Latin American & Latina/o Studies, or Native American & Indigenous Studies, click on the links in the menu or the links below.

• African American Studies
• Latin American & Latina/o Studies
• Native American & Indigenous Studies

Looking for primary sources for your History class assignments (HIS111, 112, 131, 132)? Visit the course guides below.

• HIS111/112 World Civilizations Course Guide
• HIS131/132 American History Course Guide

Here's another tip on how to find primary sources: check the footnotes, references, or bibliographies of your secondary sources. Here's an example:

The following is the Notes section of a peer-reviewed journal article ("A Right to Speak: Formerly Enslaved People and the Political Antislavery Movement in Antebellum America" by Bryan Lapointe) from The Journal of the Civil War Era. It was published in March 2023.

Notice how the author used a speech (a primary source) from the Ichabod Codding Papers (an archival collection) from the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College. The author also used a letter (a primary source) from the Smith Papers (an archival collection) at Syracuse University as well as another speech written by Owen Lovejoy (which can be found in the Internet Archive).