Primary Sources

When you think of primary sources, what ideas, qualities, or types of things come to mind?

You use & create primary sources daily - what info that you use & create today might be considered a primary source for a researcher in the future?

GOAL:
Determine what types of primary sources might be useful for your primary research papers and where to find them.

Today

• Defining Primary Sources
• Where to find primary sources
• How to find primary sources

Today's Slides

Assignment Review

What is a primary source?

PRIMARY SOURCE:
A source of information created at the time of the period under study.

SECONDARY SOURCE?

TERTIARY SOURCE?

What are some examples of types of primary sources?

Common Types

• Newspapers
• Diaries and autobiographies
• Letters
• Recordings, oral histories
• Government documents and data
• Artifact/Object

Test your Knowledge

Painting of a railroad based on the artist's observation of the railroad.

Map of sugar plantations in Brazil created in 1651.

What if that map was created by an American who made the map based on letters exchanged with a Brazilian plantation owner?

Newspaper article from a journalist who interviewed witnesses to Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion.

What if that newspaper article was written five years after the Rebellion?

Diagram of a cotton gin in a newspaper from from 1802?

Diagram of a cotton gin written in 1925 based on a description in a newspaper ad from 1825.

An encyclopedia from 2013 that describes slave labor on cotton plantations in the early 19th century.

What if you were using that encyclopedia as an example for a study on 21st century perspectives on slavery

Context

Would you add anything to your list now?

Things to Consider

Things to Consider

• Who wrote it, and why?
• What can it tell you about the situation?
• Why type of bias might the author have, or what type of information might be missing?

What do I need?

Influence of the steamboat on slave resistance along Mississippi River communities.

What primary sources?

• Map of communities along MS Rive
• News articles on slave escapes along MS River
• Accounts from slaves or others of life along the MS river

Runaway slave communities in the Brazilian jungle

What primary sources?

• Map of known fugitive slave communities
• Military/government records of efforts to retrieve fugitive slaves
• Newspaper notices on escaped slaves
• Accounts from slaves living in fugitive communities

Difference in slave labor demand in the Chesapeake and Deep South regions.

What primary sources?

• Legal documents of slave owners (wills, tax document, slave purchases)
• Personal accounts of slave owners or slaves
• Inventories of plantation equipment

Your Turn

Where to look?

Research Guides

Research Guides

• Primary Sources
• History
• Latin American Studies
• Africana Studies

Try these sources first

• Accessible Archives
• 19th Century Collections Online
• Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive
• Library of Congress

How to search?

Google v. Library

Focus on Keywords

Topics not types

Search

GOAL:
Determine what types of primary sources might be useful for your primary research papers and where to find them.

Untitled Slide

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