Primary and Secondary Sources: Finding Primary Sources

There are different types of primary sources. One way to search is using a genre keyword + your topic keyword(s).

For first-person evidence, try using:

• Memoir
• Autobiography
• Personal narrative
• Diary

For lists or statistics, try:

• Almanac
• Directory
• Guide
• Yearbook

Example searches:

• Memoir and "civil rights movement"
• Almanac and literature

For archival collections, use a finding aid repository like

For digital surrogates of archival materials (like historical photos, or scans of letters or diaries), use a digital primary source repository like

For books that have been mass-digitized (most materials currently in the public domain, pre-1925), try

• Select the date range the sources you're looking for would have been published
  • For example, for primary sources about the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, you might use 1941-1950
• Display search results from oldest to newest