Letters and Diaries/ Oral Histories
- In the First Person: Index to Letters, Diaries, Oral Histories, and Other Personal Narratives

- American Civil War: Letters and Diaries

- British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries

- North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories

- North American Women's Letters and Diaries: Colonial to 1950

- Women and Social Movements in the United States

What are Primary Sources?
Primary source is a term used in a number of disciplines to describe source material that is closest to the person, information, period, or idea being studied. A primary source (also called original source) is a document, recording, artifact, or other source of information that was created at the time under study, usually by a source with direct personal knowledge of the events being described. It serves as an original source of information about the topic. Similar definitions are used in library science, and other areas of scholarship. In journalism, a primary source can be a person with direct knowledge of a situation, or a document created by such a person. Primary sources are distinguished from secondary sources, which cite, comment on, or build upon primary sources, though the distinction is not a sharp one.
The National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Artist
Description
Loading content... please wait





Loading content... please wait