Subject Guide
Zara Wilkinson
Contact:
Paul Robeson Library
300 North 4th Street
Camden, NJ 08102
856-225-2831
Website
300 North 4th Street
Camden, NJ 08102
856-225-2831
What is a primary source?
A primary source is a document that was created during a particular time period. This may include first-hand accounts of historical events and time periods, such as speeches, diaries, letters, and news coverage. Creative works such as fiction, poetry, and art are also considered primary sources.
A secondary source is about a primary source. It analyzes, interprets, and comments on the rimary source. Books and scholarly journal articles are secondary sources.
Two examples:
Hamlet is a primary source. It was written during the Renaissance. Harold Bloom's Hamlet : poem unlimited, which is a book about Hamlet, is a secondary source. It was written in 2003.
A letter from a WWII soldier to his family is a primary source. A journal article about WWII soldiers and their families is a secondary source.
Find primary sources
- 17th - 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers17th - 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers consists of nearly five hundred newspaper titles from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most published in London, but some from other parts of Great Britain and a few from overseas. In addition, there are approximately three hundred "newsbooks." Circulated during the Civil War and the Commonwealth, newsbooks were small, cheap weekly pamphlets of current news, the precursors to modern newspapers, Finally, the collection also includes almost three hundred pamphlets and broadsides.
- African American NewspapersAfrican-American Newspapers is a full-text database of the following newspapers:
Christian Recorder (Philadelphia: 1861-1902 [excluding 1892])
Colored American (New York: 1837-1841)
Douglass' Monthly (Rochester, NY: 1859-1863)
Frederick Douglass' Paper (Rochester, NY: 1851-1855)
Freedom's Journal (New York: 1827-1829)
National Era (Washington, D.C.: 1847-1860)
North Star (Rochester, NY: 1847-1851)
Provincial Freeman (Chatham, Ontario): 1854-1857)
Weekly Advocate (New York: 1837) - American Civil War: Letters and DiariesIncludes over one thousand memoirs, diaries, and collections of letters written by private soldiers, generals, politicians, and civilians. The database offers intimate, first-hand accounts of the war both on and off the battle field.
- Black Drama: 1850 to the PresentBlack Drama contains the full text of 1,200 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by 201 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries.
- Black Thought and CultureBlack Thought and Culture offers the full text of approximately 100,000 pages of non-fiction writing by leading figures in African American life and culture, including Frederick Douglas, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida Wells, A. Phillip Randolph, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesse Jackson and hundreds of others.
- British and Irish Women's Letters and DiariesThis resource is comprised of more than 400 years (1500 - 1950) worth of the personal writings of the women of Britain and Ireland. The collection documents the evolution of diary and journal writing, and includes multiple forms of the format such as the travel diary, the personal diary, the letter diary, and others.
- C19: The Nineteenth Century IndexA multi-disciplinary database providing bibliographic access-more than 20,000,000 records-to books, periodical and newspaper articles, government publications, and archival collections.
- Caribbean LiteratureCaribbean Literature is a searchable collection of poetry and fiction produced in the region during the 19th and 20th centuries. Includes English, French, Spanish, Dutch, and various Creole languages.
- Early English Books Online (EEBO)A full-text, online image collection containing practically all books (nearly 120,000) printed in the English language and non-English language books printed in British territories from 1475 to 1700.
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)Digital versions of more than 180,000 English language titles and editions published between 1701 and 1800, allowing full text searching of more than 33 million pages of material. Includes books and broadsides, Bibles, tract books, and sermons, and printed ephemera-with works by many well-known and lesser known authors, all providing a diverse collection of material for the researcher of the eighteenth century.
- Electronic EnglightenmentFully searchable text of over 58,000 letters and documents of British, American, French, German, and other Enlightenment figures, unpublished or previously published in dozens of critical editions for over 7,000 correspondents, including writers, scientists, booksellers, philosophers, politicians, political thinkers, in original language editions or translation.
- Empire OnlineA collection of original documents relating to Empire Studies, including sections on cultural contacts; litrature and empire; empire and religion; and race, class, imperialism, and colonialism.
- Ethnic NewsWatchEthnic NewsWatch is an interdisciplinary, bilingual (English and Spanish) full text database of the newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press.
- Everyday Life of Women in America, c.1800-1920This collection includes fully searchable images (alongside transcriptions) of monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides focused on 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes.
- GenderWatchGenderWatch provides access to citations and full text resources on the topics of women and gender, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) issues. The collection documents perspectives dating from 1970 to the present, and includes 292 titles, with more than 258 in full-text. Sources originate from a number of academic, radical, community and independent presses. Prominent topics include sexuality, religion, social roles, feminism, masculinity, eating disorders, healthcare, and the workplace.
- The Gerritsen Collection of Aletta H. JacobsThis collection documents feminist thought and initiative around the world through more than 4,000 monographs and 300 periodicals from continental Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and New Zealand, mostly in English, French and German. Both feminist and anti-feminist perspectives are represented, as well as dispassionate accounts of the condition of women through the centuries.
- Manuscript Women's Letters and DiariesThis resource compiles hundreds of thousands of pages of the personal writings of women from the collection of the American Antiquarian Society. Date coverage is approximately 1750-1950, and the collection is particularly strong in the nineteenth century material.
- Middle English CompendiumThis resource covers material from 1100 to 1500. Includes an electronic version of the Middle English Diciorary, a HyperBibliography of Middle English, and a fully searchable selection of 146 texts in Middle English. Authors included are Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, and others.
- North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral HistoriesThis database documents the personal experience of immigrants to Canada and the United States over more than two centuries. In addition to letters, diaries and oral histories, there are a limited number of other sources, including immigration guides and cartoons.
- North American Women's Letters and DiariesNorth American Women's Letters and Diaries (NAWLD) provides full text access to the personal writings of American women from all classes and walks of life, from colonial times to 1950. The collection includes approximately 150,000 pages of published letters and diaries, plus more than 7,000 pages of previously unpublished materials, drawn from 605 sources, including journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings.
- Oral History OnlineOral History Online provides access to oral histories of English-speaking men and women from all walks of life. The database contains some proprietary material, but for the most part it serves as a detailed index of thousands of oral history projects worldwide. In some cases the records link to the full-text of the oral history transcripts or to video or audio files. In other cases, only a description of the collection or the oral history interview is provided.
- Parker Library on the WebA full-image database of the handwritten books of the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University. The database includes books from the sixth through the sixteenth centuries. Texts represented are mostly in Latin, Anglo-Saxon or English.
- Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000Women and Social Movements in the United States, Scholar's Edition documents women's activism in public life by bringing together books, images, pamphlets, advice literature, training guides, documents (including primary documents), scholarly essays, commentaries, bibliographies, links to other websites, and other ephemera that provide snapshots of women's struggle for equality over time and across regions.
- Women Writers OnlineWomen Writers Online provides access to more than two hundred and fifty texts of pre-Victorian women's writing in English from 1450-1850.