Vise Library: History: Primary Resources

Library Resources

Full Text Finder (Subject area: General) This link opens in a new window
An alphabetic listing tool for locating the library's electronic resources. It is easy to navigate and provides access to the library's online titles including e-journals and individual articles in full-text databases.

Analyzing Primary Sources

Resources for Primary Sources

Using Primary Sources on the Web
Information from the American Library Association about how to locate and evaluate primary resources online.
Tennessee State Library and Archives
With a focus on Tennessee, this website provides scanned newspapers, Civil War resources, Tennessee Landmark documents, and more.
National Archives
The National Archives contains a huge depository of federal records, military records, photos, maps, and other historical documents.
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress website contains primary documents, film, images, maps, newspapers, and sound recordings from American history.
Avalon Project
The Avalon Project, developed and maintained by the Yale Law School, is a collection of historical documents with a focus on law and diplomacy. You will find the text of Hammurabi's Code, the Magna Carta, and the Declaration of Independence, among many other seminal documents.
Gilder Lehrman Institute
The Gilder Lehrman Institute provides a digital collection of American historical documents, from pre-colonization to the present. This site requires a membership.
University of North Carolina's Digital Collections
Explore a wide and interesting variety of primary documents ranging from first person narratives of the American South to Civil War maps to North American Slave Narratives. Most of these documents focus on the United States--especially the South.
Louisiana Digital Library
This collection, maintained by Louisiana State University Libraries, houses thousands of historical documents broken down by topic, media format, and time period.
Nashville Public Library Civil Rights Collection
The Civil Rights Collection contains various forms of information that pertain to Nashville’s involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. During the 1950s-1960s, Nashville’s Civil Rights Movement was in constant flow, from desegregating public schools to lunch counter sit-ins. This collection is an assembly of materials composed of primary sources and first-hand experiences, detailing the situations that were occurring during the Civil Rights Movement in Nashville. The collection includes over 100 oral history interviews with participants in the movement as well as photographs, documents, periodicals, ephemera, and records and manuscripts. This collection has been growing within the department since 2001, when the decision to create the Civil Right Room and Collection was first developed and funded by Nashvillians Robin and Bill King.
Digital Public Library of America
The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world.

Helpful Hint

What is the difference between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources?

According to a guide created by the University of Maryland Libraries, primary sources are original materials that have not been subject to much, if any, interpretation or evaluation. Some examples would be a person's diary or journal, newspaper articles written at the time, photographs, interviews, and even Internet communications (such as email).

Secondary sources are materials that have been written or created sometime after the event and subject to interpretation or evaluation. Some examples may include biographies, journal articles, and textbooks.

Finally, tertirary sources are those which "consist of information which is a distillation and collection of primary and secondary sources." These would include many reference materials, such as chronologies, dictionaries and encyclopedias, and guidebooks.

Keep in mind that sources may overlap. For example, a webiste could be primary or secondary. A textbook could be secondary or tertiary. When in doubt about a resource, ask a librarian or professor for help.

More information:

What is History?

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Phone: 615-547-1299
Email: library@cumberland.edu