ED 213 - Georgia History Primary Sources - Undergraduate Education

Definitions and Examples

What Are Primary Resources
Primary Resources vs. Secondary Resources

Primary sources are original materials, such as first-hand accounts, events, or works of literature or art, that have not been interpreted by anyone other than their creators. Common types of primary sources are diaries, letters, manuscripts, journals, interviews, memoirs, autobiographies, oral history interviews, speeches, organizational records, business records, documents produced by government agencies, newspapers, and many more. These sources do not generally describe or analyze other documents but are usually created by those who have witnessed what they are describing.

Watch the following video for more information on understanding primary sources.

Finding Primary Resources

Think About Your Topic

Once you have decided upon a topic and have gathered some information about the background of your topic, including the key people, places, events, and dates involved, you can start to think about finding primary sources. Think about these questions in order to determine what types of information you will be searching for:

What types of documents would have been created during the event or time period I am researching? (Government documents, newspapers, diaries, business reports, etc.?)
Whose perspective am I looking for? (civilian, soldier, politician, woman, slave?)

Search Terms

Manuscript collections or archives of organizational records often include some of the following keywords in their titles or content descriptions. By combining these words with words that describe your topic you are more likely to find primary sources:

collection or collected works
papers
archive or archives
diaries
correspondence
documents
journal
letters
manuscripts
pamphlets
personal narratives
sources
speeches
account
notebooks
reports
drafts

An example of this type of search is "United States Civil War" AND diaries

Search by Author

To find diaries, letters, autobiographies, etc. search a person's name as an author which will give you results written by the person rather than results about them.

Books and Articles

Many secondary sources will include a Works Cited or Bibliography of the sources used by the author. Primary sources are frequently listed in these bibliographies.

Database Tips

Many of the databases allow you to limit your search to document types and to primary source types in the advanced search screen. For instance, in the database Academic Search Complete, go to the advanced search screen:

Once you are in the advanced search screen, scroll down and you will see document types. You can choose to search for letters and speeches, both of which are types of primary sources. It will look like this:

You may also search by primary source types. It will look like this:

Databases and the Internet: Resources to find Primary Documents

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Featuring thousands of full-text journals, this collection of scholarly trade and popular articles offers information on a broad range of important areas including: anthropology, biology, chemistry, ethnic & multicultural studies, law, mathematics, music, psychology, women's studies, and many other fields.

Part of the Database Offerings in GALILEO, Georgia’s Virtual Library
Arts & Humanities Database This link opens in a new window
Arts & Humanities Database titles include both scholarly peer-reviewed journals and selected trade and consumer titles relevant to applied arts and cultural studies. The subject strengths of the collection are art and design, interior design, anthropology, history, philosophy, modern languages and literature, music, theatre, film, and cultural studies.

Part of the Database Offerings in GALILEO, Georgia’s Virtual Library
Georgia History eBooks By University of Georgia Press This link opens in a new window
Georgia History eBooks from the University of Georgia Press includes early and seminal works on Georgia's history and culture, many published in the 1950s and 1960s that have long been out of print.

Part of the Database Offerings in GALILEO, Georgia’s Virtual Library
History Reference Source By EBSCOhost This link opens in a new window
The database features full text for more than 1,990 reference books, encyclopedias and non-fiction books from leading history publishers. The database also includes full text for more than 150 leading history periodicals.

Part of the Database Offerings in GALILEO, Georgia’s Virtual Library
JSTOR Collections This link opens in a new window
JSTOR is an archive of scholarly journals in a range of disciplines including language and literature, the arts, history, social sciences, etc.
Military Database This link opens in a new window
Covers topics across all government and military branches, including international relations, political science, criminology, defense, aeronautics and space flight, communications, civil engineering, and more.

Part of the Database Offerings in GALILEO, Georgia’s Virtual Library
ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
ProQuest Central brings together 30 highly used ProQuest databases to create the largest single academic research resource. Researchers can choose to search individual databases for targeted research or search all at once to find relevant results and information from other disciplines. This allows cross-searching with other ProQuest business resources as well as creation of RSS feeds, content alerts, Smart Search, article linking, and much more.

Part of the Database Offerings from GALILEO, Georgia’s Virtual Library
Research Library By ProQuest This link opens in a new window
ProQuest Research Library™ provides access to more than 5,060 titles —over 3,600 in full text— on a wide range of popular academic subjects. The database features a diversified mix of scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines, and newspapers.

Part of the Database Offerings in GALILEO, Georgia’s Virtual Library

African American History: Library of Congress
Seventeen collections from the Library of Congress's American Memory.
Auburn Avenue Archives
The Auburn Avenue Archives is a special library of the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System, it is the first public library in the Southeast to offer specialized reference and archival collections dedicated to the study and research of African American culture and history and of other peoples of African descent.
Chronology of US Historical Documents
Full text of historical documents in chronological order.
Civil Rights Digital Library
The CRDL features a collection of unedited news film from the WSB (Atlanta) and WALB (Albany, Ga.) television archives held by the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia Libraries. The CRDL provides educator resources and contextual materials, including Freedom on Film, relating instructive stories and discussion questions from the Civil Rights Movement in Georgia, and the New Georgia Encyclopedia, delivering engaging online articles and multimedia.
Digital Collections of the Library of Congress
A digital record of American history and creativity - written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.
Digital Library of Georgia
The Digital Library of Georgia is a gateway to Georgia's history and culture found in digitized books, manuscripts, photographs, government documents, newspapers, maps, audio, video, and other resources.
Documenting the American South
Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes sixteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.
Elizabeth Murray Project: A Resource Site for Early American History
Emory's Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library
The library's holdings span the 15th to the 21st centuries and support research in a wide array of fields and disciplines with some online collections.
Georgia's Virtual Vault
Hosted by the Georgia Archives, this is your portal to some of Georgia's most important historical documents, from 1733 to the present. The Virtual Vault provides virtual access to historic Georgia manuscripts, photographs, maps, and government records housed in the state archives.
The Georgia Archives
The Georgia Archives are the official archives for the state of Georgia. They preserve Georgia's most valuable historical documents.
Georgia Historic Newspapers
The Georgia Historic Newspapers database is a project of the Digital Library of Georgia as part of Georgia HomePlace. The project is supported with federal LSTA funds administered by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Georgia Public Library Service, a unit of the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia.
Hall County Georgia Historical Photograph Collection
"Photographs of Hall County residents, buildings, and events from the late nineteenth century to the present from the collections of the Hall County Library System."
Nineteenth Century Documents Project
Primary texts from nineteenth century American history, with special emphasis on those sources that shed light on sectional conflict and transformations in regional identity.
Vanishing Georgia
Vanishing Georgia comprises nearly 18,000 photographs. Ranging from daguerreotypes to Kodachrome prints, the images span over 100 years of Georgia history.

Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
Credo Reference helps researchers build context by providing background information and key terms enabling more efficient research. Content from hundreds of reference books are presented in every major subject. The content is enriched by a network of cross-reference links that cut across topics, titles and publishers to provide accurate, contextual results.
History Reference Source By EBSCOhost This link opens in a new window
The database features full text for more than 1,990 reference books, encyclopedias and non-fiction books from leading history publishers. The database also includes full text for more than 150 leading history periodicals.

Part of the Database Offerings in GALILEO, Georgia’s Virtual Library