Finding Primary Sources in Databases
Some databases provide access to digital or digitized primary sources. Digitized primary sources in databases are no longer in their original formats, but they are still considered to be primary source materials.
The video below can help you search databases successfully.
Keywords and Terminology
Terminology changes over time and will vary based on the perspective of the person who created the source.
Try searching with terms that correspond with the time period you are researching. This can help you find materials that may not yet have current-day language applied in a descriptive section.
For instance, if you wanted to find primary sources from 1918 about some aspect of World War I, you may try the search term "The Great War" instead of "World War I," since "The Great War" is how people living during the war referred to it.
It's always a good idea to try a couple of searches using different keywords to see what terms are most effective for your topic.
You can use background sources, scholarly sources, or help from your instructor or a librarian if you need assistance determining the most effective keywords to use in your searches.
Some primary or secondary sources may not exist in databases or may be very difficult to find.
Libraries, archives, and databases are not exempt from the norms of dominant culture or existing power structures. They have traditionally collected and described items that reflect what is valued by the dominant culture.
Many librarians and archivists are actively working to increase the diversity of people represented in their materials and to remedy problematic terminology used in descriptive materials, although this work is an ongoing process.
It is likely, but not guaranteed, that you will still be able to locate valuable primary sources for any research question. For some topics, you may need to use a creative approach to finding and locating applicable sources. UH librarians are happy to help you generate a research strategy.
Selected Primary Source Databases
- Arte Público Hispanic Historical Collection, Series 1 This link opens in a new windowHistorical content pertaining to U.S. Hispanic history, literature and culture in its written form from colonial times until 1960.
- Arte Público Hispanic Historical Collection, series 2 This link opens in a new windowContent focusing on the evolution of Hispanic civil rights, religious thought, and women writers from the late 19th and 20th centuries.
- Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment This link opens in a new windowOver 100,000 pages of letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts of early encounters.
- Global Commodities This link opens in a new windowManuscript, printed, and visual primary source materials for the study of global commodities in world history.
- North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new windowThe immediate experiences of 1,325 women and 150,000 pages of diaries and letters.
- Hathi Trust Digital Library This link opens in a new windowHathiTrust is a digital repository for digitized materials from United States research libraries, including a wide variety of primary sources.
- Internet ArchiveIntenet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more. The Wayback Machine search tool enables you to search the history of over 763 billion web pages on the Internet.
- Portal to Texas HistoryA gateway to rare, historical, and primary source materials from or about Texas. This database contains a wealth of digitized items such as newspapers, yearbooks, and photographs.
- Digital Sanborn Maps, 1867-1970 This link opens in a new windowLarge-scale plans of a city or town, drawn at a scale of 50 feet to an inch. They were created to assist fire insurance companies as they assessed the risk associated with insuring a particular property. The maps list street blocks and building numbers including numbers in use at the time the map was made and previous numbers.
- Early English Books Online (EEBO) This link opens in a new windowEarly English Books Online contains over 100,000 English texts first published in the 15th through 17th centuries. Topical coverage varies widely and full-text searching is available in a minority of titles.
- C19, the Nineteenth Century Index This link opens in a new windowC19 (Nineteenth Century Index) provides integrated access to the most important finding aids for books, periodicals, official publications, newspapers and archives for nineteenth century research.
Related Resources
For additional databases for finding primary sources, consult the applicable resource guide for the discipline(s) in which you are doing research: