A primary source is the final and often most challenging step for students doing research. Primary sources are documents or artifacts written or produced during the time period being researched (so, eyewitness accounts). Students will often ask for help finding primary sources, and the type of primary source they use may vary depending on their topic. Some good places to look for sources include:
Often primary sources come from newswpapers or magazines. These may also be called "periodicals" (because they're published periodically) or "serials," usually by a librarian. "Journals" are also periodicals, but more often will refer to secondary sources published in serial scholarly publications.
Limit by date range
Find the important dates of an event and limit to the days and weeks following in order to get contemporary news coverage
Limit by location
It's possible that for events pre-dating mass media, something that happened in Iowa was not immediately interesting to someone in Massachusetts. See if you can find local news coverage, or search larger databases for major national newspapers like The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal.
Use the right search terms
The term "Boston Tea Party" was not used until the early 19th century, so using it to search for news coverage in 1773 will not bring back any search results. Pay attention to the terms being used in other news coverage, and search for people, places, and terms that would have been contemporary (like "Boston" AND "Tea" with location and date range limiters)
Consider the source
Newspapers write for their audiences. Coverage of an event in an Italian immigrant newspaper might be different than it is in The Chicago Tribune. Use newspaper databases like "Hispanic American Newspapers" or "Black Life in America" for a broader understanding of how different people groups perceived an event.
Use Boolean operators
Using terms like AND, OR, and NOT (capitalized) will change your search results by grouping or separating keywords. See this guide for more information on how to use Boolean logic in searching.
Leading women's interest consumer magazines. Coverage ranges from the late-19th century through to 2005. These primary sources permit the examination of the events, trends, and attitudes of this period.
If you are trying to find a specific article and you have the publication information including the periodical it was published in and the date or edition, you can use Journal Title Finder to see whether we have access to the article. Use the search box below to look for the title of the magazine, newspaper, or journal, and you will be taken to a list of databases or print holdings for the journal in question.