Research Guides: Africana Primary Sources: Getting Started

Introduction

Primary sources provide raw data (such as first-hand accounts or other direct evidence) about a topic, usually created during the timeframe under study by witnesses or recorders who experienced the subject being documented. It is the content of the source which matters, not its physical format; a digital version of a South African newspaper published when Nelson Mandela was freed from prison serves the same primary source function as the original print version would.

This guide will highlight some of the Herskovits Library's materials which can be considered primary sources, depending on your project.

Primary Source Examples

Disciplines	Primary source examples
Anthropology, Archaeology	Articles describing research, ethnographies, surveys, cultural and historical artifacts
Communications, Journalism	News as reported events (printed, radio, TV, online), photographs, blogs, social media sites
Education, Political Science, Public Policy	Government publications, laws, court cases, speeches, test results, interviews, polls, surveys
Fine Arts	Original art work, photographs, recordings of performances and music, scripts (film, theatre, television), music scores, interviews, memoirs, diaries, letters
History	Government publications, newspapers, photographs, diaries, letters, manuscripts, business records, court cases, videos, polls, census data, speeches
Language and Literature	Novels, plays, short stories, poems, dictionaries, language manuals
Psychology, Sociology, Economics	Articles describing research, experiment results, ethnographies, interviews, surveys, data sets
Sciences	Articles describing research and methodologies, documentation of lab research, research studies