Primary sources are original records created at the time historical events occurred or well after events in the form of memoirs and oral histories. Primary sources may include letters, manuscripts, diaries, journals, newspapers, speeches, interviews, memoirs, documents produced by government agencies such as Congress or the Office of the President, photographs, audio recordings, moving pictures or video recordings, research data, and objects or artifacts such as works of art or ancient roads, buildings, tools, and weapons. These sources serve as the raw material to interpret the past, and when they are used along with previous interpretations by historians, they provide the resources necessary for historical research.
Written in 2003 by the Instruction & Research Services Committee of the Reference and User Service Association History Section in the American Library Association.
Artifacts and objects
Books; manuscripts; monographs
Correspondence: letters; emails; listservs
Diaries
Dissertations and thesis
Government documents: census data; reports; laws
Interviews and oral reports
Maps
Memoirs
Moving images: films, television programs
Patents
Printed ephemera: pamphlets, menus
Proceedings of meetings
Records of organizations
Serials: newspapers, periodicals; magazines; scholarly journals
Sound recordings
Speeches
Works of art: novels, films, paitings; photographs; caricatures; comic strips; etc
