Primary Sources
From CommWiki
Primary Sources are first-person accounts of events in the lives of people such as diaries, letters, written manuscripts, video or audio recordings, photographs, etc. that were either created at the time of the event or soon thereafter. Primary Sources could also be in the form of material created long after an event in the form of memoirs or oral histories.
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More about Primary Sources
A good definition of primary sources and guidelines on how to find them on the web may be found at the website of the History Section of the American Library Association's Reference & User Services Association (RUSA) For additional definitions and discussion about using primary sources, be sure to click the More Info link in the section What Are Primary Sources?
A Wikipedia article about Primary Sources
Primary Sources at the Library
Libraries, historical societies, museums and other similar institutions have primary sources in various forms such as microfilm, original manuscripts, video recordings and photographs. Listed below are some of the major primary source collections for the field of Communication held by Ohio University Libraries, OhioLINK and other Ohio libraries:
- E.W. Scripps Papers
- Women in Journalism Interview Collection
- American Public Opinion Data
- America’s Historical Newspapers
- Television News Archive from Vanderbilt University
Directories of Primary Sources
Primary Sources on the Web
Many primary sources have now been digitized and made available on the internet. Some examples:
- E.W. Scripps Papers in the OhioLINK Digital Media Center
- American Memory from the Library of Congress
- Ohio Memory
- Cleveland Memory
- Footnote "a large database of digitized primary source documents on American history including images, newspapers, correspondence, records, military service papers, naturalization documents and more. The complete database is searchable for free but viewing some fullsize high-resolution documents and images requires a paid membership. Free materials are clearly marked and include many collections from The National Archives; examples include 5,600 Mathew Brady photographs from the Civil War, American Milestone Documents and the Lincoln Assassination Papers"--Infomine.
