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HY 136: United States History since 1877: Primary and Secondary Sources

This guide was created for the HY 136 class at USA.

Primary Sources in History

Primary vs. Secondary

Primary sources are direct examples of your research topic in real life.

Secondary sources are what other researchers have written after they researched the same topic as you.

Primary Sources

Primary sources are: 

  • Directly limited by your topic
  • Examples of your research topic in real life
  • Proof of your claims

What counts as a primary source depends on your topic and topic scope. Please visit the Primary Sources LibGuide for more information.

If you were writing about how boxing champions were trained in the 1920s, some primary sources could be:

  • a newspaper article written in 1920 by a direct observer of a boxing match
  • 1920s boxing gloves
  • a journal entry written in 1921 by a boxing trainer
  • a source book of letters and essays written by 1920s boxers

For this topic, a book written in 1993 about the history of boxing would not be a primary source.

Secondary Sources

Secondary sources are products of the research other people have done.

They might be:

  • Documentaries about a past event
  • Books by an expert
  • Articles published in research journals

Primary Sources Online

Newspaper Articles

Newspaper articles may be found in both physical and digital formats at Marx Library. Some articles may only be found in one format.

Physical copies of newspaper articles can be found in Government Documents. 

Digital copies of newspaper articles can be found in the multiple newspaper databases we are subscribed to. You can find newspaper databases in the Databases & e-Reference Library Resources List. In the tags sidebar, you can filter to only show databases with the newspaper tag.