Clay Williams
What is a Primary Source?
A primary source is a document, speech, or other sort of evidence written, created or otherwise produced during the time under study. Primary sources offer an inside view of a particular event. Examples include:
- Autobiographies, diaries, e-mail, interviews, letters, minutes, news film footage, official records, photographs, raw research data, speeches.
- Newspapers can be considered primary sources if they offer first-hand accounts of events. Often they are considered secondary sources.
Historical Primary Source Collections
- National Security Archives at George Washington University.
An independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University, the Archive collects and publishes declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The Archive also serves as a repository of government records on a wide range of topics pertaining to the national security, foreign, intelligence, and economic policies of the United States. - Latin American Pamphlets
Harvard's Widener Library is the repository of many scarce and unique Latin American pamphlets published during the 19th and the early 20th centuries. One of the few institutions to have consistently collected Latin American pamphlets, Harvard has benefited from collections formed by Luis Montt (Chile), Nicolás Acosta (Bolivia), Manuel Segundo Sánchez (Venezuela), José Augusto Escoto (Cuba), Blas Garay (Paraguay), Charles Sumner, John B. Stetson and others. Chile, Cuba, Bolivia and Mexico are included. - Latin American Poster Collection
The posters included in this collection were created by a wide variety of social activists, non-governmental organizations, government agencies, political parties, and other types of organizations across Latin America, in order to publicize their views, positions, agendas, policies, events, and services. Even though posters produced in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and Venezuela are the most abundant among the more than two thousand currently available in the site, almost every country is represented. - Center for Latin American Issues
The Center for Latin American Issues is a premier center for the pursuit of scholarship and academic excellence on issues pertaining to Latin America and the Caribbean region.
Center for Research Libraries (CRL)
The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) is an international consortium of university, college, and independent research libraries. UCSD Libraries is a member. As such, UCSD students, faculty, and staff are entitled to borrow materials from there through Interlibrary Loan.
The Guides to Materials in the Latin American Materials Project (LAMP) help you identify collections, and often provides guides or finding aids to those collections. In recent years, CRL has begun acquiring resources in electronic format.