Primary Sources are original materials that have not been edited, evaluated, or altered by a second party. In this case, primary refers to the originality of the source as opposed to its importance to your topic.
Examples:
Finding U.S. Newspapers at Princeton: A thorough overview of various strategies and resources.
Specific Resources:
19th Century U.S. Newspapers
Proquest Historical Newspapers (US Newspapers)
Historical Newspaper Indexes: (Features historical indexing and full text coverage of The Times of London and the New York Times.)
Illustrated London News Archive
Architecture-Related:
Index to 19th-Century American Art Periodicals
Averu Index: Indexes architectural periodicals dataing back to the 1890s.
Burnham Index to Architectural Periodical Literature: Print index covering architectural literature dating back to the 1900s.
Art Index(1929+) - Indexing to art and architecture journals.
Nation Digital Archive - Includes art and architecture columns written by scholar over the years.
Main Catalog: PUL has rich collections of primary sources in all sorts of formats. It can get a little confusing when trying to determine if a particular resource is considered primary or not. If you need a hand figuring out whether or not your research materials are primary, please contact me and I can help.
Other Primary Source Search Gateways:
MASC:This database is specific to the holdings in PUL's Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections divisions.
PUL Finding Aid Database: Searches all archival collections organized with a finding aid, e.g. "Jean Labatut Papers, 1915-1983 (bulk 1920s-1970s): Finding Aid."
ArchiveGrid: Index to finding aids and other descriptive information about the holdings of manuscript and archival collections in libraries and research institutions throughout the world.
OAIster: OAIster is a union catalog of millions of records representing open archive digital resources that was built by harvesting from open archive collections worldwide using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). Today, OAIster boasts more than 23 million records representing digital resources from more than 1,100 contributors.
Special Collections on Campus: Using special collections and archives takes a little more deliberation than walking into your favorite branch library on campus. You will likely need to register as a user, follow additional rules or guidelines for use, and visit these collection during daily business hours, e.g. 9 to 5. If you are new to special collection research, have a look at this tutorial. Below are a few of the many divisions of special collections at Princeton. For a full listing, click here.
Graphic Arts Collection
Mudd Manuscript Library
Princeton University Archives
Rare Books Division
