W&L

University Library

History 220: Imperial Russia, 1682-1917

Prof. Bidlack

What are primary sources?

A primary source is a piece of information that is generated by a witness, participant, or contemporary of an event, experiment, or time period under study.

Primary sources are characterized by their content, and are not format/information type dependent. They can be found in:

  • printed books and ebooks,
  • archival manuscripts,
  • newspaper articles,
  • physical artifacts,
  • works of art,
  • images...among other formats.

Some primary sources collected in books

Primary source resources freely available online

Historical newspaper resources