Washington and Lee University Research Guides: Literature in Translation: Primary Sources and Images

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What is a Primary Source?

"Primary sources are original records created at the time historical events occurred or well after events in the form of memoirs and oral histories. Primary sources may include letters, manuscripts, diaries, journals, newspapers, speeches, interviews, memoirs, documents produced by government agencies such as Congress or the Office of the President, photographs, audio recordings, moving pictures or video recordings, research data, and objects or artifacts such as works of art or ancient roads, buildings, tools, and weapons. These sources serve as the raw material to interpret the past, and when they are used along with previous interpretations by historians, they provide the resources necessary for historical research."

Primary vs Secondary Sources

What is a Secondary Source?

A secondary source interprets and anlyzes primary sources. These sources are one or more steps removed from the event. Secondary sources may have pictures, quotes, or graphics of primary sources in them. Some types of secondary sources include:

Textbooks, magazine articles, histories, criticisms, commentaries, encyclopedias

Examples of secondary sources include:

A journal/magazine article which interprets or reviews previous findings
A history textbook
A book about the effects of WWI

Image Databases

ARTstor image database This link opens in a new window
The Artstor Digital Library is a resource containing over 2 million images from the world's museums, archives, libraries, scholars, and artists. Use Artstor to find images for papers, presentations, and study in the humanities. You must register for an account to use many of Artstor’s features, such as downloading images, curating groups of images, and downloading groups of images to PowerPoint.
Downloading the Offline Image Viewer(OIV) is necessary to create presentations.

Saving images
•Double click on image (this will allow you to download)
•Save the image to your desktop – DO NOT CHANGE THE NAME OF THE FILE
•Open your desktop
•There will be two files with the same name on your desktop.
•One of them is the jpeg; this is the one you need to work with.
•Right click on the name field and rename the image.
•Open it up and save it to your desktop or H: drive.
•You can now import the picture in Powerpoint or some other program.

Web Gallery of Art
The Web Gallery of Art is a virtual museum and searchable database of European painting and sculpture of the Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque periods (1150-1750), currently containing over 6,000 reproductions. Biographies, commentaries, guided tours are available. Free postcard service is provided for the visitors.
The Beazley Archive
The Classical Art Research Centre at Oxford University leads and supports research on ancient art. At its heart is the Beazley Archive, which includes the world's largest collection of images of ancient figure-decorated pottery.
NGA Images
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 20,000+ images