What is a Primary Source?
Primary sources provide a first-hand account of an event or experience from a specific time or era. Primary sources are seen as the most direct evidence of a historical event, as they provide evidence and/or original contextual thought from the moment in question. Often primary sources are created at the time when the events or conditions are occurring -- news coverage, census data, legislation, personal correspondence, etc. -- but primary sources can also include information gathered later like memoirs, and oral histories.
Newspapers are a valuable primary source for those interested in how people experienced and wrote about the past. But it is important to realize that news outlets are by no means an unbiased source.
Primary Sources
- #15añosMCH - Memoria Chilena, Biblioteca Nacional de ChileMemoria Chilena es un espacio destinado a reunir la gran historia colectiva y las pequeñas aventuras individuales que conforman nuestra identidad como país: acontecimientos, tradiciones y fábulas, el pensamiento y la obra de hombres y mujeres destacados, el legado social, literario y artístico que enriquece nuestro patrimonio cultural.
- Calisphere: your gateway to California’s remarkable digital collectionsCalisphere provides free access to unique and historically important artifacts for research, teaching, and curious exploration. Discover over two million photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more. The collections in Calisphere have been digitized and contributed by all ten campuses of the University of California and other important libraries, archives, and museums throughout the state.
- Cuban Heritage CollectionFrom the University of Miami Libraries, this site includes over 10,000 digital items as well as bibliographies and research guides for learning about Cuba.
- David Ramsey map collectionThe David Rumsey Map Collection was started over 35 years ago and contains more than 150,000 maps. The collection focuses on rare 16th through 21st century maps of North and South America, as well as maps of the World, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. The collection includes atlases, globes, wall maps, school geographies, pocket maps, books of exploration, maritime charts, and a variety of cartographic materials including pocket, wall, children's, and manuscript maps. Items range in date from around 1550 to the present.
- Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean EphemeraThe Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean Ephemera is a steadily growing repository containing a previously unavailable subset of Princeton University's Latin American Ephemera Collection as well as newly acquired materials being digitized and added on an ongoing basis.
- Early Americas Digital ArchiveThe Early Americas Digital Archive (EADA) is a collection of electronic texts and links to texts originally written in or about the Americas from 1492 to approximately 1820. Open to the public for research and teaching purposes, EADA is published and supported by the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) under the general editorship of Professor Ralph Bauer, at the University of Maryland at College Park. Intended as a long-term and inter-disciplinary project in progress committed to exploring the intersections between traditional humanities research and digital technologies, it invites scholars from all disciplines to submit their editions of early American texts for publication on this site.
- Elmer and Diane Powell Collection on Mexico and the Mexican RevolutionThe Elmer and Diane Powell Collection on Mexico and the Mexican Revolution, held by the DeGolyer Library, consists of many unique materials with a focus on the Revolution period and key political and military men. A lifelong student of Texas history, in the early 1970s, Elmer Powell began collecting Republic of Texas bank notes and Civil War county notes. Later, when he acquired some Mexican Revolution-era currency, it also piqued his interest. As he re-evaluated the significance of Mexican history as it related to Texas, Powell shifted his focus to the study of money from across the Rio Grande and later extended his interest to the whole Mexican Revolution period, 1910-1920, photography and documents as well as earlier Mexican War materials.
- Historic Mexican and Mexican American PressThe Historic Mexican and Mexican American Press collection documents and showcases historic Mexican and Mexican American publications published in Tucson, El Paso, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sonora, Mexico from the mid-1800s to the 1970s.
- LANIC etext collectionThese resources include research papers written by Latin American studies scholars; theses and dissertations; etext versions of books; conference proceedings; speeches by Latin American leaders; periodical publications; and official documents. Some of the etexts are in Spanish, others are in English. In all cases, copyright resides with the respective authors.
- Latin America and the Caribbean Primary Sources, World Digital LibraryPrimary sources from Latin America and the Caribbean found in the World Digital Library.
- Latin American Digital Initiatives (LADI)Latin American Digital Initiatives (LADI) is a collaboration between LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections at The University of Texas at Austin, the University of Texas Libraries, and Latin American partner institutions to preserve and provide access to unique archival documentation from Latin America, with an emphasis on collections documenting human rights and underrepresented communities.
- Latin American Pamphlet Digital Collection"More than 5,000 titles including many scarce and unique Latin American pamphlets published during the 19th and the early 20th centuries. Chile, Cuba, Bolivia and Mexico are the countries most heavily represented in this collection."
- Latin American photos, prints, and essays from the New York Public LibraryThe New York Public Library Digital Collections contains 914,267 items and counting. While that is a small fraction of the Library's overall holdings, it is representative of the diversity of our vast collections—from books to videos, maps to manuscripts, illustrations to photos, and more.
- Latin American Posters CollectionThe 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 in the region is represented. In terms of topics, some of the best represented are human rights, elections, gender issues, indigenous issues, labor, ecology and environmental issues, development, public health, and education. The Latin American Posters Collection is a component of the larger collection of Latin American ephemera that Princeton University Library has developed since the 1970s.
- La TopoRadioLa TopoRadio maps books and articles about the history of Spanish-language radio in the United States according to the locations of the radio stations that each examines. Through this visual bibliography, researchers can identify publications that focus on a specific radio station, community, city, or region.
- Mexican Revolution photograph collectionThis collection consists of over 300 photographic prints, 15 photographic negatives, and 42 postcards that came from several different sources. The subject content predominantly relates to the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920, although some images are tourist or general interest photographs of Mexico from the period. Of particular interest are photographs taken at Francisco Madero’s camp across the Rio Grande from El Paso in May 1911. Also included are images of prominent figures of the period such as Pancho Villa, Francisco Madero, Pascual Orozco, and other military and political leaders. The collection contains some still photos from motion pictures made about the Mexican Revolution.
- Muralism in Revolutionary Nicaragua-The Henry Houser Collection (Knox College)The Henry Houser Manuscript Collection contains photographs and slides of Houser's many trips to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Guatemala. Also included in the larger collection are his notes and drafts for his research on the murals, general information about the Nicaraguan Revolution, and his notes about the impact of religion on the revolutionary movement. The collection includes correspondence (in both English and Spanish) with artists and activists who participated in the muralism movement in Nicaragua.
- National Security Archives - Latin America CollectionsFounded in 1985 by journalists and scholars to check rising government secrecy, the National Security Archive combines a unique range of functions: investigative journalism center, research institute on international affairs, library and archive of declassified U.S. documents ("the world's largest nongovernmental collection" according to the Los Angeles Times), leading non-profit user of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, public interest law firm defending and expanding public access to government information, global advocate of open government, and indexer and publisher of former secrets.
- National Security Archives - Latin America ProjectsFounded in 1985 by journalists and scholars to check rising government secrecy, the National Security Archive combines a unique range of functions: investigative journalism center, research institute on international affairs, library and archive of declassified U.S. documents ("the world's largest nongovernmental collection" according to the Los Angeles Times), leading non-profit user of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, public interest law firm defending and expanding public access to government information, global advocate of open government, and indexer and publisher of former secrets.
- Pensamiento Crítico (Cuban magazine, 1967-1971)Pensamiento crítico responde a la necesidad de información que sobre el desarrollo del pensamiento político y social del tiempo presente tiene hoy la Cuba revolucionaria. De aquí que los artículos publicados no correspondan necesariamente a la opinión de la revista, que se reserva el derecho de expresarla por medio de notas aclaratorias o artículos cuando lo estime necesario.
- SALALM - Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials Digtial Primary ResourcesProvides access to digitized collections of primary material (in a variety of formats) related to Latin America and the Caribbean. The materials listed are freely available to the public and were created or hosted at an academic institution associated with SALALM. You will find links to sources that range from Mexican Incunabula (1559-1600), to Puerto Rican Civil Courts Documents from the nineteenth century, to a collection of Latin American Posters, among many more. The site is organized first by format “Historical Texts by Country“, “Historical Texts/General“, “Statistics“, “Visual Material by Country“, “Visual Material General“, and “Miscellaneous.” Then, each section contains the titles of the collections, country or origin (if applicable), host Library/Archive, the link to the collection, and an introductory note that briefly describes content and scope of the collection.
Historic Newspapers
- Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980 This link opens in a new window
Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980, represents the single largest compilation of Spanish-language newspapers printed in the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries.
- Latin American Newspapers, Series 1 This link opens in a new window
Historical Newspapers from Latin America from the World Newspaper Archive. Explore Latin American History and Culture during the 19th and 20th Centuries.
- Latin American Newspapers, Series 2 This link opens in a new window
Historical Newspapers from Latin America from the World Newspaper Archive. Explore Latin American History and Culture during the 19th and 20th Centuries.
- El Mundo Digital Archive This link opens in a new window
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Founded in 1919, El Mundo (The World) was a respected, conservative newspaper from Puerto Rico and was widely considered a key source for news until it ceased in 1990.
- Independent and Revolutionary Mexican Newspapers This link opens in a new window
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Comprising nearly 1,000 titles from Mexico’s pre-independence, independence and revolutionary periods (1807-1929), the newspapers in this collection provide rare documentation of the dramatic events of this era and include coverage of Mexican partisan politics, yellow press, political and social satire, as well as local, regional, national and international news.
