LibGuides: Comparative Literature: Primary Sources

Approaches to Finding Primary Sources

The "primaryness" of a source emerges in relation to the researcher's engagement with it. The UC Berkeley Libraries define primary sources as "either created during the time period being studied or...created at a later date by a participant in the events being studied (as in the case of memoirs)."

(source: Finding Historical Primary Sources: Getting Started, last updated 8/12/18, http://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/c.php?g=4409&p=15606)

When determining primary sources for your research, it's helpful to give yourself a historical context that defines your search. This could be a range of dates. It could also be determined by geographical sites of origin. You might also be interested in a specific type of source. Examples include photographs, diaries, advertisements, newspaper articles, web sites, video, and sound recordings.

Databases and digital repositories can offer a multitude of paths to potential primary source material for your research. I've shared some examples below. In addition, you might want to try searches in CLIO Catalog and CLIO Articles, limited by date of publication.

Digital Collections

Alexander Street Literature
is a comprehensive, cross-searchable package of collections covering literatures of place, race, and gender. It includes poetry, short fiction, and novels, along with full-text plays and film scripts. Resources are organized into the following collections: Black Short Fiction and Folklore, Black Women Writers, Caribbean Literature, Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period, Latin American Women Writers, Latino Literature, Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period, and South and Southeast Asian Literature.
ARTstor
Artstor is a searchable database of digital images and associated catalog data from museum, archives, galleries and libraries from around the globe. ARTstor documents the fields of architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, design, anthropology, ethnographic and women's studies, as well as many other forms of visual culture. Users can search, view, download and organize images.

Biblioteca Digital del Patrimonio Iberoamericano
a portal which brings together digitized newspapers, magazines, images, manuscripts, maps, and other sources from a range of national and university libraries and archives in Latin America.
China: trade, politics & culture, 1793-1980 : sources from the School of Oriental and African Studies and the British Library, London
A large body of maps, colour paintings, photographs and drawings depicting people, places, customs and events relating to Chinese history , from 1793-1980, and with a focus on relationships between China and European countries.
European Library
allows you to search, browse, and in many cases full access the resources of 49 different European national libraries. Objects include books, magazines, newspapers, journals, and audio recordings.
Europeana
presents a searchable collection of image, text, sound, and video from libraries, museum, archives, and special collections in Europe.

Gallica
is a digital library of French and francophone culture maintained by the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Contains numerous electronic texts, images, maps, animation, and sound files of French and other publications in history, literature, science, philosophy, law, economics, and political science.
HathiTrust Digital Library
is a large repository of digitized texts from research libraries and digitization initiatives such as the Google Books project and the Internet Archive. Many of these texts are in the public domain and fully viewable, while others not in the public domain may be partially searchable.

Hemeroteca Digital
offers access to full color digitized historic newspapers and magazines, from Spain as well as a smaller selection of sources from Latin America, with well over 1000 titles in the collection. You can search the full text of these periodicals, or you can browse them by topic and title words. Coverage extends from the late 17th to the late 20th century.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers
Full-text and full-image articles from major newspapers, largely from the US: Atlanta Constitution, Baltimore Sun (1837-1985), Boston Globe, Call and Post (1934-1991), Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor (1908-1997), Guardian (1959-2003), Irish Times (1859-2009), Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Norfolk Journal and Guide (1921-2003), Philadelphia Tribune (1912-2001), San Francisco Chronicle (1865-1922), Times of India (1861-current), Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Scotsman (1817-1950) every page in PDF files.
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Réseau Francophone Numérique
brings together digitized books, newspapers, journals, archives, maps and audiovisual documents from the Francophone world and areas formerly colonized by France, with coverage of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, North Africa, and North America.