LibGuides: SPAN 3350: Palabra y Lugar: 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. Some examples include:

photographs
diaries
newspaper articles
advertisements
films
web sites
sound recordings
government documents
works of art

Databases and digital repositories can offer a multitude of paths to potential primary source material for your research. In addition, you might want to try searches in the CLIO catalog, limited by date of publication.

Some Suggested Databases and Digital Collections for Finding Primary Sources

ArchiveGrid
lets you keyword search collection descriptions from archives around the world. Entries provide contact information and links to relevant web sites. You can narrow your search to archives in the New York City area, if needed.
Arte Público Hispanic Historical Collection: Series 1
is a digital collection of historical content pertaining to U.S. Hispanic history, literature, and culture, from colonial times until 1960. Documents include books, pamphlets, newspapers, photographs, illustrations, and advertisements.

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.
Biblioteca Digital Hispanica
is a project of the National Library of Spain. It offers online access to books, manuscripts, drawings, prints, brochures, posters, photographs, maps and atlases, from the 15th to the 19th centuries. Through the search box, you can also cross-search archival sources from Europeana and Biblioteca Digital del Patrimonio Iberoamericano.
Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes
has the world’s largest open access collection of digitized literary and historical texts in Spanish. You can also search the site for archival resources and critical work on major writers in Spanish. A project of the University of Alicante.

Cuban Culture and Cultural Relations, 1959-
Primary-source collection of ca. 45,000 fully-searchable documents from the Casa de las Américas in Havana, documenting the culture and cultural relations of Revolutionary Cuba and countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Includes such diverse materials as articles, newspaper clippings, cable messages, interviews, conference memorabilia, etc., collected from 1959 onward.

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.

Latin American Newspapers. Series 1
Series 1 of a searchable collection of historical Latin American newspapers. Once completed this collection will include 35 newspapers published in the 19th and early 20th century in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela.
Latin American Anarchist and Labour Periodicals Online
This collection contains the periodicals that have been accumulated by the Austrian anarchist, historian and collector Max Nettlau (1865-1944), together with a number of later additions, held at the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam. The collection provides a richness of documentation pertaining explicitly to the formative anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist episode (1890-1920) in the history of Latin American labor movements.
Latin American Women Writers
includes full text works of prose, poetry and drama by Latin American women writers of the 19th century, in Spanish and Portuguese. You can browse works by author, place, or genre, or conduct advanced or full text searches of works represented.

PARES: Portal de Archivos Españoles
is a project of the Spanish Ministry of Culture for the diffusion in Internet of the Spanish Historical Documentation. The portal offers free access to fully digized Spanish historical documents, including government and legal sources.