Teaching with Primary Sources: Finding Primary Sources
Searching for Primary Sources
How do I start my search?
Finding primary source may sound daunting at first, but once you have an idea of the topic or format of primary source you would like it becomes much easier! First, identify the subject of the lesson into which you are planning to incorporate a primary source(s). Then, decide if you would like students to experience the primary source in person or via online access. Once you have decided these factors, it is time to start your search!
Physical Primary Sources
The Wilson Special Collections Library is home to the University of North Carolina's North Carolina Collection, Rare Book Collection, Southern Folklife Collection, Southern Historical Collection, and University Archives and Records Management Services. The library is open to the public, and individuals who are not affiliated with UNC or Duke are still able to register to view our selection of materials in person. Later, we will explore how to search for primary sources in the special collections catalog. In the section "Visiting Wilson Library," we will cover the ways educators and students are able to engage with the physical collections held at Wilson Special Collections Library.
Digitized Primary Sources
Since digitization of materials has increased, there are plenty of options to easily incorporate primary sources into the classroom space. Instructions can use online catalogs provided by libraries and archives to search for materials and access digitized sources. Wilson Special Collections Library offers an online catalog for searching physical and digitized primary sources. We will cover how to search the special collections catalog in the "Searching Special Collections" section.
Housed within Wilson Special Collections Library, the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center is a digital archive that digitizes physical materials from cultural heritage institutions statewide. This provides a wealth of primary source materials from across North Carolina and an easy avenue for finding primary sources to use in the classroom.
UNC libraries also provide access to primary source databases, both generalized primary source databases and curated databases on special topics. Below are a few examples of available primary source databases for UNC library users and a link to the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center archive:
- Gale Primary SourcesGale Primary Sources is a search engine for Gale's historical digital collections of primary materials. You can search all at once or choose selectively. Consult the database to see the full-text collections available.
- Gale Primary Sources: Decolonization: Politics & Independence in Former Colonial & Commonwealth TerritoriesPrimary source collection (1898-2017) illustrating political party formation and trade union movements across former British colonies in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. Collection is composed of three series: Papers of African Trade Unions (1949-1969), Political Pamphlets (1898-2017), and the Marjorie Nicholson Papers from the Trades Union Congress Library (1935-1997), sourced from British archives.
- Gale Primary Sources: Archives of Sexuality & GenderPrimary source collection (16th century to 2014) for LGBTQIA+, gender, and sexuality studies, sourced from American, Australian, British, Canadian, and South African Archives. Consists of three series: LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940 (1940-2014); Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century; and International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture (20th century).
- Primary Source Microfilm Online GuidesLarge library of microfilm sets of primary source materials covering the humanities and the social sciences. A few of these sets are City Directories of the United States, the History of Women, Published Records of the American Colonies, and Early English Newspapers. The Online Guides Website provides detailed indexing for the individual contents of their many microfilm collections. UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke, and North Carolina State hold many of these collections.
- North Carolina Digital Heritage CenterThe NCDHC is a digital archive of materials across North Carolina. Click the link to go to the main search page where you can search through the archive's collections and past issues of North Carolina newspapers.
Primary Source Sets and Instruction Guides
Along with digitization, some libraries and archives have created primary source sets that group multiple primary sources on a particular subject together. These sets may also include guidance for instructors on how to teach with them. For instructors seeking prepared primary source sets, primary source research guides, and instructor guides, there are options for both K-12 and higher education students. Here is a list of some online source sets and guides:
- Research using Primary Sources at Wilson Library
- Primary Source Sets with the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center
- PBS Teaching With Primary Sources Inquiry Kits
- Library of Congress Primary Source Sets and Classroom Materials
UNC's libraries hold books that support instructors on teaching specific topics. Below are some examples of the resources available through the UNC library catalog for teaching with specific primary sources.
Exploring Vacation and Etiquette Themes in Social Studies by ISBN: 9781475831986Publication Date: 2017-03-08This book introduces a thematic approach to social history that connects the past to the daily lives of students. Historical overviews of vacation and manners spanning from the ancient world to twentieth century United States provide detailed context for the teacher, emphasize issues related to social class, sex and gender, and popular culture, and examine the methods of social historians. Four unique primary source sets, reading guides, and essential/compelling questions for students are provided that encourage inquiry learning and the development of critical literacy skills aligned with the Common Core Standards for Literacy and the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards. Each themed chapter includes suggestions for extending each theme to current events, the local community through placed-based education, and across content areas for interdisciplinary instruction. The final chapter provides guidance on how to research additional historical themes, locate relevant primary sources, and prepare themed lessons and units.
Twentieth Century Guerrilla Movements in Latin America by ISBN: 9781315849584Publication Date: 2021-07-19Twentieth Century Guerrilla Movements in Latin America: A Primary Source History collects political writings on human rights, social injustice, class struggle, anti-imperialism, national liberation, and many other topics penned by urban and rural guerrilla movements. In the second half of the twentieth century, Latin America experienced a mass wave of armed revolutionary movements determined to overthrow oppressive regimes and eliminate economic exploitation and social injustices. After years of civil resistance, and having exhausted all peaceful avenues, thousands of working-class people, peasants, professions, intellectuals, clergymen, students, and teachers formed dozens of guerrilla movements. Fernando Herrera Calderón presents important political writings, some translated into English here for the first time, that serve to counteract the government propaganda that often overshadowed the intellectual side of revolutionary endeavors. These texts come from Latin American countries such as Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Nicaragua, and many more. The book will be indispensable to anyone teaching or studying revolutions in modern Latin American history.
Enduring Legacy of Ancient China by ISBN: 0887275087Publication Date: 2006-01-01Both an illustrated teacher's guide and a textbook, The Enduring Legacy of Ancient China: Primary Source Lessons for Teachers and Students offers teachers and students a treasure trove of
Whether you are looking for physical or digitized primary sources, searching for primary sources outside of prepared sets and guides is helpful when building your own lesson plans or as a way to tailor existing guides. Below, we will review how to search through Wilson Library's special collections and how to identify digitized items.
Searching Special Collections
How do I search using a catalog?
If you would like to look for primary sources outside of prepared primary source sets and guides, Wilson Special Collections Library offers a vast array of primary source materials. You can find these sources by navigating to the "Search the Special Collections" webpage. Whether you are searching for one primary source or various primary sources on the same topic, individual primary sources are usually part of a larger collection. A collection can contain a single item or tens of thousands of documents. The creator of a collection is usually an individual, a family, an organization, or administrative unit that was responsible for producing or gathering together collection materials. The collection is usually named for the creator—for example: Nancy Kalow Collection, C. Clay Dillard Papers, Barbara Lau Collection, Delta Health Center Records, and Athletic Communications Office of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Records.
Researchers can find information about specific items in a finding aid. Finding aids describe archival collections to users and provide a list of the items in the collection. A finding aid includes biographical or historical information about a collection's creator, while also providing an outline of a collection's contents: such as papers, bound volumes, audio recordings, photographs, films and video.
Searching Across Finding Aids
You can search Wilson Library finding aids using the "Search Archival Collections" tool on our website.
To search for collections for specific formats of materials, like film or video, try searching for the format by typing "[format type]" in the search bar. You can also search by using or adding key words as you would in the Library Catalog, Google, or other search engines. Searching the finding aids for "video" produces roughly 371 results. Each result is a link to an individual finding aid for a collection.
Searching Individual Finding Aids
Once you are on a finding aid, you can scroll through it to browse description of all of the collection's materials. Different format types or subject matter are often arranged or published in their own series or grouping. If a collection has multiple series, you can quickly review the series titles by selecting "Contents List", found under "Navigate this page" on the left-hand side of the finding aid.
“Find in page” function
One of the most effective tools for locating relevant materials in a finding aid is the “Find in page” function. Use Ctrl+F [cmmd+F on mac] to search for relevant terms, proper names, places, and container numbers.
When searching a finding aid, it's helpful to remember that finding aid description, or the words or language that archivists use to describe materials, is not exhaustive! The "find in page" function allows you to key word search the entire finding aid quickly and relatively thoroughly, however this search is limited to what is written in the description. So if a person’s name, or place, or date is not recorded in the description, the “Find in Page” will not yield results. You should consider likely synonyms and alternative spellings (or misspellings) when applicable and search for those as well.
Additional review
Locating individual elements like songs, persons, events, or images not described in a finding aid requires review of the collection in greater detail. A finding aid does not typically include an extensive or complete description of contents of the items, like a list of song titles or a summary of images or even a list of performers. There will always be materials that require viewing the materials to learn of the contents.
Some collections include supporting documentation that corresponds to the items in the collection, such as transcripts, tape logs, field notes, ephemera, or other information that may be useful to review. Often these supporting materials are described as "supporting documentation" or "field notes" in the finding aid.
You're not alone!
And remember, you're not alone in this search process - Research and Instruction staff at Wilson Library are available to help with your search. The best way to reach them is by email, or wilsonlibrary@unc.edu. Wilson Library's Research and Instruction staff are super knowledgeable of the collections and can help guide you to collection materials which may be of interest to you.
Harmful Language and Content Warning
When searching for materials, you may come across finding aids that contain outdated and harmful language, as well as harmful digitized content. As part of the library-wide Reckoning Initiative, Wilson Library's Conscious Editing Initiative, and Special Collection's Technical Services' "Principles for Ethical Description", staff at Wilson Library are working to remedy this by reviewing and remediating harmful legacy description, by providing additional historical context for materials and their creators, and by alerting users of harmful digitized content.
Below you will find additional information on how to watch, or stream, digitized moving images from collection finding aids at Wilson Library.
Viewing Digitized Content
How do I find digitized materials during my search?
Collections with digitized content include a green “Has Online Content” note at the top of a finding aid, as seen in the image on the right. This indicates that some materials from that collection are digitized and accessible online. It also includes a link to exclusively show digitized content available instead of the full collection, which may not be entirely digitized and available. You can then browse through the finding aid's contents list to read description of individual items and identify materials you would like to review.
Finding Digitized Content in the Finding Aid
Within a finding aid, different types of digitized items can be view directly through the finding aid. As described above, finding aids will have the green "Has Online Content" labels at the beginning of the finding aid. To view content, first find the collection contents side menu. The collection contents numbered headings will indicate if any materials within the group of records has digitized material with a green image icon to the right. Additionally, if there are any access restrictions to materials, a red triangle icon with an exclamation mark inside will appear to the right of the numbered heading, as well.
You can click the "+" button beside the numbered collection contents to view a drop down of all the record cartons under the numbered heading, indicated with the red arrow in the photo below. If there is digitized content in one of the record cartons, a green image icon will appear to the right of the hyperlink.
By clicking on one of the links underneath the numbered heading, you will see a page describing the "digital folder," or the folder with digitized content within the collection. On that page will be a green box labeled "Online Content" that has a hyperlink to view the digitized material(s).
Viewing Digitized Content
To view content online, use the steps above to find a collection with online content and navigate to the folder or item page where the "Online Content" box is shown. This page also shows how many items are within the folder. For example, the page below indicates there are 6 items in the folder with online content.
By clicking on the hyperlink, you will go to a page for that folder or subsection of the collection. If the digitized material has no access restrictions, meaning it can be viewed by everyone online, it will show previews of the digitized items and a hyperlink to view the individual scan.
After clicking the hyperlink for the individual scan, you will see a page with an image viewer and any additional information or description about the item. You have officially viewed the digitized scan!
To view audio or video files, you will follow the steps outlined above, though there are some slight differences. After finding a collection with audio or video files, you can identify the type of file by the icon that is in place of the digitized can preview as described above. Audio files can be identified by the "Audio" icon, and video material can likewise be identified by the “Video” icon. Below are examples of finding aids that contain digitized audio and video material, respectively.
First the audio material icon:
And the video material icon:
These icons indicate that the material has been digitized and is available for viewing online. After clicking the link, you will see the preview page for the content. Here, you will again see either the audio or video icon and a hyperlink that will redirect you to a page to view or listen to the content.
After you click on the icon or hyperlink, the video/audio player will be on the next page. Once you see the player, you can click on the play button of the player screen to begin watching or streaming the digitized audio, videotape, or motion picture film. The video play button is indicated by the red circle in the screenshot below.
After hitting play, you should now be able to watch or stream digitized audio or moving images from Wilson Library.
These examples have all contained material with no access restrictions; however, if the items have access restrictions, meaning that it cannot be viewed by everyone online, it will have a "locked" icon on the folder and/or image icons. There will by a button at the top right hand side of the page to contact Wilson Library staff to inquire about the restrictions and if it is possible to access the material.
Now you should be prepared to access digitized content from Wilson Library's special collections! If you run into any technical issues, please reach out to us at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.