Primary Sources 

Welcome to Swem Library's research guide on primary sources. I hope this will help you learn to use primary sources successfully.

For additional help, please get in touch with me (contact information to the right) or the librarians at the reference desk (sweref@wm.edu or 757.221.3067).

Thanks to the following institutions from whose websites I took information: Jackson Library, University of North Carolina at Greensboro; Queen Elizabeth II Library, Memorial University of Newfoundland; The Learning Page, American Memory Project, Library of Congress; Bobst Library, New York University; Boatwright Library, University of Richmond; Library at the University of California, Berkeley.

You can find good general discussions of primary-source research from the following:

History Writing Resource Center, W&M

University of California, Berkeley

Wisconsin Historical Society

University of British Columbia

American Library Association