Primary Sources

The Historian's Handbook defines a primary source as one that "gives the words of the witnesses or the first recorders of an event. Primary sources include manuscripts, archives, letters, diaries, and speeches." They can also be photographs, audio or video recordings; original records created at the time historical events occurred or well after events in the form of memoirs and oral histories. These are frequently materials that document the attitudes and popular thought of a historical time period.
Here are just a few of the Primary Source resources that the Framingham Public Library has in its collection and a sample of what is available online.

Books

Call Number	Author	Title
REF Y940.2 Renaissance	Peggy Saari and Aaron Saari, editors	Renaissance and Reformation. Primary sources
REF Y973.9 American; 8 vols. 1900-1979, 2000-2009	Cynthia Rose, editor	American decades primary sources 1900-1979 2000-2009
REF 909.07 2001. Middle	Judson Knight	Middle ages. Primary sources
REF Y940.3 Pendergast	Tom Pendergast and Sara Pendergast	World War I primary sources
REF Y940.53 World	Barbara C. Bigelow	World War II : primary sources
REF Y973.2 Colonial	Peggy Saari	Colonial America : primary sources
Y306.362 Slavery	Judson Knight	Slavery throughout history. Primary sources
REF Y973.2 Copeland	David A. Copeland.	Debating the issues in colonial newspapers : primary documents on events of the period
973 Annals		The Annals of America
REF 973 1994 100	Peter B Levy, editor	100 Key documents in American Democracy
Commager; vols. 1 & 2	Henry Steele Commager, editor	Documents of American history
REF Y973 United		Our Documents: 100 Milestone Documents from the National Archives
REF 973.7 American	Dr. Spencer C. Tucker, editor	American Civil War : the definitive encyclopedia and document collection
973 Eyewitness	David Colbert, editor	Eyewitness to America : 500 years of America in the words of those who saw it happen
REF Y305.8 Gale	Jeffrey Lehman, editor	Gale encyclopedia of multicultural America. Primary documents
Y973 Panchyk (McA Branch)	Richard Panchyk	The keys to American history : understanding our most important historic documents
973 Witness	Stephen Ambrose & Douglas Brinkley, editors	Witness to America : an illustrated documentary history of the United States from the Revolution to today

Databases and e-Books

Credo Reference
A comprehensive database providing many primary sources including documents, pictures, audio and video. Start here and use your Framingham Public library card to access.

Gale US History in Context
http://libraries.state.ma.us/login?db=UHIC&locid=fpl
Provides a complete overview of our nation's past that covers the most-studied events, decades, conflicts, wars, political and cultural movements, and people.

Websites

American Memory
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/
Historical Collections for the National Digital Library American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.

The Avalon Project
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/default.asp
Documents in Law, American History and Diplomacy The Avalon Project is dedicated to providing access via the World Wide Web to primary source materials in the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government

Making of America
http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moagrp/
Making of America (MoA) is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction.

New York Public Library Digital Gallery
http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/
A searchable database presenting tens of thousands of digital images from The Library's collections including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, rare prints and photographs, and more.

Our Documents
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/
100 Milestone documents in American history from the National Archives

Duke University Libraries - AdAccess
http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adaccess/
A huge database of advertisements compiled by Duke University from the U.S. and Canada from 1911-1955

American Journeys
http://www.americanjourneys.org
American Journeys contains more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later

EuroDocs
http://eudocs.lib.byu.edu
Primary historical documents from Western Europe

Archiving Early America
http://www.earlyamerica.com/
An array of primary source material from 18th Century America

WW2 Resources
http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/

Museum of Tolerance - Simon Wiesenthal Center
http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/
Holocaust related resources