For library research assistance please email moninder_lalli@sfu.ca, Liaison Librarian for GSWS or Ask a librarian.

What is a primary source?

A primary source is a document or other sort of evidence written or created during the time under study, or by one of the persons or organizations directly involved in the event. Primary sources offer an inside view of a particular event.

Primary Sources for the Humanities guide provides an extensive list of sources which may also be useful for students of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies (GSWS).  This guide provides a selected number of these sources.  Selected sources are included in this guide.  In addition, see also SFU Special Collections guide:  LBGTQ2S+ materials.

Find primary sources using Catalogue Search

Examples of primary sources: documents, correspondence, diaries, personal narratives, pictorial works, description and travel, interviews, maps, and manuscripts 

Example searches

Use the Basic Catalogue Search or Advanced Search to find books that are "primary sources."

• ("African American Women" OR "Black American" OR "Black Canadian") AND (autobiograph* OR interview* OR diar* OR narrative*)
  • Above search limited to "Subject" of "autobiography"
     
• ("primary document*") AND ("African American Women" OR "Black American" OR "Black Canadian")
   
• (gender OR transgender OR LGBT*) AND (autobiograph* OR interview* OR diar* OR narrative*)
  • Above search limited to "Resource type" of "archival material/manuscript"
  • Above search limited to "Resource type" of "Audio"

• Proper syntax for Boolean logic (words that allow you to combine concepts)

  Combine different concepts using AND
  Combine same concepts using OR
  Use quotation marks to search for a phrase
  Use brackets for synonyms
  Use asterisk (*) for different endings of words

  Note:  For Catalogue Search, when combining concepts, use CAPITAL letters ( "OR", "AND")

  Look at the titles in the "results list" and for those books that look relevant, click on their subject headings to find more books on that topic.

Evaluating primary sources

Reading and interpreting an historical document requires a thoughtful and critical approach. The following sites offer some guidelines for approach and evaluation: Reading a Primary Source , Dohistory, and Using Primary Resources.

Selected databases of primary sources for GSWS

List of databases by content type of "primary sources"

Multiple database search engines

AM explorer
Search for primary source material covering the social sciences and humanities from multiple Adam Matthew Digital databases. Includes monographs, manuscripts, newspapers, maps, photographs and archival documents covering history, literature, culture and politics.

Artemis Primary Sources -  Search across multiple Gale collections for monographs, manuscripts, newspapers, photographs, maps, and other primary sources.

Single primary source databases

Archives of Lesbian Oral Testimony (ALOT) 
"the oral histories of people who presently or at one time identified as lesbian."

Archives of Sexuality & Gender
Monographs, manuscripts, correspondence, and ephemera from 1600 to 1940, as well as texts, photographs, and illustrations on health, politics, age, race/ ethnicity, and social and economic issues in relation to LGBTQ rights and women's rights since 1940.  Rare and unique content from newsletters, organisational papers, government documents, manuscripts, pamphlets, and other types of primary sources sheds light on the gay rights movement, activism, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and more.

Use "Advanced" search for more flexibility in searching.  Use "topic finder" to search or topics.  E.g. film or cinema or "motion picture*"

ARTstor
Currently contains over one million images. The Collection documents artistic traditions across many times and cultures and embraces architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, and design as well as many other forms of visual culture.

British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries 
The immediate experiences of British and Irish women, as revealed in diaries and letters. Use the "Browse" icon to search for "personal events" such as courtship, pregnancy, childbirth, and spouse's absence.

Community Health Online Digital Archive & Research Resource(CHODDAR)
"project is a permanent, catalogued and publicly accessible online digital archive of research materials related to health and social welfare, with an emphasis on housing, gender, aboriginal issues, HIV and mental health."

Defining Gender 1450-1910: Five Centuries of Advice Literature Online
Fulltext collection of "advice literature to women," 1450 to 1910.

Discovering American Women's History Online
Primary documents. Over 400 digital collections about the history of women in the United States.

Empire Online
A collection of over 70,000 images of original manuscripts and printed material, 1492-1969, taken from libraries and archives around the world, including Africa, the Americas, Australasia, Oceania, and South Asia.

Italian Canadian Women Oral History Collection
Interviews collected in the 1970s and 1980s documenting the experiences of Italian women who immigrated to Canada throughout the first three quarters of the twentieth century.

Italian Canadian Women Photograph Collection 
A collection of archival images dating from 1950 to 1975 celebrating the contributions of Italian women immigrants to Canadian history and culture.

Liberty Magazine
Published from 1924 to 1950, Liberty Magazine was an American weekly which often focused on sensational and popular issues. Gain insight into life in the United States during the Depression era and World War II. The articles, stories and advertisements in Liberty Magazine offer a perspective on the everyday lives of working-class and middle-class America when illustrated magazines were a popular form of mass entertainment.

Maclean's Magazine Archive  - Full-text access to Maclean's Magazine from 1905 to 2015. Includes investigative reporting, opinion and analysis on politics, economy and business, science and technology, society, arts and culture, education and work.

Mass Observation Online: British Social History, 1937-1972
The papers of the Mass Observations organisation. It offers an unparalled insight into everyday British life in the 1930s and 1940s

North American Women's Letters and Diaries  
Full-text of letters and diaries written by North American women from Colonial times to 1950.

Oral History Online
More than 2,500 collections of Oral History in English from around the world.

Perdita Manuscripts: Women Writers, 1500-1700 
Collection of manuscripts written or compiled by women in the British Isles during the 16th and 17th centuries.

Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975  Colour images of manuscripts and rare printed materials, as well as photographs, ephemera and memorabilia covering popular culture in Britain, America, and Canada from 1950 to 1975.

QMUNITY's Stories of Older Queers
Video interviews chronicling the experiences of older lesbian-gay-bisexual-transfolk conducted as part of a project called "Stories of Older Queers: Videography and Archives of Queer Elder Experiences."

Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period 
An electronic collection of over sixty volumes of lyric poetry by Scottish women, written between 1789 and 1832

The Shirley Petten Collection  
Correspondence, newspaper clippings and other materials related to Shirley Petten's landmark ruling on same-sex survivor benefit rights from the BC Worker's Compensation Board in 1992.

Selected websites of primary sources

Many archival and library collections are now preserving, digitizing, and providing access to significant primary historical resources. The Internet also provides access to many other primary sources, such as advertisements, e-mail messages, speeches, manifestos, creative works, laws and court cases, historical documents, etc. It is always possible to search for specific items by using a web browser.

Canada

• Canadian War Brides  - Provides information on the Canadian War Brides of WWII.

   
• Herstory - A retrospective exhibition to capture the flavour of 20 years of work on a unique feminist project. It samples the pages of Herstory: The Canadian Women's Calendar from 1974 to 1995, and reflects on the process and the people that created them.
• Rise Up! - a digital archive of feminist activism in Canada from the 1970s to the 1990s.
  • Publications
    • Canadian feminist publications - E.g.
      • breaking the silence: a feminist quarterly  [1982 to 1987, national]
  • Rise Up's guide to CBC Archives on Canadian Women's History sources

For a more complete list, see Primary Sources for the Humanities: Canada

International

• Digital Transgender Archive
  The purpose of the Digital Transgender Archive (DTA) is to increase the accessibility of transgender history by providing an online hub for digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world. Based in Boston, Massachusetts at Northeastern University, the DTA is an international collaboration among more than sixty colleges, universities, nonprofit organizations, public libraries, and private collections. [from the website]

United Kingdom

• British Library  Sisterhood and after: an oral history

United States

• Library of Congress
  • Women's history
    • National American Women's Suffrage Association
      • Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers
      • Susan B Anthony Papers
    • Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records of the National Woman's Party
    • African American History
      • Rosa Parks Papers
      • Zora Neale Hurston
         
• GLBT Historical Society Collections
  Founded in 1985, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT) Historical Society is recognized internationally as a leader in the field of LGBTQ public history. Our operations are centered around two sites: our GLBT Historical Society Museum, located since 2011 in the heart of San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood; and our Dr. John P. De Cecco Archives and Research Center, open to researchers in the Mid-Market district. [from the website]