Finding Primary Literature
What is Primary Literature?
A record of a first-hand observation of an event, a report of scientific research, or an original work of fiction or art. Examples:
- Personal narrative, diaries, reminiscences, memoirs, autobiographies, correspondence
- Speeches, addresses, essays
- Short stories, poetry, drama, fairty tales, sheet music, works of part, photographs, maps, etc.
- Government documents, newspaper articles, audio and video recording of news, interviews, etc.
- Magazine articles can also be primary sources, as long as the author observed the event first hand
Print Sources
Early issues of major Canadian daily newspapers are available in microform in Rutherford Library. Check the catalogue for holdings and call numbers for specific titles and for availability of a subject index.
Check the EBSCO Discovery Service for 'period' publications for your topic:
- EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS)
EDS provides cross-searching of all subscribed EBSCO content (database, journals, ebooks etc.) as well as many other UofA databases.
Online Sources
- Canadian Newsstream
Indexes and provides fulltext access to major Canadian newspapers. Full text is available for the articles and transcripts but graphical material (photos, illustrations, graphs, etc.) is excluded. Classified ads, advertisements, and stock market reports are also excluded.
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Globe and Mail
Electronic full-page newspaper archive of The Globe from June 1844. Coverage includes all the stories, plus images, advertisements, classifieds, political cartoons, births and deaths from more than 1.4 million pages of Canada's National Newspaper, dating back to the pre-confederation era.
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Toronto Star
Contains the fulltext and images of The Toronto Star's newspaper.
- Peel's Prairie Provinces
Peel's Prairie Provinces is a resource dedicated to assisting scholars, students, and researchers of all types in their exploration of western Canadian history and the culture of the Canadian prairies. This website contains both an online bibliography of books, pamphlets, and other materials related to the development of the Prairies, as well as a searchable full-text collection of many of these items.
More Information
For more information and examples, please visit the guide on Primary Sources:
