Primary Sources
Primary sources are documents, images, or artifacts that provide firsthand testimony of an event, action, topic, or time period. These sources are usually created by individuals who directly experienced an event or topic, and record their experience through things such as images, videos, memoirs, correspondence, oral histories, and autobiographies.
Common Examples of PRIMARY Sources:
Letters, diaries, memoirs, speeches, interviews, photographs, notes, subject files, oral histories, autobiographies, travelogues, pamphlets, newspapers, newsletters, brochures, government documents including hearings, reports and statistical data, military service records, manuscripts, archival materials, plant specimens, artifacts, architectural plans, artistic works, works of fiction, music scores, and sound recordings.
Archives are often full of primary sources, but can also have secondary sources in a collection. For more tips on determining primary sources, visit this website from the University of California-Irvine.
Image: Letter from Buffalo Bill to George T. Beck, March 26, 1895, Box 1, Coll. 9972, Buffalo Bill Letters to George T. Beck.