Below are some options for accessing digital primary source collections from UT Libraries.
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Updated regularly. This collection allows students and researchers to analyze historical events, and their presentation over time, through documentaries, commercial and governmental newsreels and archival and public affairs footage. The full runs of newsreels from United Newsreel and Universal Newsreel from 1929 through 1967 are included. On 14th September 2012, American History in Video was updated. As of this update there are 6,002 videos (including 3,211 documentaries) equaling 1,616 hours in American History in Video.
Users may also make isolated clips from the videos and save them in a free account available for registration set up within the database.
Unlimited users.
Artemis Primary Sources is an integrated research environment that allows users to search across Gale primary source collections. Artemis Primary Sources takes users beyond a simple search and retrieve workflow, allowing them to analyze content using frequency and term-relationship tools. Currently, Artemis Primary Sources includes Eighteenth Century Collections Online and Nineteenth Century Collections Online. Other resources are being added.
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An archival research resource comprising the full backfiles of leading women’s interest consumer magazines. Titles are scanned from cover to cover in high-resolution color and feature detailed article-level indexing. Coverage ranges from the late-19th century through to 2005 and these key primary sources permit the examination of the events, trends, and attitudes of this period. Among the research fields served by this material are gender studies, social history, economics/marketing, media, fashion, politics, and popular culture.
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An archive of Newsweek magazine, one of the premier US weeklies of the 20th -21st centuries. With coverage from 1933 through 2012, it comprises 80 years of news reporting and commentary, charting the key US and global events during this period. Its diverse content beyond news and politics (in areas including business, science/technology, arts, travel, and family life) is such that there is valuable material for researchers in many fields, from history and political science through to economics, women's studies, and media history.
Unlimited users.
Searchable digital archive of Life Magazine covering national and international events, documentaries, popular culture, and business from November 1936 through December 2000.
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Updated annually. Includes all the articles published since the first issue of the paper in 1851. Provides full text and full image articles with digital reproductions of every page, every article and every issue in PDF format. In addition to news stories, includes editorials, letters to the editor, obituaries, birth and marriage announcements, photos, and advertisements.
More recent years are also available in other full text resources.
Unlimited users.
Documents the key events, trends, and movements in 1960s America. Through letters, diaries, memoirs, oral histories; accounts from official, radical, and alternative organizations; posters, broadsides, pamphlets, advertisements, and rare materials, the collection tells the story of the 60s. Themes include: civil rights, counter-culture, mass and underground media, sexual revolution, student activism, the Vietnam War, and women's rights.
Primary sources are records of events as they are first described, usually by witnesses or people who were involved in the event. Many primary sources were created at the time of the event but can also include memoirs, oral interviews, or accounts that were recorded later.
Visual materials, such as photos, original artwork, posters, and films are important primary sources, not only for the factual information they contain, but also for the insight they may provide into how people view their world. Primary sources may also include sets of data, such as census statistics, which have been tabulated but not interpreted. However, in the sciences or social sciences, primary sources report the results of an experiment.
Primary vs. Secondary Sources
Secondary sources offer an analysis or a restatement of primary sources. They often attempt to describe or explain primary sources. Some secondary sources not only analyze primary sources, but also use them to argue a contention or persuade the reader to hold a certain opinion. Examples of secondary sources include dictionaries, encyclopedias, textbooks, books, and articles that interpret, analyze, or review research works.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Generic License.