C
lark Special Collections is located on the McDermott Library’s sixth floor. Its collections include documents relating to the origin of the U.S. Air Force, the Academy, military actions, and the history of human flight.
Collection holdings include:
Visit in person or browse their online collections.
Primary sources provide firsthand accounts or direct evidence to the event, person, object or place. These sources are created by participants or witnesses of the event at the time it occurred or their experiences recorded later in the form of an autobiography, memoir or oral history.
Secondary sources, however, provide a more critical analysis of an event, person or object that often interpret primary sources and refer to secondary sources created by other authors to help formulate a less personal account.
Archives are a common place to search for primary source materials. Searching for books will also help you discover primary sources, i.e. firsthand accounts of people directly involved in or who had witnessed an event. Other primary sources can be found in exerts of journal articles, newspaper articles contemporary to the time period, and statistical information.
Search across multiple Gale primary source products through one interface. It combines historical archives covering hundreds of years of history and various resources such as monographs, manuscripts, newspapers, maps, and photographs.
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.
Use interface to search all of the following library-owned Readex primary source databases: African-American historical newspapers. Primary sources include books, pamphlets, newspapers, government documents, and more.
Still not finding what you are looking for? Check the full list of databases from McDermott Library or ask a librarian for help.
Primary sources relating to the United States, including U.S. military history related sources, are located on the Primary Sources: United States tab.
Sourced from the National Archives UK, Confidential Print: Middle East from the British Colonial and Foreign Offices are digitized primary source documents on Middle Eastern history, politics and culture from 1839 through 1969 that covers the following areas: Afghanistan, Egypt, Sudan, Persia, Suez Canal, Turkey, Jordan, Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Syria.
Contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700
A fully text-searchable corpus of over 180,000 books, pamphlets and broadsides in all subjects printed between 1701 and 1800.
An archival research resource containing a vast collection of rare magazines by and for servicemen and women of all nations during the First World War. Coverage: 1914-1919
When looking for primary sources consider who is interested and can finance an archive about your topic:
When looking for primary sources consider what types of primary sources may exist about your topic:
Search for the following terms to help identify primary sources
Provides access to more than 10 million academic journal articles, books, and primary sources in 75 disciplines.
Sourced from the National Archives UK, Confidential Print: Middle East from the British Colonial and Foreign Offices are digitized primary source documents on Middle Eastern history, politics and culture from 1839 through 1969 that covers the following areas: Afghanistan, Egypt, Sudan, Persia, Suez Canal, Turkey, Jordan, Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Syria.
