Primary sources are original documents and objects created at the time being studied, such as diaries, newspaper accounts, letters, governmental records, or drawings. Any record that documents a past event can be considered a primary source.
You can find primary sources in libraries, museums, and archives, including McGill's Rare Books and Special Collections Library (located on the 4th floor of the McLennan Library building). You can also find digitized primary sources online in library databases, such as those linked below, as well as in digitized collections, such as McGill Digital Collections.
You can also find primary sources in print and eBooks through the library. Historians and other scholars often bring together (and, when necessary, translate) primary sources in collections called sourcebooks (sometimes spelled source books), readers, or anthologies. You can systematically search for these in the Library Catalogue by using subject headings. Try combining keywords on your topic with the word sources (which demarcate primary sources) in a subject heading search. For example:
Contains access to original British source material for teaching and research on the history, literature, sociology and education from a gendered perspective.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
LGBTQ history and culture since 1940. Archive containing historical records of political and social organizations founded by LGBTQ individuals, personal correspondence, interviews, publications, gay and lesbian newspapers from more than 35 countries.
New modules: L'Enfer de la Bibliotheque Nationale de France; International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture; and Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century.
The content of this database is available for text-mining through Gale Digital Scholar Lab
LGBTQ history and culture since 1940. Archive containing historical records of political and social organizations founded by LGBTQ individuals, personal correspondence, interviews, publications, gay and lesbian newspapers from more than 35 countries.
New modules: L'Enfer de la Bibliotheque Nationale de France; International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture; and Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century.
The content of this database is available for text-mining through Gale Digital Scholar Lab
A collection of primary source exhibits for students and scholars of queer history and culture.
A resource for students and scholars of U.S. history and U.S. women's history. Organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000, this collection seeks to advance scholarly debates and understanding about U.S. women’s history generally and at the same time make those insights accessible to teachers and students at universities, colleges, and high schools. The collection currently includes 124 document projects and archives with more than 5,100 documents and 175,000 pages of additional full-text documents, written by 2,800 primary authors. It also includes book, film, and website reviews, notes from the archives, and teaching tools. Includes access to the online version of Notable American Women and the database on Commissions on the Status of Women.
From colonial times to the present, this collection presents over 1,500 full-text plays by 330 women playrights from the United States and Canada. Includes many rare, out of print, or previously unpublished materials.
Bio-bibliographical database of Canadian English-language women writers who first published in or before 1950.
A textbase comprising more than 8 million words of original scholarship about women writers’ lives, bodies of work, and cultures in a collection of author profiles, event entries, and bibliographic entries brought together for searching and remixing by the project’s bespoke tagging system.
A collection of British and Irish women's diaries and correspondence spanning more than 300 years.
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