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History of Science, Mathematics & Technology: Primary sources

What is a primary source?

Primary sources include documents or artifacts created by a witness to or participant in an event.  They can be firsthand testimony or evidence created during the time period that you are studying.

Primary sources
may include diaries, letters, interviews, oral histories, photographs, newspaper articles, government documents, poems, novels, plays, and music.  The collection and analysis of primary sources is central to historical research.

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Tips for Searching:

Once you've run a search, use the "Refine My Results" options on the left side of the page.  It's a quick way to drill down to the most useful results without paging through a lot of items you're not really interested inOptions often include:

  • Resource type (examples: book, article)
  • Library (example: UW Tacoma)
  • Creation date
  • Language
  • Topic
  • Classification LCC (Library of Congress call numbers)