Research Guides: Theater of the Real: Primary Sources

Primary Sources Definition

What are Primary Sources?

Primary sources enable the researcher to get as close as possible to the truth of what actually happened during an historical event or time period. "Primary source" is a term used in a number of disciplines to describe source material that is closest to the person, information, period, or idea being studied. A primary source (also called "original source") is:

a document,
recording,
artifact,
or other source of information that was created at the time under study, usually by a source with direct personal knowledge of the events being described.

It serves as an original source of information about the topic. Similar definitions are used in library science, and other areas of scholarship. In journalism, a primary source can be a person with direct knowledge of a situation, or a document created by such a person. Primary sources are distinguished from secondary sources which cite, comment on, or build upon primary sources, though the distinction is not a sharp one.

Newspaper Research

Historical Newspapers (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Search the PDF full text and image archives of more than 100 major U.S. and African American newspapers.

Highlights include: Atlanta Constitution (1868-1945), Atlanta Daily World (1931-2003), Baltimore Afro-American (1893-1988), Chicago Tribune (1849-1986), Christian Science Monitor (1908-2004), Los Angeles Times (1881-1995), New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993), Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2002), The Chicago Defender (1910 - 1975), The New York Times (1851-2014), The New York Tribune (1841-1922), The New York Tribune (1900-1910), San Francisco Chronicle (1869-1922), The Wall Street Journal (1889-2000), The Washington Post (1877-2001), St. Petersburg Times / Tampa Bay Times (1901-2009), Korea Times (1956-2016)

Shadrach Minkins for sale in newspaper notice,1851.

ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
ProQuest Central is a large, multidisciplinary database with over 11,000 titles, with over 8,000 titles in full-text. It serves as the central resource for researchers at all levels in all markets. Over 160 subjects areas are covered extensively in this product including business and economics, health and medical, news and world affairs, technology, social sciences and more.
Global Newsstream This link opens in a new window
Global Newsstream contains the html full text of hundreds of U.S. and international news sources. Coverage dates vary from title to title, but generally span the most recent five to ten years.
New York Newspaper Archive This link opens in a new window
Access New York Newspaper Archives and discover stories of the past with NewspaperArchive.com. The archive covers New York history from 1753-2023, with lots of content from smaller, local newspapers. Articles have been scanned as PDFs and include images and advertisements, and are full text searchable.
America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
America's Historical Newspapers includes articles from local and regional American and Hispanic American newspapers from all 50 states. Coverage dates from 1690 to the early 20th century. Articles have been scanned as PDFs and include images and advertisements, and are full text searchable.
American Periodicals Series Online This link opens in a new window
Search a selection of periodicals that first began publishing between 1740 and 1900, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and many other historically-significant periodicals.
Times Digital Archive (London) This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text access to back issues of The Times newspaper. Dates of coverage: 1785 to 2006.
Eight Centuries This link opens in a new window
Searches numerous indexes and web-based resources from 1106 until 1930 CE. It provides references and links out to periodicals, books, artworks, and government documents (US and UK). These cover all subject areas.
Some resources identified in this database may not be available directly but we could have access through another vendor. Please contact the library in those cases.
Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980 This link opens in a new window
Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980 provides access to searchable digitized copies of newspapers printed in the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries for a Hispanic readership. It features hundreds of monolingual and bilingual newspapers in Spanish and English, including many obscure titles from the 19th century.
Gale Newspaper Sources This link opens in a new window
Gale Newspaper Sources allows access to several historical collections of British newspapers and periodicals, published in the UK and its colonies around the world. Notable titles include the Times of London, Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement, and the PUNCH archive. Coverage dates span the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
Access World News This link opens in a new window
Access World News provides the html full text and, for some titles, the pdf "as printed" visual representation, of articles from a variety of national and international news sources, including newspapers, digital-native news websites, television and radio transcripts, blogs, college and university newspapers, journals, magazines, and some audio and video. Most international titles are English language. Dates of coverage vary from title to title, but primarily span the late 20th century to present.
Black Historical Newspapers (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Black Historical Newspapers (formerly Historical African American Newspapers). Full historic content from major black newspapers: The Chicago Defender, The New York Amsterdam News, The Atlanta Daily World, The Baltimore Afro-American, and Los Angeles Sentinel.

Historical Databases

An advert for P.T. Barnum's "Feejee Mermaid" in 1842 or thereabout.

America: History and Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Indexes literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. The database indexes 1,700 journals and also includes citations and links to book and media reviews. Strong English-language journal coverage is balanced by an international perspective on topics and events, including abstracts in English of articles published in more than 40 languages. Publication dates of coverage: 1964 to present.
Historical Abstracts with Full Text (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present, including world history, military history, women's history, history of education, and more. Indexes more than 1,700 academic historical journals in over 40 languages. Publication dates of coverage: 1955 to present.
Theatre in Context Collection This link opens in a new window
O’Dell’s Annals of the New York Stage, the Oxford University Press Companion series, and Greenwood’s American Theatre Companies series are just a few of the many in-copyright sources included in the Theatre in Context Collection. Placed alongside thousands of playbills, posters, photographs, and related theatrical ephemera, users will be able to paint a more comprehensive picture of the life and evolution of dramatic works.
Shakespeare Collection This link opens in a new window
The Shakespeare Collection provides access to general reference data, full-text scholarly periodicals, reprinted criticism, facsimile primary source material and the full-text annotated works from The Arden Shakespeare. Users can view page images of the First Folio, key Quartos, and major editions and adaptations of Shakespeare's works, plus works by Shakespeare's contemporaries and promptbooks from the 17th to the 20th century.
Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
Contains 1297 sources with 1100 authors, covering the non-fiction published works of leading African-Americans. Particular care has been taken to index this material so that it can be searched more thoroughly than ever before. Where possible the complete published non-fiction works are included, as well as interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamphlets, letters and other fugitive material.
Periodicals Archive Online This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text and full-image access to hundreds of journals published in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and areas of general popular interest. Each periodical is covered back to its first issue, regardless of when it began publication. International in scope, PAO covers periodicals in a number of Western languages.
London Low Life This link opens in a new window
London Low Life is a full-text searchable resource, containing colour digital images of rare books, ephemera, maps and other materials relating to 18th, 19th and early 20th century London.In addition to the digital documents, London Low Life contains a wealth of secondary resources, including a chronology, interactive maps, essays, online galleries and links to other useful websites.
Accessible Archives This link opens in a new window
NYU's subscription provides the full text of several periodicals (and a few publically available books). It is particularly strong on African American and abolitionist newspapers, the history of the United States before Reconstruction, and the campaign for women's suffrage in the United States.
Early English Books Online (EEBO) This link opens in a new window
Early English Books Online (EEBO) 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. Searchable full text is also available for a subset of the collection.
Eighteenth Century Journals This link opens in a new window
Eighteenth Century Journals brings together rare journals printed between 1685 and 1835, primarily in the British Isles (with some publications from India, the Caribbean, and Europe). Users can view and download page images and search transcribed full text for all journals in the collection.
C19: The 19th Century Index This link opens in a new window
C19: The 19th Century Index provides bibliographic coverage of nineteenth-century books, periodicals, official documents, newspapers and archives from the English-speaking world. This database includes the Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals (1824-1900), Poole's Index to Periodical Literature, Palmer's Index to The Times, the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, and more.
Black Studies Center This link opens in a new window
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Black Studies Center is a fully cross-searchable gateway to Black Studies including scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, the Schomburg Studies, and much more. It combines several resources for research and teaching in Black Studies: Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, International Index to Black Periodicals (IIBP), historical black newspapers, and the Black Literature Index.
Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960 - 1974 This link opens in a new window
The Sixties is a full text resource consisting of diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary.
African American Archives (via Fold3) This link opens in a new window
This full text resource offers access to original documents that reveal a side of the African American story that few have seen before.
African American Experience This link opens in a new window
Full-text digital resource exploring the history and culture of African Americans, as well as the greater Black Diaspora. Features access to full-text content from more than 400 titles, 3,000 slave narratives, over 2000 images, 5,000 primary sources, and 250 vetted Web sites.
Everyday Life and Women in America This link opens in a new window
Everyday Life and Women in America showcases unique primary source material circa 1800-1920 for the study of American social, cultural, and popular history. Sourced from the collections of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History, Duke University, and The New York Public Library, it is comprised of fully searchable images of monographs, pamphlets, periodicals, and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social, and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes. The collection is especially rich in conduct of life and domestic management literature, offering vivid insights into the daily lives of women and men, as well as emphasizing contrasts in regional, urban, and rural cultures.
Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
Gale Primary Sources is a groundbreaking research environment that integrates formerly disparate digital collections to enable innovative research. Gale provides an unprecedented, seamless research experience that helps students find a starting point, search across a wide array of materials and points in time, and discover new ways to analyze information. ** The database includes the subscribed collections Eighteenth Century Collections Online; Amateur Newspapers from the American Antiquarian Society; American Historical Periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society; Archives of Latin American and Caribbean History, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century; The Making of Modern Law: Foreign Primary Sources; The Making of Modern Law: Foreign, Comparative, and International Law, 1600-1926; The Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926; The Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources; The Making of Modern Law: Trials, 1600-1926; Making of Modern Law: Landmark Records and Briefs of the U.S. Courts of Appeals, 1890-1980; The Making of the Modern World; Nineteenth Century Collections Online; Declassified Documents Online: Twentieth-Century British Intelligence; and Sabin Americana, 1500-1926. **
Shakespeare in Performance: Prompt Books from the Folger Shakespeare Library This link opens in a new window
Shakespeare in Performance: Prompt Books from the Folger Shakespeare Library, showcases rare and unique prompt books from the Folger Shakespeare Library. These prompt books tell the story of Shakespeare’s plays as they were performed in theaters throughout Great Britain, the United States and internationally, between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries.
Victorian Popular Culture This link opens in a new window
Victorian Popular Culture is an essential resource for the study of popular entertainment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The resource is divided into four self-contained sections: Moving Pictures, Optical Entertainments and the Advent of Cinema; Music Hall, Theatre and Popular Entertainment; Circuses, Sideshows and Freaks; Spiritualism, Sensation and Magic.

International Collections

SIBMAS International Directory of Performing Arts Collections and Institutions
SIBMAS is the International Association of Libraries, Museums, Archives and Documentation Centres of the Performing Arts. We promote research in the performing arts, facilitate networking among our members and share resources about their specific collections and the performing arts in general.

Letters & Diaries and Oral Histories

Oral History Online
Provides in-depth indexing to more than 2,700 collections of Oral History in English from around the world. The collection provides keyword searching of almost 281,000 pages of full-text by close to 10,000 individuals from all walks of life.

American Civil War: Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
This database contains 2,009 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of diaries, letters and memoirs. Includes 4,000 pages of previously unpublished manuscripts such as the letters of Amos Wood and his wife and the diary of Maryland Planter William Claytor. The collection also includes biographies, an extensive bibliography of the sources in the database, and material licensed from The Civil War Day-by-Day by E.B. Long.
British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
Includes 10,000 pages of diaries and letters revealing the experiences of approximately 500 women. The collection now includes primary materials spanning more than 300 years. The collection also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of the sources in the database.
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories This link opens in a new window
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories includes 2,162 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of information, so providing a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada between 1800 and 1950. Contains contemporaneous letters, diaries, oral histories, interviews, and other personal narratives.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
North American Women's Letters and Diaries includes the immediate experiences of 1,325 women and 150,000 pages of diaries and letters.

Historical Image Collections

The American actress Charlotte Cushman advertised in William Shakespeare's Hamlet at the Washington Theater in 1861.

American Broadsides and Ephemera This link opens in a new window
Based on the American Antiquarian Society's landmark collection - the most extensive in existence - American Broadsides and Ephemera offers fully searchable facsimile images of approximately 15,000 broadsides printed between 1820 and 1900 and 15,000 pieces of ephemera printed between 1760 and 1900. The remarkably diverse subjects of these broadsides range from contemporary accounts of the Civil War, unusual occurrences and natural disasters to official government proclamations, tax bills and town meeting reports. Featuring many rare items, the pieces of ephemera include clipper ship sailing cards, early trade cards, bill heads, theater and music programs, stock certificates, menus and invitations documenting civic, political and private celebrations. American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I consists of more than 29,000 broadsides and pieces of ephemera.
Early American Imprints, Series I. Evans, 1639-1800 This link opens in a new window
Search or browse the books, pamphlets, broadsides and other imprints listed in the renowned bibliography by Charles Evans.
Early American Imprints, Series II. Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819 This link opens in a new window
Search or browse the books, pamphlets, broadsides and other imprints listed in the distinguished bibliography by Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker. 1801-1819
American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Provide digital access to the most comprehensive collection of American periodicals published between 1691 and 1877. Included digitized images of American magazines and journals never before available outside the walls of the American Antiquarian Society. The collection is available in five series: Series 1 (1691-1820) - Series 2 (1821-1837) - Series 3 (1838-1852) - Series 4 (1853-1865) - Series 5 (1866-1877)

The Billy Rose Theatre Collection

Scene from Othello with Paul Robeson and Uta Hagen as Desdemona.

Billy Rose Collection NYPL
The Billy Rose Theatre Division of The New York Public Library is one of the largest and most comprehensive archives devoted to the theatrical arts. Encompassing dramatic performance in all its diversity, the division is an indispensable resource for artists, writers, researchers, scholars, students, and the general public.

Theater of the Real