UDLib/SEARCH
A state-funded collaboration between the Delaware Department of Education and the University of Delaware Library providing online magazines, journals, encyclopedias and training for all Delaware K-12 public schools
A state-funded collaboration between the Delaware Department of Education and the University of Delaware Library providing online magazines, journals, encyclopedias and training for all Delaware K-12 public schools
It's important to consider what would be an age-appropriate primary source for your students before you begin searching. For elementary school students, you might want to try and locate more visually appealing sources like photographs. Whereas, for older students, you can begin to incorporate written documents into your classroom, BUT not all students can read cursive!
Use the following tips to locate primary sources:
When searching for primary source collections online, include the following additional phrases with your keywords:
Primary sources can be found by searching for articles directly. There are usually images, videos, or other forms of visual media that could be used for the younger age groups. Below you will find an example of an article in PebbleGo Social Studies that has an image that could be used as a primary source:
As you can see, the image on the right-hand side is a drawing that younger students can observe and engage with to learn more about this period of American history. Students can be asked questions about what they see in the picture - including asking questions that they might want to explore further themselves that the picture (or other primary sources) might not have covered.
In order to find primary sources that are the most relevant, you should first use keywords to find articles about the topic you are researching in history. Most articles have images, videos, or other options that could be used as a primary source. For the Middle and High School pages, you can find a list of databases that focus on "Government & History" farther down the databases page.
In most of the databases for Middle School and High School, you can limit your search to Primary Sources in the Advanced Search area or after you are already viewing a list of results. In the image below, you can see that there is an option to limit the results in the bottom left side of the screen.
Depending on your time period, primary sources can also be found in newspaper articles, media, or other types of sources. You can limit by resource type and time period in each database as well. Please note, that this searching option works best for contemporary topics.
Tip! In SIRS Issue Researcher and SIRS Discoverer, you can find images and political cartoons under the trending topics articles, along with a list of questions. For some topics, there is even a timeline as well.
Although primary sources can be found in every single UDLib/SEARCH database, there is only one database that only has primary sources: Original Sources. You can search for phrases, events, dates, or people under the search bar, but you can also browse a list of topics as well.
You can browse through the list of topics and events if you are looking for what sources this database has on a particular topic or event like the American Revolution or the Gilded Age. Once you find a topic, there will be a list of the sources this database has. Original Sources primarily has text-based sources like books and documents, although you can find images on some events pages.
Please note: In Original Sources, you typically will not find images or copies of the original document, but rather transcriptions of it.