Research Guides: Studies in Arts and Culture: Primary Sources

What are Primary and Secondary Sources?

The library has access to many repositories that focus on primary source materials that relate to Studies in Arts and Culture dating back to early history and running up until the present. On this page you will find a list of some of our recommended resources as well as a helpful video describing what primary sources can include. Depending on your research topic Special Collections and Archives here at Brock might be a great resource to explore as well.

Primary Sources

Explore these databases for manuscripts, diaries, letters, government documents, memoirs, oral histories, photographs, and other printed and visual primary source materials.

Black Thought and Culture
- Find books, articles, letters, speeches and other texts of black leaders.
- Coverage: 1700-current
- Permitted Uses
Sixties
- Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960-1974.
- Find diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary.
- Covers American history, culture, and politics.
- Permitted Uses
Gale Primary Sources
- Search across nine primary source databases simultaneously: British Library Newspapers, The Economist Historical Archive, Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), The Times Digital Archive, The Illustrated London News Historical Archive (1842-2003), the Burney Newspapers Collection, Archives of Sexuality & Gender, Indigenous Peoples of North America, and the Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive.
- Coverage: 1603-2015
- Permitted Uses
Digital Public Library of America
- Brings together millions of materials from America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world.

List of Canadian Archives
This list is not exhaustive, but is a great place to find potential sources of information on your topic. Archives and archival collections can range from National institutions to individual organisations which collect and preserve documents from the past.