Primary sources can be found in libraries, museums, databases, etc. The advantages of using primary sources is that they are the direct eyewitness or contemporaneous accounts of events. The drawbacks to using primary sources are they could be forgeries, they can be biased, they may be irrelevant or inaccurate. Interpretation of primary source documents (both literally if they are in a different language) can be difficult as can determining their objectivity and accuracy.

Examples of primary sources in the discipline of history include; artifact, diary, government report, interview, letter, map, news report, oral history, organizational records, photograph, speech, work of art. There are several on-line archives with primary source documents in American history.

• Library of Congress
• American Memory
• The National Archives
• The GPO
• Our Documents