LibGuides: Women's Studies: Find Primary Sources

Primary sources in Women's Studies

For many researchers in Women's Studies, primary sources are essential resources for incorporating the ideas and knowledge of those who are traditionally excluded from academic conversations due to systemic racism, sexism, ableism, queerphobia, and other forms of oppression. Primary sources can be used to contextualize research in the experiences of real people and center the voices of the oppressed.

Primary Sources

A primary source provides direct or firsthand evidence about an event, object, person, or work of art. Primary sources include historical and legal documents, eyewitness accounts, results of experiments, statistical data, pieces of creative writing, audio and video recordings, speeches, and art objects. Interviews, surveys, fieldwork, and Internet communications via email, blogs, listservs, and newsgroups are also primary sources.

When would I need to find primary sources? If you're working on a history project, you may be asked to find and cite primary sources to analyze something from the past, like posters from political activism in modern African history. If you're working on a sociology project, you may be asked to find demographic data on homeless in Los Angeles. Both documents would be considered primary sources in each case.

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CSUDH Historical Images Collection This link opens in a new window
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The CSUDH Digital Collections are digitized photographs and documents from our collections, including the history of CSUDH, the South Bay, Rancho San Pedro and the Dominguez family, and more.
Global Issues Library This link opens in a new window
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Primary sources, books, and more on a variety key issues including border and migration studies, human rights studies, security issues, environmental issues, and revolution and protest.

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Online Archives of Primary Sources for Women's Studies

Black Women's Suffrage
The content featured in this collection explores linkages between women’s suffrage and other social causes of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (anti-slavery, anti-lynching, education reform and civil rights) as well as racism within the Suffrage Movement
Suffragists Oral History Project
Bancroft Library's Regional Oral History Office, collected interviews with twelve leaders and participants in the woman's suffrage movement. Tape-recorded and transcribed oral histories preserved the memories of these remarkable women, documenting formative experiences, activities to win the right to vote for women, and careers as leaders of the movements for welfare and labor reform, world peace, and the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.
Women's Liberation Movement in Print Culture
This collection from Duke University contains manifestos, speeches, essays, and other materials documenting various aspects of the Women's Movement in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. The Women's Liberation Movement refers to a series of campaigns for reforms on issues such as reproductive rights, domestic violence, and equal pay.
ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives
Digital Collections from the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives from USC
Harvard Women Working Collection, 1800-1930
Women Working, 1800–1930 is a digital exploration of women's impact on the economic life of the United States between 1800 and the Great Depression. Working conditions, workplace regulations, home life, costs of living, commerce, recreation, health and hygiene, and social issues are among the issues documented in this online research collection from Harvard University.
1911 Triangle Factory Fire Resources
This site includes original sources on the fire held at Columbia University's ILR School's Kheel Center, an archive of historical material on labor and industrial relations.