Research Guides: Art History: Search for Primary Sources/Archives

What Are Primary Sources?

Primary sources are first-hand accounts that serve as original evidence documenting an event, people, period, or object. Primary sources are usually created during the life of the person or at the time an event occurs. Sometimes primary sources are created after an event when a person recalls their first-hand account of an event in the form of memoirs and oral histories.

Types of primary sources:

Objects / Artifacts / Photographs
Sketchbooks / Diaries
Letters (correspondence)
Interviews / Oral Histories
Newspaper articles
Exhibition reviews
Official documents from agencies, associations, political parties, hearings
Social Media posts

Primary Source Databases at Temple

African American Communities This link opens in a new window
African American Communities focuses on Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina, and offers pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records, reports and in-depth oral histories.
African American Experience This link opens in a new window
The African American Experience (AAE) provides full-text reference works from Greenwood Publishing. (AAE) includes interviews with former slaves from the WPA Slave Narratives Project. Documents, audio clips, photographs, from Negro University Press titles are also included.
American History (1493-1945) This link opens in a new window
American History is sourced from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, and includes: Module 1 / Settlement, Commerce, Revolution and Reform: 1493-1859 and Module 2 / Civil War, Reconstruction and the Modern Era: 1860-1945.
American West This link opens in a new window
American West contains original manuscripts, ephemeral material , maps, and rare printed works from the Everett D Graff Collection of Western Americana at the Newberry Library, Chicago.
Empire Online This link opens in a new window
Contains manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of 'Empire' and it's theories, practices and consequences. The materials span across the last five centuries and are accompanied by a host of secondary learning resources including scholarly essays, maps and an interactive chronology.
The Grand Tour (1550-1850) This link opens in a new window
The Grand Tour includes accounts of the English abroad (c1550-1850) and highlights the influence of continental travel on British art, architecture, urban planning, literature and philosophy. This collection of manuscript, visual and printed works includes letters; diaries and journals; account books; printed guidebooks; published travel writing; paintings and sketches; architectural drawings and maps.
Index of Medieval Art (formerly Index of Christian Art) This link opens in a new window
The largest archive of materials on Early Christian and Medieval Iconography. It documents more than 18,000 works of art from early apostolic times to AD 1400, with emphasis on art of the western world, and includes mediums such as manuscripts, metalwork, sculpture, painting, and glass. Indexing is provided for theme/iconography, artist, location, school or style and other categories. Records include bibliography, references to reproductions and a growing number of links to images.
LGBT Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
Access guaranteed through May 2027
LGBT Thought and Culture offers books, periodicals, and archival materials documenting LGBT political, social and cultural movements throughout the twentieth century and into the present day.
Medieval Family Life This link opens in a new window
The Paston Family Papers have long been a subject of both literary and historical interest. They are Britain’s first surviving records of private correspondence, describing everyday life in East Anglia during the Wars of the Roses and the Black Death. In addition we include four other valuable collections relating to medieval families in Essex, Oxfordshire, Yorkshire and Warwickshire, c1400-1490." Transcripts are fully searchable.
Medieval Travel Writing This link opens in a new window
"This project provides direct access to a widely scattered collection of original medieval manuscripts that describe travel - real and imaginary - in the Middle Ages."
Queer Pasts This link opens in a new window
Queer Pasts is a collection of queer history and culture primary source exhibits that address LGBT topics as well as other sexual and gender formations that are queer. Particular focus is given to perspectives from people of color, trans people and people with disabilities.

Sources and Documents in the History of Art
Books series at Temple Libraries. Compilations of primary source material.

Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels This link opens in a new window
Underground and Independent Comics is the first-ever scholarly online collection for researchers and students of adult comic books and graphic novels. At completion, this collection will include more than 100,000 pages of materials, including 75,000 pages of primary materials (the comics themselves), and more than 25,000 pages of materials about comics—interviews, commentary, theory, and criticism—from The Comics Journal and other secondary sources.

More Primary Source Databases

Newspaper Databases
List of databases at TU Libraries for finding newspaper articles (past and present).
Primary Sources Databases (History)
List of databases at TU Libraries for finding primary sources related to history.
Primary Sources Databases (Literature)
List of databases at TU Libraries for finding primary sources related to literature.