"Primary sources are original records created at the time historical events occurred or well after events in the form of memoirs and oral histories.... These sources serve as the raw material to interpret the past, and when they are used along with previous interpretations by historians, they provide the resources necessary for historical research." (Written by the Instruction & Research Services Committee of the Reference and User Service Association History Section in the American Library Association. Committee members include Nancy Godleski, David Lincove (chair), Theresa Mudrock, Edward Oetting, Jennifer Schwartz, Joe Toth, Kendra Van Cleave, and Celestina Wroth, <http://www.lib.washington.edu/subject/History/RUSA/>.)
Primary sources in the web are digital documents in databases, so-called metasources (Jean-Philippe Genet: : “Source, Métasources, Texte, Histoire”, in Francesca Bocchi and Peter Denley (eds.): Storia & multimedia . Proceedings of the Seventh International Cong, Association for History & Computing , Bologna, Grafis Editori, 1994, pp.3-17). Later on, the use of the term metasource was extended to the copies of other "material" records described with meta-data's
The internet himself is a direct primary source only for recent contemporary history. For example, 9/11 2001 is an event which could be studied directly through primary sources available in the WWW: The September 11 Digital Archive
Information about Access, Open Access (OAI) and Copyrights
Laws
There exist many country differences worldwide for accessing and using primary digital sources. In Europe, especially in continental Europe, many scientific web sites are freely accessible being often funded by public money like in the USA by the NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities). In the UK and in the USA many editors are offering primary sources online at a high subscription price for libraries.
Subscribed commercial databases versus free accessible and public resources. Examples of companies with important primary historical sources, all periods
Chadwyck-Healey: ThePatrologia Latina Database is an electronic version of the first edition of Jacques-Paul Migne's Patrologia Latina, published between 1844 and 1855, and the four volumes of indexes published between 1862 and 1865. The Patrologia Latina comprises the works of the Church Fathers from Tertullian in 200 AD to the death of Pope Innocent III in 1216
Proquest/Chadwyck-Healey: EEBO "From the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War, Early English Books Online (EEBO) will contain over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard and Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640), Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700), the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661), and the Early English Tract Supplement - all in full digital facsimile from the Early English Books microfilm collection."
History matters - Reference Desk. "This feature provides annotated links to resources on standards, citing and evaluating Web sites, and understanding copyright and fair use laws as they apply to the use and creation of educational materials on the Web."
OAI - Open Archives Initiative - "The Open Archives Initiative develops and promotes interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content. OAI has its roots in the open access and institutional repository movements. Continued support of this work remains a cornerstone of the Open Archives program. Over time, however, the work of OAI has expanded to promote broad access to digital resources for eScholarship, eLearning, and eScience".
Are they some copyrights law that I have to follow to publish my essays with quotations from alreaady published materials ? Consult the University of Nothingham, SHERPA/RoMEO database, with support from JISC and the Wellcome Trust in the UK. "Publisher copyright policies & self-archiving. The majority of publishers support the right of academic authors to mount their own work online. Use this site to find a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement".
VCDH - Virginia Center for Digital History at the University of Virginia. The VCDH promotes the teaching and learning of history using digital technologies. Our research projects and outreach programs use the web to serve scholars and educators in universities, colleges, schools, and libraries around the world.
EEBO - Early English Books Online: (NOT FREE) "Collection of online text editions of works originally published 1473-1700, listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-title catalogue, Wing's Short title catalogue or the Thomason tracts. Titles in the collection cover literature, philosophy, politics, religion, geography, science and all other areas of human endeavor. Text (SGML/XML format) and images (gif files).
Partnership:
University of Michigan,
University of Oxford,
Council on Library and Information Resources,
Bell & Howell Information and Learning,
Proquest Information and Learning.
ECCO -
Eighteenth Century Collections Online, (NOT FREE) "can be used to access the digital images of every page of approximately 150,000 books published during the 18th Century. With full-text searching of about 33 million pages, the database allows researchers new methods of access to critical information in the fields of history, literature, religion, law, fine arts, science and more".
Compact Memory [Portal for Jewish Studies] - dem Wissenschaftsportal für Jüdische Studien. Besuchen Sie unsere Bibliothek, mit weit über 100 jüdischen Periodika zwischen 1806 und 1938.
BDHP - Bethlehem Digital History Project. "Honored in 2005 by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as one of the "best online resources for education in the humanities", the Bethlehem Digital History Project provides online access to digitized primary source materials, transcriptions, translations and contextual information relating to the early history of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1741 – 1844. It is the aim of this project to encourage broad or specialized exploration of local, regional and national history."
Need a subscription Historical Newspapers, "a website for historians that provides valuable reference material for students of nineteenth- and twentieth-century history" is available only after subscribing like many primary sources databases.
Need a subscription EEBO - Early English Books Online: "Collection of online text editions of works originally published 1473-1700, listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-title catalogue, Wing's Short title catalogue or the Thomason tracts. Titles in the collection cover literature, philosophy, politics, religion, geography, science and all other areas of human endeavor. Text (SGML/XML format) and images (gif files).
Partnership:
University of Michigan,
University of Oxford,
Council on Library and Information Resources,
Bell & Howell Information and Learning,
Proquest Information and Learning.
Need a subscription ECCO -
Eighteenth Century Collections Online, can be used to access the digital images of every page of approximately 150,000 books published during the 18th Century. With full-text searching of about 33 million pages, the database allows researchers new methods of access to critical information in the fields of history, literature, religion, law, fine arts, science and more.
Historical Newspapers is a website for historians that provides valuable reference material for students of nineteenth- and twentieth-century history.
Using newspaper coverage and indexes to some of the best news coverage across two continents and two centuries, Historical Newspapers creates a fascinating window on the past.... Historical Newspapers will expand continually to provide further primary and secondary historical sources". (Not a free resource)
N I N E S a networked infrastructure for nineteenth-century electronic scholarship
Contemporary
Compact Memory [Portal for Jewish Studies] - dem Wissenschaftsportal für Jüdische Studien. Besuchen Sie unsere Bibliothek, mit weit über 100 jüdischen Periodika zwischen 1806 und 1938.
The Brown University Women Writers Project has been working for over fifteen years on building an electronic collection of early women's writing, and on researching the complex issues involved in representing early printed texts in digital form. As the publisher of Women Writers Online, the WWP now supports the work of innumerable faculty, students, and readers at hundreds of institutions from around the world, by providing access to rare materials by women that otherwise would go unread and untaught.
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WWW-VL HISTORY: PRIMARY SOURCES