Primary Sources for Historical Research

• Search Findit@ Bham for any ‘how to research’ guides or guides to sources in your area e.g. MacFarlane, Alan (1983) A Guide to English Historical Records. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press. Some of these might be quite old, but do not let that put you off using them as the still contain valuable information. 
   
• Find some good secondary sources i.e. books, textbooks, articles and the bibliographies and acknowledgements as these will tell you if the author has used primary sources and where they are located. 
   
• Find a thesis on your topic and use the bibliography and acknowledgements. See our Tracing Theses guide.
   
• If you are researching a particular individual consult Oxford Dictionary of National Biography  If you are researching art history or music use Oxford Art Online or Oxford Music Online.
   
• Visit the National Archives website.
   
• Visit the History Records section on the third floor of the Main Library which houses printed version of many official documents and guides to conducting historical research. See our guide to Finding History Records.

The Main Library houses a collection of original documents and modern copies in the History Records Collection on the third floor. It is a reference collection of c. 3,500 volumes comprising a wide range of both source and bibliographic material, including:

• The Victoria County Histories
• Rolls Series
• Journals of both Houses of Parliament,
• Royal Historical Society Bibliography
• Guides to research materials

Not everything has survived. Items have been lost, stolen, damaged or destroyed.

Not all items are where you would expect to find them. Collections of personal papers may have been split either through inheritance or purchase and be housed in separate locations. For example State Papers  have ended up in the following repositories: 

• State Paper Office
• Colonial Office
• British Library
• Cecil Papers at Hatfield House
• Lambeth Palace

Unpublished primary sources 

Unpublished primary sources are usually contained in archives and are found using catalogues such as the Cadbury Research Library Archive Catalogue. (Opens a new website.)

Archives are arranged in a different way from libraries and their catalogues reflect this. The items are arranged according to provenance, i.e. material created and/or collected by an individual or organisation are kept together.

Note: It is not always possible to identify all individual items in an archive collection as sometimes the items are only indexed at ‘collection level’ i.e. ‘A. N. Other: Correspondence’      

The Cadbury Research Library houses many primary sources in a variety of formats. Guide to archive and manuscript collections in the Cadbury Research library (Opens a new website.)

Location Register of English Literary Manuscripts and Letters
'Over the decades the Location Register of English Literary Manuscripts and Letters has established itself as a standard reference source for the study of English literature and includes information about the manuscript holdings of British and Irish repositories of all sizes and about literary authors of all genres, from major poets to minor science fiction writers and romantic novelists.' 

Published primary sources 

Published primary sources which include edited copies of manuscripts in archives, are usually found in libraries using library catalogues such as the University of Birmingham’s  FindIt@Bham  (Opens a new website.) or  a union catalogue such as Library Hub Discover (Opens a new website.) which searches the holdings of over libraries in the UK. 

Digitised archive collections

Libraries and Learning Resources subscribes to a wide range of online primary sources containing digitised copies of documents, letters, photographs and sound recordings.

See  Digitised collections to discover a selection of the  major primary sources collections the library subscribes to.  Use the Database Search option in FindIt@Bham for a comprehensive list of our subscriptions.

To find books by publication date 

To find books and journal articles published during a particular time period, e.g. books written about Birmingham during the nineteenth century:

Go to  FindIt @Bham 

Search for topic e.g. Birmingham

In the column on the right of the screen scroll down to date and fill in the date range you require and click apply:

To find letters, diaries, biography, correspondence, interviews, oral history, memoirs, pamphlets, speeches.

Go to  FindIt @Bham 

click on Advanced Search

• Enter the keyword(s) for the individual or topic you are interested in e.g. Iris Murdoch
• In the next Keyword field add a primary source e.g. diaries

Note this search will only find published diaries such as

​Murdoch, I. (2010) A writer at war : letters & diaries 1939-45 / Iris Murdoch; edited & introduced by Peter J. Conradi, London: London : Short Books.

Archival resources for the history of the West Midlands (PDF 1000 KB)

• Archives Hub
  A gateway to thousands of the UK’s archives
• The National Archives
• British Library
• Wellcome Library
  Major collection of manuscripts and archives on the history of medicine in Britain.
• Europeana 
  Explore over 50,000 artworks, artefacts, books, films and music from European museums, galleries, libraries and archives
• Location Register of English literary manuscripts and letters
  Includes information about the manuscript holdings of British and Irish repositories of all sizes, from the British Library to small-town museums, and about literary authors of all genres, from major poets to minor science fiction writers and romantic novelists.