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HIST 232: Medieval Lives (Bush): Primary Sources

Spring 2025

Working with Primary Sources

Searching

  • Keep your searches simple, and be creative with your search terms. How did people in the period you are researching speak and write?  What words would they have used to describe events or ideas? Are there specific names or organizations that you can focus in on? 

  • Work with, not against, your search tools. Databases designed for primary sources often will let you narrow your search by features like publication date, geographic location, or type of source. 
     
  • Pay attention to the order of search results.  If your search is very broad or you get a lot of results, sorting by relevance can help you find starting places. But when looking at newspapers or other sources that might build on each other and create a story over time, you may want to sort Oldest to Newest instead! 
     
  • Don't just search -- browse! Keyword searching for primary sources can be imprecise, especially if you don't know exactly what you're looking for. Give yourself time to click in and out of sources you're unsure of, browse through the pages, and look at the context of sources like newspaper articles (what other stories appeared on the same day? what advertisements?) for maximum information. 
     
  • Pace yourself. Primary sources can take longer to find than academic articles. You may also need more time to decipher, digest, and interpret the content of your primary sources. Leave yourself plenty of time to do this work, and ask questions or for assistance earlier rather than later! 

Analyzing

Whose Voices?

Similarly to academic articles, there are some very general tools that you can use to search primary sources broadly. However, it is usually more productive to work out in advance....

Who do you want to hear from...

This could be a perspective, a category of people, a specific group/organization, a geographic area or country, etc.

...And where are they? 

Next, figure out where your voices "live" in the historical record. For example: 

  • The perspectives of an individual could live in letters or a personal memoir, among others. 
  • A monarch's perspectives could show up in places such as official acts or correspondence. 
  • Religious perspectives are likely to live either in church records or in books published and authorized by the church. 
  • etc. 

This page of the guide is designed to give you some starting points -- but you can also ask Jennifer or Prof. Bush for a recommendation! 

Collections of Primary Sources

Images: 

Reverse Image Searching 

Reverse image searching can be a powerful tool to locate comparanda (basically, sets of similar objects that can be studied and compared together). Reverse image searching can also help you find more information about images that you have found out of context, for example in a blog illustration. 

Tips for Reverse Image Searching

Books in the Visual Arts Wing 

Museum catalogs and other books focused on material culture can be helpful places to discover works of art relevant to your research project. 

The majority of books relating to religious and other medieval art, will be found in the N call number section. All books in this letter section are shelved in the Visual Arts Wing on the first floor of Dinand Library (from the side entrance, take an immediate right and go past the graphic novels). 

Books incl. Hagiography:

In the Library:

You can also find many kinds of primary sources in the library.  When using CrossSearch, you can check the Catalog box on the left navigation bar to only search for items in the library catalog.

The library owns a variety of hagiographies (lives of the saints). Most of the lives of the saints will be shelved under BX4650 to BX4705, beginning with compilations and then proceeding to lives of individual saints in alphabetical order. Some will also be available as ebooks. 

Other kinds of primary sources in the library could include editions of primary accounts/documents that were re-published later. You will find these in many different areas of the library depending on the 'theme' of the documents (for example: sourcebooks related to religion will be in the Bs, sourcebooks related to women and gender will be in the HQs, etc.). You may want to use the Library Catalog when searching for these sourcebooks, which will let you sort by general call number area.

Correspondence & Other 'Ephemera':

Religious Sources:

For more in-depth guidance on Church research: 

Misc. Web Archives: