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World Civilizations Research Guide

Types of Sources

Primary Sources          

Primary Sources are:

First hand, immediate accounts from people who experienced an historical event or topic. 

Examples of primary sources are: photographs,  memoirs and autobiographies, government documents from the given time period, letters and diaries, artifacts, newspaper and magazine articles from the given time period, interviews, oral histories, and maps from the given time period. 

Secondary

Sources

Secondary Sources are:

works created by people who DID NOT experience an historical event or topic. Often times secondary sources use and analyze primary sources to back up their arguments.  

Examples of Secondary Sources are: academic research articles, scholarly books, biographies.

World History Research Databases

Primary Source Resources

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Accessing NYT Times Machine:

1. If you have never accessed the NYT before, you MUST register for an account by going to https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/digitalpass.  NYT digital Pass will send a message to your PREP GMAIL, likely to your promotions inbox. Click on the link sent to your email and fill out any requested information. You are now ready to log into the NYT and Times Machine  through your Prep Gmail. 

2. Go to https://www.nytimes.com/ to access articles from January 1 2003 to current and sign in using your Prep Gmail. 

3. Go to https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser to access any archival New York Times articles from 1851-2002. 

NewsBank America's Historical Newspapers

This source gives you access to newspaper articles, advertisements and documents written from 1690-2000. Use the keyword search or historical timeline to help you. 

NewsBank Access World News 

This source gives you access to a large variety of GLOBAL news articles and videos from periodicals and news sites across the world going from 1980-current.