 This is our workshop for primary sources. Before we get started, I do just want to let you all know that this session is being recorded. So if you unmute yourself during the first 30 minutes of the workshop, your name and camera will be included. So if you prefer not to have that information included in the recording, then you have two options. You can either ask questions through chat or make comments, or you can wait until the end of the workshop when we stop the recording and ask any questions you have. So I'm Kayleigh Dunn and my colleague doing this with me is Sarah Johnson. I prefer she her pronoun. I am a graduate student at the University of Tennessee in the Leverent Information Science program. And I'm also a supervisor at Hodges Library of Public Services. So basically that just means that I work the public services desk and I assist with research assistance. And then Sarah as I also prefer she her pronoun and she's a commons librarian and she's going to kind of tell you a little what she does. Yes, I put a jack of all trades because it's I do a little with a lot of different things. So public services research, instruction, engagement, that kind of stuff. So yeah, jack of all trades is way easier to put down on a slide. Okay, perfect. So today we will be covering what primary sources are, how to use them in your research, and some places that you can go to find them. So we'll start off with what is a primary source? A primary source is an original object or document that's created, distributed, or called by a person who had personal experience of an event or subject. Essentially, it just primary sources give firsthand experience of a topic that you've chosen. When you're using primary sources, it's helpful to ask yourself what information are you do you need for your research, what is the source telling you, and how are you using the source. This can be helpful because sometimes primary sources can be used as secondary sources, and secondary sources can be used as primary sources. So just to give context, a secondary source describes, analyzes, interprets, or synthesizes information about an event. So how those two can sometimes be confused or how they can be interchangeably depends on what your topic is and what you're researching. For instance, a magazine is usually a secondary source, but to a researcher who's studying American food magazines during the 80s, it's a primary source. Basically, the magazine is acting, is giving context to the time and it's giving information about the time period that it's being used as opposed to how it's usually used as a secondary source. So I did want to give a few examples of primary sources that you can get that would be beneficial to any kind of research that you're using. So for instance, you could use ads, diaries, interviews, letters, maps, newspapers, certain objects from time periods can also be helpful. Photos, even surprisingly enough, tweets can be used as primary sources, political cartoons, videos, speeches, and even pieces of art. If it's giving representation of the time period that you're using it in, then it's going to add to your research. So when do you use primary sources? You want to use primary sources to help build a historical research and it's usually the foundation for the argument that you're making. For instance, in 102 courses, you will be asked to do an archive or an archival paper. All that's asking you to do is to take primary sources and make that the basis for your paper. You want to use those primary sources to build and enhance the argument and the research that you're using. So the librarians at UT have tried to make this a little easier for students and make primary sources easy to find and to use. So we have a few databases and research guides that are helpful to help you find any primary sources. For instance, we have a primary source research guide, which gives different databases and then we have specifically just databases in the special collection. And so really quickly I'm going to show you all where you can find those on the library homepage. So I have to give me just a second so I can stop sharing and switch screens. Okay, perfect. So you should see the library homepage now. So all you have to do to get to the library homepage is just go to lib.utk.edu and this is the page that I'll call that. So once you're here, you'll want to scroll down and then you'll see a few different sections here. There is find materials and then there's research. We are going to use the articles and databases because this is going to get us where we need to go. You can also go to research guides and get directly to some of these guides as well. But you're going to click on articles and databases. Perfect. And then this is also kind of divvied up and sectioned off. So you have your most popular subject and type. For primary sources, it's easiest to just use the type because we have this handy link here that leads you directly to primary sources. And these in yellow are kind of your best bets. They're the ones that most people use most often and are going to give you some of the better results. But this list is extensive but not exhaustive. So there are plenty of others that you can use based off of your subject matter topic that you've chosen and what argument or interpretation you're taking. But this is kind of newer to this database resource page because over here is like some of the research guides dedicated to primary sources. And we have everything from the Spanish blue to Appalachia to Civil War. And these are going to be actual research guides that will give you helpful information and hints and databases specific to your topic. But here's one specifically for primary sources. And this research guide was created to try and make primary source finding easier for you. And so they're all done by type, by subject matter, but then you can also do by type. So if you're newspapers, magazines, images, even videos, and then here's a few helpful guides for how to cite primary sources because they can get a little bit tricky sometimes. And this is also just related guides. Special Collections is a great place to get primary sources from. And so is the newspaper guide. So I'm going to switch back over to our PowerPoint slideshow. Perfect. So that's how you get to some of these research guides. And then if you want to learn more than what was in this workshop, there is a first year composition research guide, which gives information about primary sources, secondary sources, how to cite things and just how to use databases in general. And then if you want a little extra practice, there is this primary versus secondary sources tutorial, and it'll give you a chance, a hands-on chance to test what you know and to learn a little bit more. That's the end of our workshop. I do ask that you guys take this survey. If you need proof of independence, you will find it at the end of the survey. So you can use either the link that's here, or you can use this little nifty QR code that we've got. And then, of course, we ask that you join us next week for our workshop on how to use the studio. And then if you want to see a full list of all of our workshops for the rest of the semester, you can go to this link here and you can register and see what we've got.