Lakehead students, and faculty may request assistance with CRL resources.
First hand accounts of events, written by someone who experienced or witnessed the event in question. They are considered to be scholarly as the information presented is original and has not been analyzed, interpreted or commented upon.
Examples of primary sources include: books, magazines and newspapers articles published at the time, hand-written documents like diaries and journals, speeches, interviews, letters, memoirs, diaries, autobiographies, government agency records, records of organizations, pubic opinion polls, photographs, audio or video recordings, research data and artifacts of all kinds like physical objects, furniture, tools, clothing etc.
Primary Sources according to geographic location:
Canadiana Online identifies, catalogue, and digitizes documentary heritage—books, newspapers, periodicals, images and nationally-significant archival materials.
Monographs - spanning three and a half centuries of Canadian documentary history, holds rich primary materials exploring a wide range of subjects and disciplines. With a projected 84,000 titles by completion, this resource is the most comprehensive full-text searchable set of historical monographs currently available for the study of Canada.
Serials - includes a wide range of dailies, weeklies, specialized journals and mass-market magazines, as well as city directories and annual reports from churches, schools, and corporations. Specialized publications include trade or industry journals as well as many men’s, women’s, student’s and children’s popular magazines
Government Publications - includes over 1.7 million pages of historical pre-1920 colonial, provincial and federal government documents. This collection includes government acts, bills, committee reports, court rules, debates, journals, ordinances, a selection of official publications from France and Great Britain, sessional papers, regulations, royal commission reports, voter’s lists and treaties.
Canadiana Online is projected to digitalize the entire CIHM collection by the end of 2018.
The collection contains 115 of the Champlain Society's volumes (over 50,000 printed pages) dealing with exploration and discovery over three centuries. It includes first-hand accounts of Samuel de Champlain's voyages in New France, the diary from Sir John Franklin's first land expedition to the Arctic, 1819–22, plus many other fascinating stories.
This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers, and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society, and events of the time.
Includes 15 full-text Canadian Major Daily newspapers. Earliest coverage: 1977-
English-language sources relating to China and the West, 1793-1980. Includes maps, illustrations, diaries, essays etc.
A collection of original documents relating to Empire Studies, sourced from libraries and archives around the world.
Presents manuscripts of some of the most important works of European travel writing from the later medieval period.
A collection of 117 full-text humanities databases that make available cohesive collections of editions, in both original language and in English translation, of seminal figures in the humanities and social sciences.
A collection of original documents relating to Empire Studies, sourced from libraries and archives around the world.
British Social History, 1937-1972. insight into everyday life in the 1930s and 1940s.
Provides access to a vast body of original sources in Gender Studies.
A collection of 117 full-text humanities databases that make available cohesive collections of editions, in both original language and in English translation, of seminal figures in the humanities and social sciences.
A collection of original documents relating to Empire Studies, sourced from libraries and archives around the world.
CRL has almost four million rarely-held books, journals, pamphlets, newspapers, archival materials, theses and other sources from all regions of the globe. Because Lakehead University is a member of CRL, you can borrow primary research materials and rare publications relating to diverse topics like medieval studies, african history, comparative laws, world war II, etc.