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In the field of history, a primary source is something that was created or written at the time of the historical event, such as a letter, speech, eyewitness testimony, etc. Do an Advanced Search for your subject, person or event in the library database. On the Results page, you can filter or limit the results by Document types like audio, image, interview, letter, news, video, etc., depending on what your teacher allows you to submit as a primary source. The history databases might have Document type: primary sources for some topics.
In fields such as sociology when you are looking for a primary source you are looking for an article where the author(s) have actually conducted original research. When you are searching in one of the library databases, such as ProQuest Research Library, there is unfortunately no button you can check off in order to find only primary source articles (although you can check off the "peer-reviewed" button... but not all articles from peer-reviewed journals are actually primary sources). Instead, you have to look at the article itself.
A primary source source article will often begin with a literature review, where the author(s) talk about other related research that has already been done. Then the author(s) will describe their methodology for the study they are doing. For example, they might talk about how many people they interviewed and how they located their interview subjects. Then they will talk about their results, analyze them, make conclusions. They do NOT just write about research other people have done.
One clue when you are looking at search results in the database is that these articles normally are not very short. A primary source article is usually at least 5 pages long, often much longer. Peer-reviewed articles that are shorter than that are often book reviews or editorials, neither of which would be considered a primary source.
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