Citing Primary Sources

Because of the wide array of things archival researchers need to cite, style guides offer more flexibility in citing rare materials than they do for articles or recent books. At the same time, you need to provide detailed citations that provide the information a future researcher would need to find their way to the same item you saw. In your citation you’ll want to include as many of these elements as you can:

• Item creator and description
• Item date
• Item location
• Collection name
• Holding library

This guide is based on the Chicago Manual of Style, but those basic elements will be the same, no matter which style guide you’re using.

Other Style Guides

Need more advice on citing archival items using MLA or APA? Here’s what they have to say:

• MLA Style Center: A Guide to Citing Material from Physical Archives and Collections
• MLA Style Center: Citing Artifacts in a Digital Archive
• APA Style: Archival Documents and Collections

Item Creator & Description: Who created the item you’re using and what is it? The creator could be the person who wrote a letter, an organization that created a flier, or a business which produced an advertisement. Sometimes the creator of an item may be the same as the creator of the collection you found it in, but just as often it’s someone else. 

Many items in archives don’t have a clear title, but you’ll still need to identify the item you used so a future researcher will know they’re looking at the same item you did. You'll want to give a title or description, and possibly the type or format of the item. 

Item Date: When was this item created? Sometimes it's easy and there's a clear date on your item. If it doesn't have a date, include your best guess using “ca.” to indicate “circa” or put the date in brackets. If you really can't tell, it's okay to use "n.d." to indicate "no date."

Item location: Where did you find this? This may be the name or number of the folder, the particular series within a collection, and/or the number of the box or volume you found this document in. Some of our collections are big! Give others a clue where to look.

Collection Name: The full name of the collection you're working with. You can find this at the top of a collection guide or in the catalog record. It’s probably on the physical box as well, but double check because sometimes we use abbreviations on boxes or names get changed. For digital collections, this will be the title of the digital collection. Our digital collections list this in the right sidebar.

Holding Library: The library, archive, or institution where you saw the item you’re citing. Depending on the collections you're using here, this will be "Duke University Archives, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University" or just "David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University." If you're not sure, check the collection guide or ask us. Some institutions (Yale University, Library of Congress, many others) have more than one affiliated archives, so be specific. For well known-institutions you don’t need to provide the location, but do include it if it’s a repository with multiple locations, like the National Archives, or if it could be confused with another institution.  

Gratefully adapted from a guide created by Maureen Callahan, Smith College Special Collections