The UT Tyler Libraries Catalog includes circulating books, reference books, books on microfilm and microfiche, state documents, and thousands of e-books.
You may search for personal names (Elizabeth I), broad subjects (Great Britain--History--Tudors, 1485-1603), or topical ones (Palaces--England--History--16th century). To get the most hits and narrow down later, do a keyword search for Tudor England.
The call number range for Tudor England is generally DA300-DA360, although special topics, like Shakespeare or art of the Tudor era, will be in other areas.
EEBO, or Early English Books Online, will be your most important source of primary materials for Tudor England. This database "contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700--from the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War."
Since spellings have changed between 1473 and today, be sure to check the variant spellings box and consider if you need to check the variant forms box. If you want to choose for yourself, enter the modern spelling and click on Check for variants.
If you want to take advantage of assigned subject headings or uniform titles of works, look at Subject Keywords and click on the adjacent Select from a list.
You may sort your results by alphabetically by author or by title, or oldest first or newest first.
Results may be seen as the bibliographic record, a document image, an illustration, a full text (easier to search for a particular word or copy and paste), thumbnails for the entire document, and there's even an option for interactions among users, but not all documents have that.
You may mark a set of documents to go to a list which can then be emailed, printed, or saved.
“A primary source is firsthand testimony or direct evidence concerning a topic under investigation. The nature and value of a source cannot be determined without reference to the topic and questions it is meant to answer. The same document, or other piece of evidence, may be a primary source in one investigation and secondary in another. The search for primary sources does not, therefore, automatically include or exclude any category of records or documents.” (Yale University Library)
Primary sources may include diaries, letters, speeches, autobiographies, personal narratives, eyewitness accounts, memoirs, or government documents. They may be published or unpublished, printed or handwritten, on microfilm or fiche or online.
Start your search in the UT Tyler catalog with a subject or keyword subject, then enter one of the following words as a separate subject, then click on search.
Sources [will pull up collections of documents]
Diaries
Correspondence
Personal narratives
You may also want to try for certain keywords in the title, usually the subtitle, such as "documentary history," "letters," or "papers." You will almost certainly get some false hits, but you can weed through them.