Finding Primary Sources

Page history last edited by Betsy Cawley 1 year, 11 months ago

Finding Primary Sources

Suggested Sources:

The Making of America (American books & magazines from the 19th century)
Hudson Valley River Heritage
EuroDocs (a portal for connecting to a multitude of sites with documents relating to European history in their original languages and in translation)
The New York Times (from 1851 to three years ago)
LexisNexis Academic (for newspaper articles from the 1990s to yesterday)
The Avalon Project (documents in American history)
Gallica (documents in the National Library of France)
The American Memory Project
In the First Person (an index to personal narratives)
Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive
Primary Source Documents in Early American History (be careful, this is a list of links on a constitutionalist website, some of the links are broken)
Parallel Histories: Spain, the United States and the American Frontier (A bilingual, multi-format English-Spanish digital library site that explores the interactions between Spain and the United States in America from the fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries.)
Rochambeau Map Collection (The Rochambeau Map Collection contains cartographic items used by Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau (1725-1807), when he was commander in chief of the French expeditionary army (1780-82) during the American Revolution. The maps were from Rochambeau's personal collection, cover much of eastern North America, and date from 1717 to 1795. The maps show Revolutionary-era military actions, some of which were published in England and France, and early state maps from the 1790s.)
Virtual Jamestown
The TransAtlantic Slave Trade Database: Voyages

Archival Collections:

ArchiveGrid (search for historical documents, personal papers, and family histories held in archives around the world)
National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections

Mid-20th Century Periodicals Titles in our collection

(most are indexed in the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature)

American Historical Review 1928-
American Mercury 1929-54, 1957-58
American Review 1933-35
Business Week 1950-1981,1984-
Century Magazine’s Scribner’s Monthly 1882-1930
Christian Century 1934-
Commonweal 1927-1985,1987-1988,1992-
Current History 1941-1996,1981-
Fortnightly Review 1865-1931
Fortune 1930-1997,1999-
Golden Book 1926-1931
Atlantic 1857- (also called Atlantic Monthly)
Harper’s 1913- (also called Harper’s Monthly, Harper’s Magazine, etc.)
Holiday 1949-1956,1957-1966,1967-1970
International Conciliation 1911-1972
Monthly Labor Review 1915-
Musical Quarterly 1915-1922,1924-1984,1985-1992, 1993-
National Geographic 1912-1920,1921-
Nature 1922-1932,1957-1960,{1961-1964 microfilm}, 1964-
New Outlook 1932-1934
North American Review 1835-1839,1868,1880-1881,1910-1940,{1915-1969 microfilm},1970-1994,1997-
Poetry 1921-1954,1956-
Political Science Quarterly 1924-1997,2000-
Life 1936-1972
Nation {1865-1965,1978-2005 microfilm} 1965-
New Republic 1914-1979,1981-2005-
Review of Reviews 1892-1897,1929-1931
Saturday Review of Literature 1924-51
Saturday Review, 1952-72, 1972-81, 1976, 1978-86
Science 1927-
Scribner’s {1901-1939 microfilm}
Theatre Arts Monthly 1934-1947
Time 1923-
Virginia Quarterly Review 1941-
Vital Speeches of the Day 1948-1987
Wilson Bulletin 1942-1956,1959,1961-1970
Yale Review 1911-1928,1930-1990 {1982-1995 microfilm}

"Primary sources are original records created at the time historical events occurred or well after events in the form of memoirs and oral histories. Primary sources may include letters, manuscripts, diaries, journals, newspapers, speeches, interviews, memoirs, documents produced by government agencies such as Congress or the Office of the President, photographs, audio recordings, moving pictures or video recordings, research data, and objects or artifacts such as works of art or ancient roads, buildings, tools, and weapons. These sources serve as the raw material to interpret the past, and when they are used along with previous interpretations by historians, they provide the resources necessary for historical research." (from http://www.lib.washington.edu/subject/History/RUSA/)

Finding primary sources in our library:

Our collection is a rich repository of primary sources. From the papers of the presidents to Supreme Court decisions to interviews in documentaries to historical journals, make sure you search our catalog and ConnectNY as well as the online sources listed above.

Finding primary sources on the web:

The websites listed above are collections of documents, oral histories, photographs, etc. An excellent guide to finding and evaluating primary sources on the web can be found at http://www.lib.washington.edu/subject/History/RUSA/ .

Finding primary sources outside our library:

Archives are collections of unique, original documents organized by donor and subject matter. The contents of many archives are cataloged on ArchiveGrid and National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC). Once records of documents in a collection are found, a researcher usually contacts the archive to arrange a time to visit. Each archive has its own rules about how its materials may be handled. Make sure you understand and are prepared to do your research within the constraints of the institution you are visiting.

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Tips:

To use any of our indexes and databases (except our catalog and ConnectNY) from off campus, click here. Type in the number under the barcode on the back of your ID as the username. The password is library . You'll get an alphabetical list of our indexes and databases. Click on the title you want.

Spelling counts! A foreign title or name, particularly from a culture that does not use the Roman alphabet, may have a couple of different alternate spellings. Make use of truncation and wildcards. If you know (or want to guess at) a couple of spellings, connect them with an 'or' Boolean operator.

Make sure you read the notes and bibliographies of the articles and books that you find. Our databases and indexes are limited temporally and in the number of periodicals they cover. The bibliographies and notes in books, reference sources and journal articles will include sources outside the scope of our resources and, by seeing the same articles and authors mentioned again and again, will point you toward the important work in a field (something our indexes and databases do not indicate).

When you’ve found a subject heading in our catalog, or in ConnectNY that seems well-suited to your research, note it. You can use it in other databases like WorldCat, ProjectMUSEor The History E-Book Project.

Don’t forget to talk to your professor and to ask a librarian if you need help finding sources (or even if you just want to make sure you’ve covered all your bases).

Warnings:

Read everything critically, but especially scholarship that comes from unvetted sources, specifically Web sites. Scholarly publications like those found in JSTOR, and ProjectMUSE or in the History indexes listed on our websites publish articles that have been reviewed by experts. Anyone can put anything on a web site.

Wikipedia can be a great resource, but double check the information you get from it, and don’t include it in your bibliography. It’s not the definitive kind of resource that, say The Encyclopedia Britannica is.

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Finding Primary Sources

Finding Primary Sources

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