Finding Primary Sources
Sources can be found numerous classes of historical record. This page lists a variety of such classes and offers links to resources for exploring them.
- Searching in HOLLIS
- Archival Records
- Bibliographies
- Digital Libraries and Collections
- Diaries and Other Personal Writings
- Film
- Government Documents
- HathiTrust
- Images
- Immigration Sources
- Literature
- Magazines
- Newspapers
- Oral Histories
It is important to find the proper Subject terms for your topic and use them as well as any keywords that occur to you. This is discussed on the HOLLIS page. Any pertinent book published during your era may be a primary source, but certain kinds of primary sources, including originally unpublished sources such as letters and diaries, have particular terms attached to their Subject terms in a HOLLIS record. These are listed on the HOLLIS page and explained below. Change Anywhere to Subject for cleanest results. For this kind of search, limit to Books under Resource Type in the left-hand column of your results page.
Find bibliographies in HOLLIS+ by searching your keyword plus the word Bibliography (which must be limited to Subject).
Diaries and Other Personal Writings
To find them in HOLLIS search: ("Chinese Americans" OR "Chinese United States") AND (diaries OR archives OR correspondence OR narratives). The Subject term Biography will retrieve a mixture of biographies and autobiographies.
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories (1800-1950.) includes 342 authors and approximately 37,500 pages of information, illustrating what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada.
Autobiographies by Americans of color 1980-1994: an annotated bibliography, by Rebecca Stuhr-Rommereim. Troy, NY: Whitston, 1997.
LOCATION: Widener: WID-LC CT220.Z99 S78 1997x
--Lists 499 autobiographies of persons of African, Asian, Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Native American heritage with brief summaries. Reprints of pre1980 works are included but usually not annotated. Index includes countries of origin, topics, occupations and names, but not titles.
--Continued by Autobiographies by Americans of color, 1995-2000: an annotated bibliography, by Deborah Stuhr Iwabuchi & Rebecca Stuhr. Albany, NY: Whitston Pub. Co., 2003.
LOCATION: Widener Harvard Depository CT220.Z99
--Lists 674 autobiographies including items missed in the earlier volume. Includes some persons of Middle Eastern heritage.
To find more collections of primary sources, search Sources as a Subject keyword.Sources usually refers to published collections of primary sources of several different types.
Chinese AND immigration AND Sources [Use caps for AND]
Since Sources is a common word, 'Limit to: Subject' eliminates many irrelevant results.
American West
Annexation Of Hawaii: A Collection Of Documents
Asian Americans and Seattle's Civil Rights History offers oral histories, photographs, maps, documents.
Calisphere offers primary sources from California repositories.
Digital History of Asian-American History (University of Houston).
Survey of Race Relations Results of a 1924-1927 Stanford University study on the Chinese, Japanese, and other non-European residents of the US and Canadian Pacific Coast.
Racism, dissent, and Asian Americans from 1850 to the present : a documentary history, ed. by Philip S. Foner and Daniel Rosenberg. Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 1993, 311 p.
HOLLIS Record
The Columbia documentary history of the Asian American experience, ed. by Franklin Odo. New York : Columbia University Press, 2002, 590 p.
HOLLIS Record
Yellow peril! : an archive of anti-Asian fear, ed. by John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yeats. London ; New York : Verso, 2014, 384 pages
Subject: Asian Americans in popular culture -- History -- Sources.;
Asian Americans -- History -- Sources.;
Xenophobia -- United States -- History -- Sources.;
Racism -- United States -- History -- Sources.;
United States -- Race relations -- Sources.
HOLLIS Record
Visual Communications: Historypin (1970s- ) offers films of Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities. Includes films of anti-war movements, political and cultural events, and labor demonstrations, and other matters.
Government documents are publications intended to be released to the public.
The great majority of U.S. and foreign government documents and the publications of international organizations are housed in the Government Documents/Microforms Collection of Lamont. Reference expertise is also available there. Many government documents are not represented in the HOLLIS Catalog.
This is a very useful source, containing the reports of Congressional committees and hearings:
ProQuest Congressional provides indexing for Congressional publications dating from 1790 to the present. Post-1970, full-text access is often available. Publications included are Committee Hearings, House and Senate Documents, House and Senate Reports, Senate Executive Reports, Senate Executive Treaty Documents, Legislative Histories, Serial Set Maps, Serial Set. More information.
HeinOnline U.S. Congressional Documents provides full-text access to the published debates, proceedings and speeches of the U.S. Congress, including the Annals of Congress(1789-1824), Register of Debates (1824-1837), Congressional Globe (1833-1873) and the Congressional Record (1873 to present).
United States Commission on Civil Rights : reports on Asian Pacific Americans, ed. by Gabriel J. Chin. Buffalo, N.Y. : W.S. Hein, 2005. 4 v.
Subject:Asian Americans -- Civil rights -- History -- 20th century -- Sources.;
Pacific Islander Americans -- Civil rights -- History -- 20th century -- Sources.
HOLLIS Record
Table of contents
Reports online
--Collected Asian American reports, 1975-2001
HathiTrust Digital Library includes a searchable database of digitized books and periodicals contributed by numerous libraries. Includes items contributed by these libraries to Google Books and to Internet Archive but with some unique material. Each full text item is linked to a standard library catalog record, thus providing good metadata. The catalog can be searched separately. Globally full text searchable, like Google Books but unlike Internet Archive. Full text is fully viewable.
California Heritage Collection: Bancroft Library image collection
Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930 offers material from Harvard libraries, archives, and museums.
Immigration : records of the INS, 1880-1930
HOLLIS Record
In HOLLIS the following terms are found on literary works and works of literary scholarship.
American literature -- Korean American authors.
Korean American literature -- United States.
Korean Americans – Fiction (or Drama, or Poetry) refers to literary works
Korean Americans -- In literature refers to literary scholarship
Korean Americans -- Literary Collections
For literary scholarship:
- Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature: ABELL (1920- ) includes book reviews of literary works as well as literary criticism.
- MLA International Bibliography (1926- )
For coverage in popular periodicals see Finding Articles in General and Popular Periodicals (North America and Western Europe)
National Online Directory of Ethnic Media of New America Media, and organization of ethnic news organizations.
Chronicling America, enhancing access to historic American newspapers (1836-1922) (Library of Congress) offers searchable full text. Also includes the valuable U.S. Newspaper Directory, 1690-Present, in which searches can be limited by language and ethnicity.
Ethnic American Newspapers from the Balch Collection (1799-1971) in America’s Historical Newspapers. Title list (In Quick Facts & Overview box on the right). The titles marked Forthcoming are in fact available now. Asian newspapers are largely Japanese.
Ethnic NewsWatch (1959- ) offers full-text of 90 newspapers and other periodicals (1990- ) and of 30 African American, Hispanic American, and Native American newspapers and other periodicals (1959-1989). Includes book/film/television reviews. Lists of periodicals by ethnicity.
Nikkei Newspapers Digital Archive offers North American Times (1902-1942) and North American Post (1946-1950), published primarily in Japanese, with occasional, and then regularly appearing, pages published in English. Translation summaries (English) are provided for some front page stories.
For general newspaper coverage, see Guide to Newspapers and Newspaper Indexes.
Oral History Online offers oral histories. Includes 364 interviews with persons of Asian or Pacific Islander descent.