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

To find books, periodicals, manuscripts, videos, etc., on a topic in HOLLIS, put in likely keywords and choose Library Catalog.  Look at pertinent records and find the terms under Subject. For example, searching epidemics surveillance yields

The politics of surveillance and response to disease outbreaks: the new frontier for states and non-state actors, ed. by Sara E. Davies and Jeremy R. Youde. Farnham, Surrey, UK England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015, 192 pages.
Subjects:
Public health surveillance -- International cooperation
Epidemics
World health
Med. subject:
Public Health Surveillance
Epidemics
Global Health
International Cooperation
HOLLIS Record

Note that there are two sets of Subject terms for medicine.

  • Library of Congress labeled: Subject
  • National Library of Medicine (called MeSH) labeled Med. subject

Under Refine my results: Subject on the right of the results list there are more main terms (Communicable diseases, Disease outbreaks, Emerging infectious diseases) to try. NOTE: If you hit one of the terms in this Subject list, HOLLIS will find records with the term, say  Emerging infectious diseases, only on records in the set originally formed by searching epidemics surveillance

Redo your search using the terms that HOLLIS uses.    Also, go to Starts with.../Browse (top black band) and put in Epidemics adjusting to Browse by Subject.  This is very useful in breaking down a large subject and in giving you more subdivisions (the words after the --), which can be applied to other Subject terms, to search.  Thus:

  • Epidemics -- Prevention
  • Influenza -- Prevention
  • Epidemics -- Prevention

Whenever you have a reference to a useful book, look it up in HOLLIS and see what the Subject terms are.

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book published during your era may be a primary source, but certain kinds of primary sources, including originally unpublished sources such as letters and diaries published later, have particular terms attached to their Subject terms in a HOLLIS record.  Change Any field to Subject for cleanest results.   

  • --Archives
  • --Correspondence
  • --Description and travel
  • --Diaries
  • --Interviews
  • --Manuscripts
  • --Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc.
  • --Oral histories--Personal narratives (refers to accounts of wars and diseases only)
  • --Sources (usually refers to collect>ons of published primary sources)

Example:
Subject exact phrase: Women physicians
AND
Subject contains: Archives OR Correspondence OR Diaries OR Manuscripts OR Sources OR Narratives OR Interviews OR Oral

When you find a pertinent book, go to Starts With.../Browse and put in the call number, adjusting the menu to Library of Congress (Wid-LC) or Other. This shows you other books on the same subject, even though they may be in storage or checked out.

See the Library Research Guide for History and the HOLLIS Help guide for more information on searching HOLLIS.

Bibliographies

Biological Woman-the Convenient Myth: A Collection of Feminist Essays and a Comprehensive Bibliography, ed. by R. M. Hubbard, R., M. S. Henifin, and B. Fried. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Pub. Co., 1982, 376 pp.
--Bibliography: Women, Science, and Health, by M. S. Henifin and J. C. Amatniek, pp. 288-376.
--Largely secondary and recent primary works but with some 19th-early 20th century primary material.

Women and Sexuality in America: A Bibliography, by N. A. Sahli. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, 1984, 404 pp.
Schlesinger Ref. 016.3067 S13w
Widener WID-LC HQ29.Z99 S23 x, 1984 (In Library Use)
--19th - 20th century coverage. Annotated book citations, unannotated journal article citations. Grouped under general topics with author/title and subject indexes. Includes medical, scientific, psychoanalytic, sociological, and popular works.

Girls in schools: a bibliography of research on girls in U.S. public schools, kindergarten through grade 12 / developed at the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women ; Susan M. Bailey, director. Wellesley, Mass. : The Center, 1992?, 126 p.
Gutman Education LC1752 G57 1992
Schlesinger Harvard Depository -- contact library to request 016.37 W451g
--Subject terms:
----Women -- Education -- United States -- Bibliography
----Educational equalization -- United States -- Bibliography
----Sex differences in education -- United States -- Bibliography.

Davis, A. B. 1974. Bibliography on Women: with Special Emphasis on their Roles in Science and Society. NY: Science History Publications, 50 pp.
Schlesinger Harvard Depository -- contact library to request 016.301 D26b
Widener WID-LC HQ1397.Z99 D38x
HOLLIS Record

Body history: a repertory = Körpergeschichte : ein Repertorium, by Barbara Duden. Wolfenbüttel: Tandem, 1990, 320 p.
HOLLIS Record
--A bibliography, subject indexed, on the cultural history of the body.

Find bibliographies in HOLLIS Library Catalog by searching your keyword plus the word Bibliography (which must be limited to Subject).

Subject contains: "Communicable diseases" OR "Disease outbreaks"
AND
Subject contains: Bibliography

Diaries and Other Personal Accounts

Personal Accounts in HOLLIS and WorldCat: In the HOLLIS Library Catalog Advanced Search and WorldCat, several Subject terms refer to personal accounts.  Combine topical keywords with  the Subject words: Narratives, Diaries, Correspondence, Interviews, Oral history (or Oral histories)

Narratives is short for Personal narratives which refers to accounts of wars and of diseases.

In HOLLIS:

Subject contains: Epidemiologists
AND
Subject contains: sources OR narratives OR diaries OR correspondence OR interviews OR oral

Autobiographies usually bear only the Subject term Biography. Sometimes the terms Autobiographies or Autobiography is present.

In HOLLIS:

Subject contains: Epidemiologists
AND
Subject contains: biography OR autobiograph*

Oral History Online indexes oral history collections, with links to interview-level bibliographic records and to full-text materials, audio files and visual files where these are available.

Office of National Institutes of Health Oral History Archive

A guide to finding additional diaries and autobiographies is available in Finding Biographical Information.

Digital Libraries

Finding Primary Sources Online  offers methods for finding digital libraries and digital collections on the open Web  and for finding Digital Libraries/Collections by Region or Language.

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.

Document Collections

To find more collections of primary sources in HOLLIS Library Catalog, search Sources as a Subject keyword. Sources usually refers to published collections of primary sources of several different types. 

"African Americans" AND migration AND Sources  [Use caps for AND]

Since Sources is a common word, 'Limit to: Subject' eliminates many irrelevant results.

List of online document collections for women, gender, and sexuality

Gender and science: late nineteenth-century debates on the female mind and body, ed. by Katharina Rowold. Bristol, England: Thoemmes Press, 1996, 293 p.
Widener WID-LC HQ1593 .G45 1996
--Articles reprinted from periodicals published 1863-1891.

Film

A list of general sources Motion Picture/Television/Radio is available.

Paietta, A. C. and J. Kauppila. 1999. Health Professionals on Screen. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 430 pp.
WID-LCWID-LC PN1995.9.P44 P35 1999 (In-Library use only
--Short descriptions of motion pictures and televison films and series, with subject index.

University of Michigan Historical Health Film Collection

UCLA Film and Television Archive can be searched by keyword and subject.

Reel Research: Research Guide for Film Studies

Government Documents

United States

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. Full-text access usually available.

Hathitrust includes numerous government documents. 

  • In Catalog Advanced Search, you can use a government department or agency name as author.
  • In Full Text Advanced Search, you can use a government department or agency name as author, "Add another group of search fields", and add a Subject.

HathiTrust also offers:

There are also many government documents in the Internet Archive.  There is an Internet Archive subcollection  GovDocs Government Documents which is itself full text searchable and which contains foreign, US, state and local documents.  This may not include all government documents in the Internet Archive.

Images

Records for many, but by no means all, individual Harvard University Library images are available in HOLLIS.  Limit search with Resource type: Images.

NYPL Digital Gallery Pictures of Science: 700 Years of Scientific and Medical Illustration

Images from the History of Medicine (IHM) includes prints and photographs from the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Images From the History of the Public Health Service: a Photographic Exhibit.

Wellcome Images

Harvard's Visual Information Access (VIA) Catalog

  • VIA provides access to records for many, but not all, individual Harvard University Library (and some Harvard Museum) images.
  • Records from VIA are now searchable in HOLLIS (but not HOLLIS Classic) and incorporated into the search results alongside books, journals, scores, etc. You can choose images by using the FORMAT menu on the right hand side. Searching in HOLLIS for the word prostitution, for example, and choosing Image from FORMATS retrieves 28 results.
  • If the image has been digitized, a thumbnail appears in the search results.

ARTstor is a nonprofit digital library of more than 1.25 million images. In addition, thousands of images from the Fine Arts Library and Loeb Design Library are available in ARTstor's Harvard Study Collections.

Guides to Finding Other Image Sources

Image Databases  lists and describes many online sources of images. Invaluable!

Photographica: Research Guide for Photography at Harvard

A list of general sources for images is available

Science Sources

NYPL Digital Gallery Pictures of Science: 700 Years of Scientific and Medical Illustration

Smithsonian Institution Collections Search Center

Photograph and Image Sources in the Sciences

Science & Society Picture Library offers over 50,000 images from the Science Museum (London), the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television and the National Railway Museum

National Geographic Photo Archive

American Institute of Physics, Emilio Segre Visual Archives (Yale)

Contributions of 20th Century Women to Physics Annotated Portrait Gallery

Government Resources for Science Images (1910-1940)

Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement (1910-1940)

Medical Sources

American Social Hygiene Posters University of Minnesota (1910-1970)

Cushing/Whitney Medical Digital Library (Yale)

Historical Images in Medicine. History of Medicine Collections, Duke University

Images from the History of Medicine includes prints and photographs from the History of Medicine Division (HMD), U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM).

Images From the History of the Public Health Service: a Photographic Exhibit. National Library of Medicine.

National Library of Medicine (NLM), Online Exhibitions & Digital Projects

Public Health Image Library (PHIL): Photographs, Illustrations, Multimedia Files

Wellcome Images

Literature

Literature, Arts & Medicine Database is an annotated bibliography of prose, poetry, film, video and art." Searchable by author, title, genre, era, added keyword, free text. Links are given for full text and author information where available.

Alexander Street Literature can be searched as a group or individually. Includes  Black Short Fiction and Folklore, Black Women Writers, Caribbean Literature, Latino Literature, Latin American Women Writers, Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period, Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period, South and Southeast Asian Literature in English, Black Drama, Twentieth Century North American Drama, North American Indian Drama, North American Women’s Drama, Asian American Drama and Asian American Drama.

American Drama  includes  711 plays published through 1911 by dramatists such as Thomas Paine, Edward Hitchcock, and James Lawson.

Click the periodical abbreviation to obtain the full title.  

For the years 1930 through 1946 (when PubMed coverage begins), there is a gap in coverage.  This applies to all subjects beginning with Mo and after, and with pre-Mo subjects depending on the letter of the alphabet. For example, the volume covering the letter A appeared in 1936, so there is no coverage for Angina for about 1935-1946 when PubMed begins.  For this era use Index Medicus:

Quarterly Cumulative Index Medicus (1927-1956) American Medical Association. 60 v.
HOLLIS Record
--Alphabetical arrangement, subjects and authors in one alphabet.

Current List of Medical Literature (1941-1959). Army Medical Library; Armed Forces Medical Library, 36 volumes
HOLLIS Record
HathiTrust Version (1941-1958)

You can also browse and search online via Hathitrust versions. Search "index catalogue of the library" as a phrase in the Hathitrust Advanced Catalog search. This yields several records each of which lists several digitized volumes. There is not one master record.
--You can also search the whole Index Catalog full text in Hathitrust Advanced Full Text search.  Put your search term in one search box and the phrase "Index-catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon" in the other, choosing Title from the menu.

News

For US newspaper coverage, see Guide to Newspapers and Newspaper Indexes.

For foreign newspaper coverage, see Guide to Newspapers and Newspaper Indexes.

For broadcast news, see the Library Research Guide for History.

Periodicals

For coverage in US popular periodicals see Library Research Guide for History: General and Popular Periodicals

Statistics

For general statistical sources see Library Research Guide for History.

Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering

National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES), National Science Foundation

Science & engineering indicators, 1987- .
Available online 1993- .
HOLLIS Record for earlier volumes

Continues:
Science indicators, 1973-1986. National Science Board, National Science Foundation
HOLLIS Record  - Baker Business | Stacks -- Serials | 7369600
- Cabot Science | Harvard Depository | Q172.5.S34 S34

Characteristics of doctoral scientists and engineers in the United States. Detailed statistical tables. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation, [1981?]-1999.
Issues for 1993- are online
Earlier: Microforms (Lamont> | NS 1.22:D 65

Women in Science and Engineering Statistics

Vital Statistics of the United States, 1898-