Finding Primary Sources

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 race discrimination law yields

Was blind, but now I see: white race consciousness and the law, by Barbara J. Flagg. NY: New York University Press, 1997, 1 online resource (206 p.)
Subjects
Race discrimination -- Law and legislation -- United States
African Americans -- Legal status, laws, etc
United States -- Race relations
HOLLIS Record

Under Refine my results: Subject on the right of the results list there are more main terms (Labor laws and legislation, Equality before the law) to try, but not the terms after the dashes ( -- Law and legislation) which are called subdivisions.  NOTE: If you hit one of the terms in this Subject list, HOLLIS will find records with the term, say  "Equality before the law", only on records in the set originally formed by searching race discrimination law.

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

Examples of legal Subject terms:

Appellate procedure
Brown, Oliver, -- 1918-1961 -- Trials, litigation, etc.
Civil law
Civil procedure
Common law
Constitutional law
Courts
Criminal justice, Administration of
Criminal law -- New York (State) -- Cases.
Criminal procedure
Discrimination in education -- Law and legislation
Evidence (Law)
Evidence, Criminal
Forensic psychiatry
History of law
Judges
Jurisprudence
Justice, administration of
Law enforcement
Law reports, digests, etc
Law, Medieval
Lawyers
Punishment
Topeka (Kan.). -- Board of Education -- Trials, litigation, etc.
Trials
Women -- Legal status, laws, etc.

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book published during your era may be a primary source, but certain kinds of primary sources, including originally unpublished sources such as letters and diaries published later, have particular terms attached to their Subject terms in a HOLLIS record.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
  • --Manuscripts
  • --Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc.
  • --Personal narratives (refers to accounts of wars and diseases only)
  • --Sources (usually refers to collections of published primary sources)

Example:
"African American lawyers"
AND
sources OR diaries OR archives OR interviews OR "oral histor*" OR correspondence OR biography OR autobiograph* (as Subject)

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.

Search Tips

  • Use quotes "" to keep words together as a phrase, thus "shell shock" rather than shell shock which is searched as shell AND shock
  • Use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) to do complex searches: e.g., (“electronic surveillance” OR eavesdropping) AND privacy.
    • Note that OR and AND must be in caps. 
  • Find all forms of a word with wildcards. ? matches a single character and * matches multiple characters: e.g., feminis?; gene* therapy
    • Note: Phrase searches cannot include wildcards, and you cannot use a wildcard at the beginning of a word).

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

Is This Book Available Open Access?

Criminology

Criminal justice literature

National Archive of Criminal Justice Data

Digital Libraries

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.

In Advanced Full Text Search you can put Indians in the first (Full Text) field, and adjust the second field to Author exact phrase: Du Bois W E B. to find where W E B Du Bois wrote about Indians. Many of these books will not be full text viewable, but you can search within each book and find where (and how often) your word occurs. You can also limit your search to books with a particular Subject term

Internet Archive .

In Advanced search you can search say Description: "South Asia", and at the top left of the results page choose Media type: Collection.  When on a Collection page, you can search within by metadata or full text

LLMC Digital. The collections offered by this vast digital library can be browsed under: Browse Collections. Very good for foreign law.

Digital Libraries by State

These websites list hundreds of local, state, and regional resources. Each is different and some are better designed than others.  Very useful when your topic has a regional focus.

Searching Google for primary sources

Searching Google for other libraries' research guides - Useful for local resources and local government documents

Government Documents

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.

ProQuest Congressional provides full-text access to 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).

See also: Library Research Guide for History: Government Documents

Magazines/Periodicals

See the Finding Articles in General and Popular Periodicals (North America and Western Europe)

Newspapers

For general newspaper coverage, see Guide to Newspapers and Newspaper Indexes.  For African American newspapers.