Finding Sources

This page lists a variety of kinds of sources and offers links to resources for exploring them. We start with two general resources: HOLLIS and HathiTrust.

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 India "foreign policy" yields

How India became territorial: foreign policy, diaspora, geopolitics, by Itty Abraham. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2014, 217 pages
Subjects
Territory, National -- India.
East Indian diaspora.
Geopolitics -- India.
India -- Boundaries.
India -- Foreign relations.
India -- Politics and government -- 1947-
HOLLIS Record

Note that the proper term is Foreign relations. Under Refine my results: Subject on the right of the results list there are more main terms (International Relations; National security) to try, but not the terms after the dashes ( -- Foreign relations -- Politics and government) which are called subdivisions.  NOTE: If you hit one of the terms in this Subject list, HOLLIS will find records with the term, say National security, only on records in the set originally formed by searching India "foreign policy" .

Redo your search using the terms that HOLLIS uses ("Foreign relations".   Also, go to Starts with.../Browse (top black band) and put in, say, India foreign relations, 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.  Thus:

  • India Foreign relations Philosophy (on the conceptual foundation of Indian foreign policy)

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book published during your era may be a primary source, but certain kinds of primary sources, including originally unpublished sources such as letters and diaries published later, have particular terms attached to their Subject terms in a HOLLIS record.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:
"India history partition 1947"
AND
Archives OR Correspondence OR Diaries OR Manuscripts OR Sources OR Narratives (as Subject)

Examples:

Women and empire, 1750-1939: primary sources on gender and Anglo-imperialism, ed. by Susan K. Martin et al. Abingdon, UK ; New York: Routledge ; Tokyo : Synapse Editions, 2009. 5 v.
HOLLIS Record
Vol. 4: India. Offers articles and book excerpts by women.
Detailed contents

Women in Colonial India: historical documents and sources, ed. by Pramod K. Nayar. Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, 2013. 5 volumes
HOLLIS Record
Contents: Volume 1. The woman question -- Volume 2. Female infanticide -- Volume 3. Sati -- Volume 4. Education -- Volume 5. Health and marriage.

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.

All material published in a country

You can do a HOLLIS search for material published in a particular country.  In HOLLIS Advanced Search adjust Any Field to Code: MARC place of pub and enter ii (for India)   

Afghanistan af --  Bangladesh bg  --  Bhutan bt  --  India ii  --  Maldives xc  --  Nepal np  --  Pakistan pk   Country code list.

These searches can be limited by language, dates, format, atc. In the usual way

Thus: Subject (exact phrase) economic policy, Code MARC place of pub, limited to English and 1947-1980

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

Digital Libraries

Hathitrust is a huge general digital library similar to, and partly overlapping in content with, Google Books and Internet Archive but with some special features.  You can do a full text search over the whole collection of millions of books and journals and then effectively refine the results Use Full Text Advanced Search. You can search for a keyword in, say, travel books (Subject term: "Description and travel") on a certain country for a specified time period.

Examples:

Advanced Catalog search: Keyword: India, Full view only, During or after: 1947, English. Search. Limit results to Place of publication: India.  Yields 150 items

Advanced Full Text Search: Full text + All fields: Kashmir, Full view only, During or after: 1947. Search. Limit results to Place of publication: India.   Yields 207 items

Advanced Full Text Search: Full text + All fields: India Pakistan partition, Full view only, During or after: 1947. Search. Limit results to Place of publication: India.  Yields 207 items

Other Digital Libraries and Collections:

Bharat Ek Khoj (Internet Archive) is a large digital collection of Indian books and periodicals. It can be searched by metadata or full text.

Digital Colonial Documents (India) offers a variety of sources.

Digital Repository of Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics is an enormous collection

Digital South Asia Library

Empire On-Line offers images of original documents and printed materials relating to the British Empire.

Internet Indian History Sourcebook

Urban History Documentation Archive of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC) includes:
a) printed literature in the vernaculars relating to social and cultural history, mostly periodicals from Eastern India printed from the inception of printing until the 1950s and in Bengali and Assamese.
b) visual documents, mainly early popular visual forms of productions in Bengal, modern academic art forms and photographs
c) advertisement and commercial art in Bengali from 1800 to –1950.

Bibliographies

Sometimes you can find a bibliography, a publication that lists other publications, on your subject. Search in HOLLIS with the word Bibliography as a Subject keyword search (It needs to be Subject keyword, NOT Keywords anywhere) :  "foreign relations" AND India AND bibliography.  You can use Keywords anywhere for your other keywords in Advanced search.  Browsing a bibliography offers a different experience from database searching with keywords.

Example:

India and the world affairs : a bibliography of works by alien scholars, 1947-1983, by K.G. Tyagi, Abida Vajahat. Delhi : Pinka Agencies, 1985, 132 p.
FindIt@Harvard

Primary Documents for the Study of Indian History, c. 1890-2000

British Sources

House of Commons Parliamentary Papers includes committee reports, draft bills, and other material emanating from the House of Commons. Also includes numerous reports submitted to Parliament by other government departments.   For more on Parliamentary papers.

Parliamentary Debates: Historic Hansard

Sources relating to proceedings and legislation in the two Houses of Parliament at Westminster (British History Online)

For digital, microfilm, and printed sources see Great Britain: Guide to the Documents

More sources in Library Research Guide for British Colonial and Foreign Relations Sources

Foreign Office Files for India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, Section II: South Asian Conflicts and Independence for Bangladesh, 1964-71. Sections on additional subjects will be added in the future.

Census and Statistics

The Digital Repository of Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics has digitized the Census volumes. For an overview of the whole series see India census 1872-1951; a check list and index.

Harvard has the Indian censuses on microfiche, some in the Government Documents/Microforms Collection. some (with HOLLIS records for individual volumes) in the Tozzer Library, and some in CRL (Center for Research Libraries, Chicago) available via Interlibrary Loan. Search HOLLIS for this material by searching for example “Census of India, 1931” (in quotes, “”).

India census 1872-1951; a check list and index lists the contents of the individual microfiches.

Digital Colonial Documents (India)  offers the reports (summaries based on the census for 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901. The reports may also be found in House of Commons Parliamentary Papers.

Questions lists the information collected in each census.

Statistical abstract for British India, 1840-1940
Digital South Asia Library (1840-1920)
House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (1840-1940). Search statistical abstract India in Paper title field, limiting by date

Statistical abstract for British India with statistics, where available, relating to certain Indian states. Calcutta : Superintendent Government Printing, India, 1923-1947. 
Microforms (Lamont) | Microfiche SC 453 (1911/1921-1946/1947)
HOLLIS Record

Diaries and Other Personal Writings

Many diaries, letters and  other personal writings are available in print or full text online.

To find them in HOLLIS search: India AND "foreign relations" AND (diaries OR archives OR correspondence).

Autobiographies usually bear the Subject term Biography, and so are not distinguished from biographies. The search Autobiographies OR Autobiography yields many autobiographies, but by no means all.

First-hand accounts of life in other countries may be found in travel books.  Find them in HOLLIS by combining the name of your country with the phrase "Description and travel".

Oral History Collection . (Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge). Interviews conducted in the 1970s with people residing in India during the colonial period. Interviews with full transcript.

Economic Literature

EconLit (1969- ) indexes articles from over 525 journals. Since 1987 includes books and dissertations. Earlier years available in print in Index to Economic Journals (1886- ) and Index of economic articles in collective volumes (1960- )

Economist Historical Archive (1843-2004).

Index of Indian economic journals, 1916-1965. Poona, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics; Orient Longman, 1971, 302 p.
FindIt@Harvard

Films/Videos

To find films in HOLLIS, search your topic keywords, then on the right side of the results screen, look at Resource Type and choose video/film.

To find books about films about your topic, search Topic keywords AND "in motion pictures"

EVIA Digital Archive--Ethnographic Video for Instruction and Analysis

Other sources for film and video are listed in the Library Research Guide for History, which also has pages for television and radio.

Government Documents

The Government Documents/Microforms Collection holds a collection of paper government documents in Lamont (Information available at the main desk, Lamont Level 1).

To browse the South Asian  documents:

In HOLLIS, use the Starts with/Browse link on the basic search screen and browse Other Call Number: Ind Doc. 

Ind Doc 9-1807  India (Parliament starts around Ind Doc 112. Each volume of Parliament (Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha) has an index)
Ind Doc 2002-2362  Pakistan
Ind Doc 2400-2485 Bangladesh (East Pakistan)
Ind Doc 2500-2526  Sri Lanka
Ind Doc 3007-3019 Afghanistan
Ind Doc 3450 Bhutan
Ind Doc 3300-3309 Nepal

Example.

To search within the South Asian documents

In HOLLIS, go to Advanced search, change Any field to Code: Local call number. Put in Inddoc* and your search term in another field.

Not all South Asian documents have Ind Doc call numbers.  Some in Documents (Lamont). There are some South Asian government documents in Widener and other libraries.  In HOLLIS Advanced search, change Any field to Author. Put in, for example, Pakistan. Put other Subject terms or keywords in another search field. Example.

Official Publications of India (Pre and Post Independence) is a catalog of government documents.  Anything found within can be searched in HOLLIS, in Digital Repository of Gokhale Institute, Hathitrust, Google Book Search, and Internet Archive.  If not found within try Borrow Direct (takes 1-4 days), then Interlibrary Loan (takes about a week or so).

Sources for foreign relations documents are listed on a separate page.

Images

ARTstor offers innumerable images from art but also from a variety of humanities and social science fields. Other. sources for images are listed in the Library Research Guide for History, including sources for advertisements..

For depictions in art: Guide to Research in History of Art & Architecture

Combining your topical words with the phrase "Pictorial Works" in HOLLIS yields books that are largely composed of pictures.

Labor Sources

Report of the Royal commission on labour in India : [and Evidence]. London : H.M. Stationery off., 1931.19 v.
HOLLIS Record
Also available in House of Commons Parliamentary Papers. Search Cmd. 3883 in Paper Number field.

League of Nations and UN

Research Guide: League of Nations Documents

Yearbook of the League of Nations 1920-1928
Heinonline version

Research Guide: United Nations Documents

Library Research Guide for History 1068 United Nations: A Global History

Legal Sources

 

Anglo-Indian Legal History (University of Pennsylvania)

India Legal Research Guide: Introduction

Manupatra comprehensive database of Indian law. Includes cases and bare acts (federal and selected states), tribunal and commission orders, bills in parliament and ordinances, notifications and circulars. Supreme Court cases 1950-present ; High Courts (varies by jurisdiction). More information.

Indian Law Guide (Harvard)

South Asian Legal History Resources A website by Mitra Sharafi

Legal Information Institute of India (LIIofIndia)

Indian Kanoon Indian case law and legislation, 1870s- .

See Research Guide for History 97g: "What is Legal History?" for more sources

Literature

In HOLLIS the following terms are found on literary works and works of literary scholarship.

India -- Politics and government -- 1947- -- Fiction (or Drama, or Poetry) refers to literary works
Bangladesh -- In literature refers to literary scholarship.

South and Southeast Asian Literature (1825 to present) includes literature written in English by writers from or culturally identified with South and Southeast Asia. Most of the works included are from Largely late colonial to the present.

Murty Classical Library of India - Within this library are to be found classics of Indian literature published in dual-language format (with the original language and English facing) by Harvard University Press. Includes lyrics, biographies, poems, stories, epics, and more.

Magazines

See the Periodicals and Newspapers page of this guide.

Maps and Gazetteers

The Harvard Map Collection contains one of the world’s finest collections of maps. Although their atlases are in HOLLIS, most of their individual maps are not. To get there, enter Lamont, go down to Level B, walk down the corridor to the West end (where the now closed entrance is), turn right, and walk down the corridor past the Theodore Roosevelt exhibit.

There are many thematic maps showing distribution of health, ethnicity, economic conditions and many other features.  Speak to the Map Collection librarians about your interests.

A gazetteer is an alphabetical place name list with information on former names, physical features, social statistics, population, etc., depending on the particular gazetteer. Often a very rich resource.

Sources for maps and gazetteers are listed on the Maps and Gazetteers page.

Imperial Gazetteer of India, 1909-1931. (Digital South Asia Library)

India, district and provincial gazetteers. (4050 microfiches)
HOLLIS Record
Microforms (Lamont) Microfiche W 3064
Microforms (Lamont) INDEX Microfiche W 3064 [= Guide ]
Brief guide to the microfiche and to the Indian gazetteers in general

Numerous gazetteers in paper format can be found by searching India Gazetteers in HOLLIS.

Missionaries

Reports of missionaries offer observations on conditions in South Asia.  See Missionaries page.

Newspapers

See the Periodicals and Newspapers page of this guide.

Statistics

India, a reference annual. Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1953- .
HOLLIS Record
Internet Archive full text

US Sources

Reports of US State Department staff offer observations on conditions in South Asia.  See US Resources page.