Finding Sources

Sources for this course 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

It is important to find the proper Subject terms for your topic and use them as well as any keywords that occur to you. 

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 Malaya colonial economic* yields

The political economy of imperial relations : Britain, the sterling area, and Malaya, 1945-1960, by Alex Sutton. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire : Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, 222 pages
Subjects Sterling area -- History -- 20th century
Imperialism -- Economic aspects -- Malaysia -- Malaya -- History -- 20th century
Imperialism -- Economic aspects -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century
Economic history -- 1945-1971
Great Britain -- Foreign economic relations -- Malaysia -- Malaya
Malaya -- Foreign economic relations -- Great Britain
Malaya -- Economic conditions -- 20th century
Malaya -- Colonial influence
Great Britain -- Economic policy -- 1945-1964
HOLLIS Record

Redo the search using to proper Subject terms together with any useful keywords.  Sometimes there are no, or several, subject terms for a topic. Anti-colonialism yields

Under Refine my results: Subject on the right of the results list there are more main terms (Decolonization, Economic policy, Labor policy) to try, but not the terms after the dashes ( -- ) which are called subdivisions. NOTE: If you hit one of the terms in this Subject list, HOLLIS will find records with the term, say  Decolonization, only on records in the set originally formed by searching Malaya colonial economic* . Redo your search using any additional pertinent Subject terms.    Also, go to Starts with.../Browse (top black band) and put in Malaysia  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:

  • Imperialism -- Economic aspects
  • Nationalism --  Economic aspects

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book published during your era may be a primary source, but certain kinds of primary sources, including originally unpublished sources such as letters and diaries published later, have particular terms attached to their Subject terms in a HOLLIS record.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:
Subject exact phrase: Indochinese War, 1946-1954
AND
Subject contains: Archives OR Correspondence OR Diaries OR Manuscripts OR Sources OR Narratives

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.

Translations

In HOLLIS Advanced Search do searches of the form:

Economic*
AND
Keywords anywhere contains: translat* Thai

  • Limit to English
  • Translat* yields both translated and translation
  • This search is not exhaustive.  Where you have a particular Thai work, do a Title exact phrase search, limiting to English

Searching for All English-language Works Published in a Country

In HOLLIS Library Catalog Advanced Search do searches of the form:

Subject contains: Economic*
AND
Code: MARC place of publication: vm (for Vietnam) Code: MARC place of publication is toward the bottom of the search menu

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

Searching in HathiTrust and Other 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. Thus, the word Opium is found 43 times in English-language works published in Singapore from 1890-1899. Reduce the total hits by refining by language first, as only the more common places of publication are listed. You can search for a keyword in, say, travel books (Subject term: "Description and travel") on a certain country for a specified time period. The full text of most in-copyright works (post-1923) will not be visible, but it can be searched, and you can find the page on which your search term appears.

Google Book Search has digitized many pre-1920s books. Links to digitized books, whether digitized at Harvard or at another library are available through HOLLIS records, either through a Networked Resource link (Harvard books) or the "Discover more in Google Books" icon (from other libraries) To find books Google has digitized from other libraries, but which are not held at Harvard, search directly in the Google Book Search.

Internet Archive also offers much digitized full text, including recent copyrighted material to borrow

Other Digital Libraries and Collections

Besides HathiTrust there are many other digital libraries, some general - some specialized, which offer digitized primary sources. 

Many more are listed in the Digital Libraries page of this guide.

Bibliographies

Look for specialized subject bibliographies in the HOLLIS Catalog: Search, for example, <"southeast asia" bibliography [Subject Keyword search]>.  The term Bibliography MUST be searched as a Subject keyword: Change anywhere to Subject. 

Modern European imperialism; a bibliography of books and articles, 1815-1972, by John P. Halstead and Serafino Porcari. Boston, G. K. Hall, 1974. 2 v.
--v. 1. General and British Empire.-- v. 2. French and other empires. Regions.
FindIt@Harvard

Bibliographies on Southeast Asia, compiled by Herman C. Kemp. Leiden, The Netherlands : KITLV Press, 1998, 1128 p.
Widener | RR 3930.2

An annotated bibliography on land tenure in the British and British Protected Territories in South East Asia and the Pacific. Great Britain. Colonial Office. London: H.M. Stationery Off., 1952. 164 p.
Widener | Econ 2048.2 F

Women in Southeast Asia: a bibliography, by Fan Kok-Sim.  Boston, Mass. : G.K. Hall, 1982, 415 p.
HOLLIS Record
Internet Archive Full Text

Transnational Histories of Public Health in Southeast Asia, 1914 - 2014: A Bibliography, by Neesha Harnam, Kirsty Walker and Alastair Su

British Colonial Sources

For statistical and other information on the colonies the key resource is the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers which contains numerous reports submitted by the Colonial Office and other agencies to Parliament.  These can be searched in the online version.  Also, the annual Colonial Office List contains an index of these reports (usually called Command Papers) arranged by colony.  It is often best to search House of Commons Parliamentary Papers on the Advanced page, putting your colony in the Subject box and your keyword in the Keyword box.

The Colonial Office List London : Harrison, 1862-1966.
LLMC Version (1946-1965)
HOLLIS Record (1889-1940)
HathiTrust Version (1878-1925, incomplete)
Internet Archive Version (1862, 1881-1940)

A valuable source. Each volume includes brief descriptions of each colony with officials and statistics (largely population and import/export), brief biographical information on Colonial Office personnel, “Imperial and Local Acts of General Interest", colonial regulations, and “Papers Presented to Parliament relating to the Colonies since 1864” arranged by colony.

Titled: The Dominions Office and Colonial Office List, 1926-1940

Colonial annual reports and the statistical Blue Books were sent annually from the colony to the Colonial Office.  Instructions for finding them.

For censuses search HOLLIS: census Malaya.

Foreign Office files for South East Asia, 1963-1980

For more see the Library Research Guide for British Colonial and Foreign Relations Sources

Diaries and Other Personal Writings

To find them in HOLLIS search: Singapore AND (diaries OR archives OR correspondence OR narratives).
--"Personal narratives" is applied to personal accounts of wars or diseases.

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.

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"

BBC Archives

British Pathé offers numerous British newsreels and documentaries

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.

Gazetteers


A gazetteer is a descriptive geographical book, typically containing information on places (provinces, towns, cities),  physical features, social statistics of a region. May be topically or alphabetically arranged or both. Examples:

HOLLIS Library Catalog: Keyword: Burma AND Gazetteer*

A Historical Gazetteer of Southeast Asia (by Robert F. Austin, 1986) lists current and historical names for Southeast Asian places

Government Documents

Lamont Level D which contains the ​government documents and microfilm is now closed.  Anyone wanting material must fill out a paper form at the Lamont Circulation Desk.  Material will be delivered within 2 hours.   More information.

Do an Author search (adjust from any field to author) on your country in HOLLIS Advanced Search with Search Scope: Documents (Lamont).  Example. This should put you in the proper call number range.  Most foreign government documents are in a series of Old Widener call numbers (this material was transferred from Widener).  Some recent documents have Library of Congress numbers (Doc-LC) and a few have been sent to storage without call numbers.  Note that many records for former colonies bear only the colonial names (Gold Coast instead of Ghana), and can retrieved only with the colonial name as a Keyword search. List of former colonies with the new names.

You can browse the paper Southeast Asian government documents held in Lamont Level D by entering the following call numbers in the HOLLIS Starts with/Browse and adjusting the menu to Widener call number:

For Burma: Ind Doc 3502 (goes to 3595)
For Thailand: Ind Doc 3802 (goes to 3962)
For Malaysia: Ind Doc 4002 (goes to 4120)
For Singapore: Ind Doc 4302 (goes to 4350)
For Laos: Ind Doc 5505 (goes to 5630.10)
For Cambodia: Ind Doc 5707 (goes to 5804)
For Philippines: Oc Doc 7202 (goes to 7383.10)

You can do a search for everything in a Widener root call number, and then limit by language, format, date.  Go to Advanced Search, then Code: Local call number. For example Inddoc*.  You must eliminate spaces and add the *.

Call numbers for Malaysia are Ind Doc 4002 - Ind Doc 4120). Search:

Code local call number contains: sadoc55??* OR sadoc56??*.  The ? each tale the place of 1 digit. The * is necessary.

There are some government documents in Widener and other libraries.  Country names can be searched in HOLLIS as Author keyword, but this usually retrieves numerous publications of NGOs, learned societies and other entities.  You can do a keyword search on country plus government department name, by searching likely department name terms and finding the proper name.

Or you can browse the country name as Author in Starts with/Browse...  A general and mixed group under just the country name will appear first, then the government departments. 

Level D is now closed and material must be requested. How Can I Access Government Documents and Microforms from Lamont Level D

LLMC Digital: Go to Online Services, then Browse Collections.  A rich source of legislative and judicial documents

Asian government publications (British Library). Open pdf. Overview of government publications. Some links are dead but titles can be searched in HOLLIS

Southeast Asian Government Websites (Indiana U)
 

Government Gazettes

Government Gazettes are periodicals published by government which report its administrative, judicial and legislative actions. Content varies considerably among governments.  Find them in HOLLIS by searching, for example Gazettes Malaya. Also Gazettes Malaysia, Singapore, Straits, etc.  Some are here at Harvard, some must be obtained via Interlibrary Loan from the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) in Chicago.

Foreign Official Gazettes: Online

Foreign Official Gazette Database  (last updated 2007)  Gives holdings of CRL microfilm. Available on Interlibrary Loan

Images

ARTstor offers innumerable images from art but also from a variety of humanities and social science fields.

Visual materials, i.e., drawings, paintings, prints, photographs, films, videos, etc. are to be found in many Harvard libraries. Records for many, but by no means all, individual Harvard University Library images are available in HOLLIS Images, an online catalog of images. Records include subjects and a thumbnail image.

The Digital Public Library of America offers textual, visual, and sound resources contributed by numerous libraries, archives, and museums.  Searches catalog records, not full text, and links to the items on the contributors' websites.  Contains many individual items, such as letters and photographs, from digital collections.

Library of Congress Digital Collection (search by individual country)

International Mission Photography Archive, ca.1860-ca.1960. Browse by Place

Images Online at the British Library

Southeast Asia Digital Library offers texts and images.

Images of Colonialism largely consists of late-19th and early-20th century trade cards and illustrated European newspapers

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

League of Nations Documents

Research Guide: League of Nations Documents

Yearbook of the League of Nations 1920-1928
Heinonline version

Legal Sources

A concise legal history of South-East Asia, by M. B. Hooker. Oxford : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1978, xvi, 289 p.
FindIt@Harvard

Asian Law Online

Southeast Asian Region Countries' Law

Select documents on the constitutional history of the British Empire and Commonwealth, ed. by Frederick Madden. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985-2000. 8 v.
Law School | KD5025 .S45 1985
Widener | WID-LC | KD5025 .S45 1985

The records of trials are seldom available outside of the local courthouse or archives.  The opinion of higher court judges on appealed cases are often available. 

Find older law codes in HOLLIS with the search Law Malaysia.

Find case law in HOLLIS with the search "Law reports, digests, etc. Burma"

For expert assistance

Colonial era legal sources are listed under country in the Library Research Guide for British Colonial and Foreign Relations Sources

Literature

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

Singapore – Fiction (or Drama, or Poetry) refers to literary works
Southeast Asia -- In literature refers to literary scholarship

A new checklist of English-language fiction relating to Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei, by Lewis Hill. Hull, Humberside: Centre for South-East Asian Studies, University of Hull, 1991, 166 p.
FindIt@Harvard

South and Southeast Asian literature: classic and postcolonial writers in English, 1825 to present comprises literature written originally in English by writers who either were born in or identify themselves culturally with South/Southeast Asian countries including Malaysia, Myanmar, and Singapore. Focuses on late-colonial and postcolonial era literature, but also includes some earlier work.

Magazines (Periodicals)

Sources for Nineteenth Century and Twentieth Century British periodicals

Southeast Asian periodicals are listed in:

Southeast Asian periodicals: an international union list, by G. Raymond Nunn et al. London: Mansell, 1977, 456 p.
Widener | RR655.755
--Listed by title under country

Southeast Asian periodicals &amp; official publications. Canberra, National Library of Australia, 1970. 5 v.
Documents (Lamont) | Ind Doc 2.12

Maps

Historical Maps of Southeast Asia

Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection: Asia Maps

Plans et cartes - L'Indochine Coloniale

Historical Gazetteer of Southeast Asia, by R. F. Austin. Lists old/alternate names for places.

David Rumsey Historical Map Collection

Missionaries and Reformers

JSTOR. Pamphlet Collections (Search using: Advanced Search/Narrow By—"pamphlet")

Presbyterian Church of England Foreign Missions Committee. 1847-1950 712 microfiches
FindIt@Harvard
--Documents the work of the Presbyterian Church of England Foreign Missions Committee and the Women’s Missionary Association. Included are correspondence, reports, minutes, manuscripts, etc. Special subjects include opium trade, coolie trade, treaties and life in the treaty ports
--Includes missions to Singapore, Thailand, and Borneo.

Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. 6 units 858 on microfilm reels
FindIt@Harvard
--Unit 3.-4. reels 224-501. Missions to Asia, 1827-1919 –
Online guide.  Scroll down to reel 224

International Mission Photography Archive, ca.1860-ca.1960. Browse by Place

News Sources

NexisUni (1980s- ) is the usual first choice for finding recent newspaper articles, with full text (pictures omitted) coverage of numerous U.S. and overseas newspapers.

  • Choose Advanced Search
  • Select a Specific Content type: News
  • Enter your search terms
  • Narrow as needed on left

To get international publications, limit by "Location by Publication" on left-hand side to "International", then drive down to your country.

Factiva (1980s- ) offers full text (pictures omitted) of over 6,000 newspapers, magazines, wire services and trade journals.

Note that the default Date is In the last 3 months.

Limit to articles about a certain region by opening All Regions, then driving down to your country.  Sources emanating from a particular country can be identified under Sources on the left of the Results page.

Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports, 1947-1996. The Foreign Broadcast Information Service is a US government agency which translates daily radio and television broadcasts, newspapers and periodicals, government statements, books, etc. from non-English sources worldwide. Reports with translations are issued for eight world regions daily and cover such topics as military affairs, politics, the environment, societal issues, economics, and science and technology.

Online Newspapers by Country  and  English International Newspapers list current English-language newspapers.  Where no archives are provided on the newspaper website, often the Internet Archive Wayback Machine has issues sometimes back to 2000.  Especially for the earlier years, available issues may be scattered. and sometimes the websites are not fully functional.

Southeast Asian Newspapers (1831-1992; largely 1900-1944)

National Library of Singapore Newspaper Digitization Project (NewspaperSG) offers Singapore and Malaya newspapers, 1831-2009.

London and China Telegraph (1860-1877) "Newspaper published two to four times per month with news from China Japan Siam Java Singapore and areas east of India. Connected with the London and China Express"

Also see the Harvard Library Guide for Newspapers for lists of digitized newspapers by country   --   US papers

See Guide to Newspapers and Newspaper Indexes for finding Harvard microfilmed newspapers and obtaining microfilm from elsewhere via Interlibrary Loan.  Instructions for finding the titles of newspaper published in any location.

Statistics

International historical statistics, 1750-2010

Statistical yearbook for Asia and the Pacific. United Nations. Bangkok, Thailand : Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific,1973--2017
HOLLIS Record
Internet Archive Full Text (2000)

Continues:
Statistical yearbook for Asia and the Far East. Bangkok, Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East, 1968-72. 5 v.
HOLLIS Record

2018- titled  Asia and the Pacific SDG progress report 
HOLLIS Record
Online
 

National Statistical Offices (UN)

Bibliography of statistical sources on Southeast Asia, c. 1750-1990, by Jennifer Brewster and Anne Booth. Canberra : Economic History of Southeast Asia Project, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australia National University, 1990, 120 pp.
HathiTrust Full Text

Travel Writing

Search in HOLLIS: Sarawak AND "description and travel"

Travel Literature on Southeast Asia. Full text may be available in Southeast Asia Visions

United States Sources

Library Research Guide for History: US Government Documents

Library Research Guide for U.S. Foreign Relations