Table of Contents
Primary 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. We start with two general resources: HOLLIS and HathiTrust.
General Resources
Finding relevant subject terms
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 see what terms appear under the subject section.
Note the terms after the dashes (called sub-divisions) that sub-divide a topic. These can apply to multiple subject terms.
Redo your search using the subject terms that HOLLIS uses.
Browse by subject terms
At the top of any HOLLIS page, choose Starts with/Browse.
Enter any useful subject term you've found. Select subject as the browse option.
This browsing option breaks down a large subject into subtopics and gives you an idea of some of the types of resources available for a certain subject.
Search for primary sources
Use the terms below with keywords or subject terms to search for different types of primary sources. Search for these terms in HOLLIS as a subject.
Primary source sub-divisions:
- --Archives
- --Correspondence
- --Description and travel
- --Diaries
- --Interviews
- --Manuscripts
- --Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc.
- --Personal narratives (refers to accounts of wars and diseases only)
- --Sources (usually refers to collections of published primary sources)
Collections of primary sources may be published in print, on microfilm or online. They may contain a mix of different materials (ex. letters, diaries, notebooks, interviews, etc.) or be all one type (ex. all letters). Examples of digital collections are listed in the Library Research Guide for History; methods for searching for document collections are discussed in the Library Research Guide for Finding Archives and Manuscripts.
See the Library Research Guide for History and the HOLLIS Help guide for more information on searching HOLLIS.
Hathitrust
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 Sati (widow burning) is found 666 times in English-language works published in India from 1900-1909. You can search for a keyword in, say, travel books (Subject term: "Description and travel") on a certain country for a specified time period.
Google Books
Internet Archive
Internet Archive now offers a full text search. Put your terms (phrases or personal names, in quotation marks (""), work best) in the search box and choose Text Contents.
See more digital libraries in the Library Research Guide for History.
Find bibliographies in HOLLIS by searching your keywords plus the word Bibliography (which must be limited to subject in Advanced Search). For example, "Germany History 1918 1933" and bibliography.
Resources for Interpreting Your Primary Sources
Use encyclopedias, dictionaries, and handbooks to get a general overview of a specific topic. Search HOLLIS Advanced Search for your topic and encyclopedias OR dictionaries as a subject.
Biography and Genealogy Master Index (BGMI) indexes thousands of English-language biographical dictionaries and other compendia. Not full text; one must do HOLLIS searches for retrieved sources.
World Biographical Information System includes online full text of thousands of biographical dictionaries accessible by name of biographee.
American National Biography is the standard American source for biographies of major figures. Can do searches of occupations and limit by date.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is the standard British source for biographies of major figures. Can do searches of occupations and limit by date: Advanced Search Options: People Search.
Additional sources in Finding Biographical Information.
America: History and Life (1955- ) includes books, book chapters, journal articles, and book reviews.
Historical Abstracts (1954- ) includes books, book chapters, journal articles (but not book reviews) for non-North American history, 1450-date.
Special Kinds of Primary Sources
WorldCat is an online catalog of materials (books, periodicals, films, recordings, manuscripts, etc.) from libraries and other repositories across the world, but with a heavy emphasis on North America. There is a subscription-based version as well as two options for free access, all of which are dealt with below. It is useful for finding digital collections.
Google Advanced Search is useful for finding digital collections. General Google searches may yield very many results, and it may take much sifting through the results in order to find relevant items. Using Google Advanced Search (http://www.google.com/advanced_search) with specific search terms can help yield more focused results.
Harvard has enormous collections of archives and manuscripts, which include the unpublished records of organizations and of individuals (often called "personal papers and including correspondence (letters), notes, diaries and other material).
- Major archival repositories at Harvard
- Guidance on finding archival collections at Harvard and elsewhere.
Online and print collections of personal writings are available on the Library Research Guide for History.
To find personal writings in HOLLIS search by the subject terms diaries OR archives OR correspondence.
To find autobiographies in HOLLIS, search by the subject term biography rather than autobiography.
To find films in HOLLIS, search your topic keywords, then under Resource Type, choose video/film.
To find books about films about your topic, search topic keywords AND "in motion pictures"
Other sources for film and video are listed in the Library Research Guide for History, which also has pages for television and radio.
To find images in HOLLIS, search on your topic keywords, then choose "images" under Resource Type.
Harvard also has an images-specific search tool, called HOLLIS 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.
Combining your topical words with the phrase "Pictorial Works" in HOLLIS yields books that are largely composed of pictures.
Periodical Articles
Periodical (magazine, journal, newspaper) articles offer valuable descriptions of events and conditions as well as contemporary opinion. We divide them into:
Academic and Professional, comprising scholarly/scientific journals and periodicals of particular professions. List of resources by discipline/profession.
Magazines, comprising general interest and opinion magazines like Time or The New Yorker.
Sources for magazines (popular periodicals) are listed on the in the General and Popular Indexes pages of Finding Articles in General and Popular Periodicals (North America and Western Europe), which also has a page on women's magazines.
Newspapers see the Guide to Newspapers and Newspaper Indexes
Social Statistics and Opinion Polls
Social statistics and opinion polls can give a quantitative perspective on your topic.
United States Census Data Resources
US election and voting statistics
Other sources for statistics and data are listed in the Library Research Guide for History.