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 Latinos United States yields

Latinos in the United States: diversity and change, by Rogelio Sáenz and Maria Cristina Morales. Malden, MA : Polity Press, 2015, 265 pages
Subjects:
Hispanic Americans
Hispanic Americans -- Social conditions
Hispanic Americans -- Economic conditions
Immigrants -- United States -- Social conditions
Hispanic Americans -- Cultural assimilation
United States
HOLLIS Record

Under Refine my results: Subject on the right of the results list there are more main terms (Mexican Americans; Minorities; Immigrants; Hispanic American women) to try, but not the terms after the dashes ( -- Social conditions) which are called subdivisions.  NOTE: If you hit one of the terms in this Subject list, HOLLIS will find records with the term, say  "Immigrants", only on records in the set originally formed by searching Latinos United States.

Redo your search using the terms that HOLLIS uses. Also, go to Starts with.../Browse (top black band) and put in Hispanic Americans, 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. 

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book published during your era may be a primary source, but certain kinds of primary sources, including originally unpublished sources such as letters and diaries published later, have particular terms attached to their Subject terms in a HOLLIS record.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

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

Archival Records

To find Harvard archival collections, see the Library Research Guide for History: Archives and Manuscripts.

 

Bibliographies

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

Bibliography on Boston Immigrants

Oxford Bibliographies on Latino Studies contain annotated bibliographies on many specialized subtopics within Latino Studies, and articles usually include lists of primary sources as well. 

 

Digital Libraries

General

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 and Internet Archive. Full text is fully viewable.

Digital Libraries by State: These websites list hundreds of local, state, and regional resources.

Latinx-focused

Boston's Latinx Community History (Northeastern University)

Government Documents

Government documents are publications intended to be released to the public.

Homeland Security Digital Library provides access to U.S. policy documents, presidential directives, and national strategy documents as well as specialized resources, such as dissertations, reports and position papers from universities, research institutions, think tanks and U.S. local and state agencies as well as international governments. HSDL features SeekOnce, a meta-search engine, which enables cross searching of more than 50 journal article databases and a wide range of web-based resources from NASA to the RAND Corporation. Coverage: 2002 to current. However, HSDL is also collecting historical material relevant to homeland security from before 2002. Examples of historical documents in the collection include major legislation, executive orders, and presidential directives.

Congressional

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. Post-1970, full-text access is often available. Publications included are 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).

More government documents available from the U.S. Government Documents page on the Library Research Guide for History 

Law

HeinOnline Legal Journal Collection offers full-text of many law reviews and journals, most starting with volume 1 and extending in some cases to the present. Book reviews, notices, advertisements, etc., are included.

Nexis Uni (1970- ) includes federal and state case law, statues, secondary sources such as law reviews, and state legal materials.

Literature

Alexander Street Press Latino Literature

MLA International Bibliography (1926- ) is a multi-lingual, international journal index of literary scholarship. 

Latino Comics Collection (1993-2012). 
Description :  approximately 100 items ; 
Summary :  A selection of some of the country’s best comics illustrated, written, inked and published by Latinos in the US.  Also includes two DVDs, several posters and other ephemera. Some of the artists represented in the collection include: Jaime Crespo, José Cabrera, Rafael Navarro, Brian Anderson, Javier Hernández and many others.
HOLLIS Record

Magazines/Periodicals

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

Chicano Database overs Mexican-American topics 1967 to the present. Scope expanded 1992 to include the broader Latino experience, including Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Central American immigrants. Includes the Spanish Speaking Mental Health Database.

HAPI Online (Hispanic American Periodicals Index) (1970- ) indexes scholarly journals published in Latin America or treating Latin American and U.S. Hispanic topics.

Newspapers

Zona Latina - USA links to websites of Hispanic/Latino newspapers. Try Wayback for earlier issues.

Chronicling America, enhancing access to historic American newspapers (1836-1922) (Library of Congress) offers searchable full text. Also includes the valuable U.S. Newspaper Directory, 1690-Present, in which searches can be limited by language and ethnicity.

Ethnic American Newspapers from the Balch Collection (1799-1971) in America’s Historical Newspapers. Title list (In Quick Facts & Overview box on the right). 

Ethnic NewsWatch (1959- ) offers full-text of 90 newspapers and other periodicals (1990- ) and of 30 African American, Hispanic American, and Native American newspapers and other periodicals (1959-1989). Includes book/film/television reviews. Lists of periodicals by ethnicity.

Hispanic American newspapers, 1808-1980 offers full-text of Spanish and bi-lingual newspapers. Based on the “Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project.”   It is a subset of America's Historical Newspapers (Readex).

Historic Mexican and Mexican American Press Collection (mid-1800s-1970s) includes 20 Mexican and Mexican American publications published in Tucson, El Paso, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sonora, Mexico

Ethnic Newspapers of Greater Boston

Arte Público Hispanic Historical Collection documents US Hispanic culture, colonial times-1960.  Contains advertisements; broadsides, editorials, essays, letters, monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, periodicals, poetry, reviews, short stories, and other materials documenting Hispanic literature and political commentary.'

La Opinión Digital, 1920-2007 incomplete  (Los Angeles) 

Chicano Times Collection, 1970-1977  (San Antonio)

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

Oral Histories

In HOLLIS:

Subject contains: Hispanic Americans
AND
Subject contains: Interviews OR oral

North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories (1800-1950.) includes 342 authors.

Latinx Studies: Oral Histories is a list of oral history collections on various topics related to Latinos in the US (Yale University)

Archive of Immigrant Voices  (Center for Global Migration, University of Maryland)

Latino Oral History Collection (New Jersey) (NYPL)

UCLA Center for Oral History Research - see the interview collections on Latina and Latino History and the Chicano Movement

Bracero History Archive contains oral histories and artifacts from the Bracero program, a guest worker initiative that spanned the years 1942-1964. Millions of Mexican agricultural workers crossed the border under the program to work in the US.

Rostros y rastros : entrevistas a trabajadores migrantes en Estados Unidos, by Jorge Durand et al. San Luis Potosí, S.L.P.: El Colegio de San Luis, 2002, 204 p.
HOLLIS Record

Personal Writings

To find personal writings in HOLLIS search (for example): ("Mexican Americans" OR "Mexicans United States") AND (diaries OR archives OR correspondence OR narratives). The Subject term Biography will retrieve a mixture of biographies and autobiographies.

North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories (1800-1950.) includes 342 authors and approximately 37,500 pages of information, illustrating what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada.

Between the lines: letters between undocumented Mexican and Central American immigrants and their families and Friends, ed. by Larry Siems. Tucson, Ariz.: University of Arizona Press, 1995, 311 p.
HOLLIS Record
HOLLIS Record (1992 ed.)

Migrant Longing: Letter Writing across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, by Miroslava Chávez-García. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2018]
Online resource

La vida de los trabajadores latinos contada por ellos mismos, by Anne Bar Din. México: Centro de Investigaciones sobre América Latina y el Caribe: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 2008, 118 p.
HOLLIS Record

Policy Literature

PolicyFile (1990-) offers public policy reports and studies published by think tanks, university research programs, research organizations including the OECD, IMF, World Bank, the Rand Corporation, and a number of federal agencies.

Policy Archive is a digital library of public policy research containing over 30,000 documents.

Think Tank Search - from the Kennedy School of Government, a customized Google search of documents produced by think tanks.

Google advanced search. You can limit by domain: .org

Radio

Latinx Thought and Culture: The NPR Archive, 1979-1990 contains the "weekly Spanish-language Enfoque Nacional (1979-1988) and the daily English-language Latin File (1988-1990)."

Statistics

In HOLLIS, search: subject: "Hispanic Americans" AND statistics

Who we are: Hispanics. Amityville, New York : New Strategist Press, LLC, [2016], 348 p. HOLLIS record; Online access via Internet Archive

Latino stats: American Hispanics by the numbers, by Idelisse Malave, Esti Giordani. New York, NY : The New Press, 2015, 187 p. HOLLIS record; 

Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-Born Population of the United States: 1850 to 2000

Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1978-2001
Online Version

Yearbook of Immigration Statistics (Department of Homeland Security), 1996-present.

Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States (Migration Policy Institute)

Migration Data Hub (Migration Policy Institute)

US Customs and Border Protection Stats & Summaries