Course Guides: Hist480: Senior Thesis: Primary Sources

Who might be interested in your topic?

Think about:

Local libraries (public or academic)
Historical societies
Library of Congress

Visit their home pages. Have they digitized materials? If they haven't digitized, have they published Finding Aids (which give you a good sense of what materials are contained in their collections)?

More Primary Sources

Alexander Street Press
The Alexander Street Press publishes collections of information across various disciplines. They began by publishing collections of diaries and letters in American and women's history, but have expanded to over 80 disciplines now. To get to this content yourself, go to the library catalog and search for "Alexander Street Press". Click on the top result, scroll down and click on the "Alexander Stress Press" link in the co-author section to get a complete list of collections you can access.

Gerritsen Collection - Women's History Online This link opens in a new window
More than 4,700 publications (books, pamphlets and periodicals) reflecting the revolution of a feminist consciousness and the movement for women's rights.
HarpWeek This link opens in a new window
We have access to all the pages of Harper's Weekly for the Civil War Era and Reconstruction (1857-1877) as scanned images, together with a series of indexes.

History of Women Collection
The History of Women is a collection of literature by and about American and European women from the 18th - 20th century. Hollins has this collection on microfilm. If you would like to access the collection, search the University of Oregon's catalog to find the reel and item number.
Women & Empire
Women and Empire is a collection of primary sources focusing on gender and imperialism. This link will take you to the catalog record for the books.

Collected/Published Works

When searching a database of books, whether the catalog or Google Books or WorldCat:

Keywords to use in searches: diaries / journals / sources / personal narratives / correspondence / letters
Also, look for these words in subject headings, and follow the subject links.

Contemporary Publications

Pamphlets / Newsletters / Newspapers

Example: America's Historical Newspapers (library database), 1690-1900

Books

Google Books makes all pre-1923 books available for download.

Oral Histories

Oral histories (usually collected through interviews) are an increasingly popular method to preserve the past. Examples are below:

Southern Oral History Program Collection
Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project
Virtual Oral/Aural History Archive of California State University, Long Beach
Cover topics ranging from women's social history and ethnic studies to Long Beach Area history and the Arts in Southern California. Some of the interviews in the Asian-American, Mexican-American and women's history collections date back to 1972 and include interviews with narrators born as early as the 1860s.

Government Records/Documents

The U.S. government is one of the most prolific publishers in the world. Nearly every aspect of life is touched by government activity, and it is a publisher of all types of materials (statistics; reports; legislation; etc).

Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (dates to 1976)
For earlier (to approximately 1900, see Gov Docs collection in library).
Legislation -- U.S. Statutes at Large (1789-1871)
Legislation -- 1872-1988
U.S. Statutes at Large located in Government Documents at call number AE 2.1.
Legislation -- 1945 to present
Congress and the Nation (1945-present; JK1001 .C75) and the CQ Almanac (1960-present; JK1 .C663) provide excellent summaries of legislation for the years covered. Looking international? Think about using the Yearbooks of the United Nations (1946-present) to identify useful UN materials.
Historical Census data (1790-1960)
Thematic collections of government documents
Examples include The War of the Rebellion: a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies; Foreign Relations of the U.S.; Letters of Delegates to Congress; etc. many of these are available online and in our print collection.