Finding Primary Sources

This guide will assist you in identifying and locating primary sources in the Tompkins Cortland Community College Library and on the Web.

• What Are Primary Sources?
• Tips
• Search by Subject Headings in Library Catalog
• Search by Series
• Selected Primary Sources in the TC3 Library
• Historical Newspaper Archives
• Primary Sources on the Web

What Are Primary Sources?

Primary sources are firsthand accounts recorded during the time of the event or subject you are researching. Government documents, newspaper articles, journals, diaries, correspondance, memoirs, photographs and interviews are examples of primary sources. For a more extensive description see Library Research Using Primary Resources, a publication of the Library at the University of California, Berkeley.

Tips

• Look for footnotes and bibliographies in books and articles relating to your topic to track down primary source materials used by the authors.
• Locate books written during the period you are researching
• Locate newspapers and periodicals for the period. Our library subscibes to the following databases:

New York Times Historical (1851-2003)
HarpWeek 1857 - 1865: The Civil War Era


• Locate letters, diaries, autobiographies and personal papers by conducting an author search in the TC3 Library Catalog.
• Materials not owned by the TC3 library may be located in the SUNY Union Catalog or WorldCat, and borrowed via Interlibrary loan.

Search by Subject Headings in the Library Catalog

Select subject from the library catalog's pull-down menu in Advanced Search. Below are some useful format subheadings which can be combined with an additional subject (ie. sources women, sources politics, sources foreign relations).

• Archives
• Anecdotes
• Biography
• Correspondence
• Description and Travel
• Diaries
• Early Works to 1800
• History - Personal Narratives
• History - Sources
• Interviews
• Manuscripts
• Regimental Histories
• Speeches, addresses, etc.

Search by Series

Here are examples of series owned by TC3 which contain primary sources. Search for these by selecting series from the library catalog's pull-down menu in Advanced Search:

• Documents from the National Archives
• Documents in American social history
• March of America Facsimile Series - TC3 owns almost 100 titles in this series. They are located throughout the E and F sections - look for blue cloth covers]
• Primary documents in American history and contemporary issues
• Primary sources in American history
• Vital speeches of the day

Selected Primary Sources in the TC3 Library

Following are examples of books, electronic resources, and microfilm owned by our library:

• Annals of America. 19 vols. [REF E173 .A793]
• Birth of America: the year in review, 1763-1783. [Microfilm, 16 Reels, last drawer, Microfilm Cabinets] Accompanied by text. [REF E187 .B5]
• The boisterous sea of liberty: a documentary history of America from discovery through the Civil War. [REF E187 .B65 1998]
• Brown v. Board of Education: a brief history with documents. [KF228.B76 B76 1998]
• The Codex Nuttall: a picture manuscript from ancient Mexico: the Peabody Museum facsimile. [O-SIZE F1219 .C7 1975]
• A compilation of the messages and papers of the presidents, 1789-1902. 10 vols. [J81 .B97]
• Conquistadors; first-person accounts of the conquest of Mexico. [F1230 .F9]
• Diaries of Ireland: an anthology, 1590-1987. [DA938 .D53 1998]
• Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: five notebooks from the Lodz ghetto. [DS135.P62 L64434 1996]
• Dictionary of historic documents. [REF D9 .K63]
• Documents of American Indian diplomacy: treaties, agreements, and conventions, 1775-1979. 2 vols. [REF KF8202 1999]
• Douglas letters: selections from the private papers of Justice William O. Douglas. [KF8745.D6 A4 1987]
• Ellis Island interviews: in their own words. [JV6455 .C53 1997]
• Foundations of colonial America: a documentary history. 3 vols. [JK49 .K38 v.2]
• Grandmothers, mothers, and daughters: oral histories of three generations of ethnic American women. [HQ1439.P58 K73 1991]
• Historic documents. [1972-Present] [REF E839.5 .H57 1973]
• I was born a slave: an anthology of classic slave narratives. 4 vols. [E444 .I18 1999]
• In our own words: extraordinary speeches of the American century. [PS661 .I53 1999]
• Indian oratory; famous speeches by noted Indian chieftains. [E98.O7 V33]
• Kennedy tapes: inside the White House during the Cuban missile crisis. [E841 .K4655 1997]
• Letters of a Civil War nurse. [E621 .H29 1998]
• Letters of a nation: a collection of extraordinary American letters. [PS672 .L48 1999]
• Major problems in American Indian history: documents and essays. [E77.2 .M35 2001]
• Microbook library of American civilization. 4 vols. [REF E169.1 .L5 1971]
• Africa remembered; narratives by West Africans from the era of the slave trade. [DT471 .C8]
• Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 1708-1903. [Microfilm, 46 Reels, last drawer, Microfilm Cabinets] See also Alexander Hamilton A Register of His Papers in the Library of Congress.
• Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower: the war years. 5 vols. [D735 .E37 1970]
• Pioneers of the Black Atlantic: five slave narratives from the Enlightenment, 1772-1815. [E444 .P56 1998]
• Representative American speeches. [PS668 .B3]
• Root of bitterness: documents of the social history of American women. [HQ1410 .R65 1986]
• Touched with fire; Civil War letters and diary of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1861-1864. [E601 .H73]
• Treaty of Canandaigua 1794: 200 years of treaty relations between the Iroquois Confederacy and the United States. [KF8228.I76 T74 2000]
• Voices of the 55th: letters from the 55th Massachusetts Volunteers, 1861-1865. [E513.5 55th .V65 1996]
• What they wrote: 19th century documents from Tompkins County, New York. [O-SIZE F127.T7 W55]
• Witnesses to the Holocaust: an oral history. [D804.3 .W47 1990]
• Women together: a history in documents of the women's movement in the United States. [HQ1426 .P34]
• Words of the uprooted: Jewish immigrants in early twentieth-century America. [E184.J5 W885 1998]
• Works of Alexander Hamilton; comprising his correspondence, and his political and official writings. 4 vols. [E302.H2 W6 ]

Historical Newspaper Archives

• Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers "Allows you to search and view newspaper pages from 1880-1922 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present."
• Hackenbruch Collection of American and British Newspapers - "Contains 2,247 newspaper issues whose front pages were of historical import. The earliest were printed in London in the late seventeenth century."
• Historic Australian Newspapers, 1803 to 1954
• London Times Archive - Selected articles are available. There is a Topics Index.
• New York Times - Free articles dating back to 1851.
• Red Bank Register Newspaper Archives: 1878-1991
• Utah Digital Newspapers

Primary Sources on the Web

The Web is rich in primary source material. Many libraries are digitizing their archival resources and making them available online. Using Primary Sources on the Web is a good introduction. Below is a selective list of resources which should serve only as a point of departure.

• American Journeys: Eyewitness Accounts of Early American Exploration and Settlement
• American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital Library
• British Library Online Gallery
• Documenting the American South
• Early Americas Digital Archive - "Collection of electronic texts originally written in or about the Americas from 1492 to approximately 1820."
• Early Canadiana Online (Note: no password needed)
• European History Primary Sources
• Foreign Relations Series - Documents from the administrations of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson.
• In the First Person: an index to letters, diaries, oral histories and personal narratives - Indexes more than 2,500 collections of oral history from around the world.
• Internet History Sourcebooks
• Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: 1610 to 1791 - Excellent primary source on the French settlement of Canada. 71 volumes.
• Making of America
Extensive digital library of nineteenth century books and journals. This digitization project was undertaken at both the University of Michigan and Cornell University with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Search both collections; the Michigan collection consists of imprints between 1850 and 1877 and "currently contains approximately 9,500 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints" and the Cornell collection, which covers the period of 1840 - 1900, "provides access to 267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles." You can browse periodical titles at Cornell and Michigan.
Martha Ballard's Diary - Midwife of Hallowell, Maine "wrote in her diary nearly every day from January 1, 1785 to May 12, 1812 (27 years) for a total of almost 10,000 entries."
Primary Source Microfilm - Although this will not locate full-text, this is an excellent resource to search for names and events
National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections, 1959-2009 - Search for manuscripts in the OCLC Catalog
New York State Digital Collections - Digital Image Collections held by the State Archives, State Library, and State Museum
New York State Historical Literature - Cornell University Library
Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States
Online Books Page
Repositories of Primary Sources - "A listing of over 5000 websites describing holdings of manuscripts, archives, rare books, historical photographs, and other primary sources for the research scholar."
U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian: Historical Documents - Provides access to the extensive Foreign Relations of the United States, the "official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity". Includes:
• Kennedy Administration - 1961-1963
• Johnson Administration - 1964-1968
• Nixon-Ford Administrations - 1969-1976
Women Working, 1870-1930 - Harvard University collection of over 500,000 digitized pages and images "focuses on women's role in the United States economy and provides access to digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources."

Last update: Friday, June 04, 2010