The High Library
Elizabethtown College

Searching the Catalog for Primary Sources

Do a subject search under these headings:

            Diaries

            Letters

            Biography (encompasses autobiography)

                        Can subdivide by time period such as 18^th century

            Interviews

            Personal narratives

Using the advanced search screen, combine the above subject searches with a keyword, such as holocaust, civil war, etc.

Do a search everything search under

         Memoirs or journals, combined with a subject such as holocaust, civil war,  women, etc.

Do an author search under the name of the person you are interested in.

Some Examples of Primary Sources in High Library (a very small sample)

           American Civil War

The War of the Rebellion, A Compilation of the Official Record of the Union and Confederate Armies.  Government Printing Office. 1889  973.7 Un3
Diary of the Civil War, 1860-1865 by George Templeton Strong. 973.7 St923d

Mary Chestnut’s Civil War.  973.782 C524m
A Mennonite Journal, 1862-1865 by  Jacob Hildebrand. 973.782 H642W
The New York Times, July 4, 1865

Pioneers

        Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart. 978.7 St849W 1942
        Ho for California!: Women’s Overland Diaries.  917.8 H678
        My Girlhood Among Outlaws by Lily Kasner  917.8964 K63W 1972
        Settlers  971.03 H168s
        An Army Doctor’s Wife on the Frontier: Letters from Alaska and the Far West, 1874-1878 by Emily Fitzgerald.  917.98 F553a
        Pioneer Women: the Lives of Women on the Frontier by Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith. 978.0082 P363p
 

Memoirs of Famous People

       
        And the Sea is Never Full by Elie Wiesel  843.914 W651w 1999
        Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead by Anne Morrow Lindbergh  818.5 L742lW 1973
        Memoirs by Mikhail Gorbachev  947.0854 G661w 1966
        RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon by Richard Nixon  973.924 N738r

Diaries of Newsworthy Events

        Tiananmen Diary by Harrison E. Salisbury  951.058 Sa167W 1989
        Zlata's Diary: a Child's Life in Sarajevo  by Zlata Filipovic  949.742 F483W 1994       

Personal Diaries

A Forty-Niner from Tennessee: the Diary of Hugh Brown Heiskell.  979.403  H473f 
Puritan Family Life: the Diary of Samuel Sewell by Judith Graham  974.403 Se512 2000
Village Life in America, 1852-1872…as Told in the Diary of a Schoolgirl by Caroline Cowles Richards.  917.3 R514v 1913

Interviews/Oral History

Black Elk Lives: Conversations with the Black Elk Family by Esther Black Elk  DeSarsa, et.  970.3 Og35bel
The Foxfire Book   398.09758 F795
The Habit of Surviving: Black Women's Strategies for Life by Kesho Scott.  305.48  Sco427h
Holocaust and Memory: The Experience of the Holocaust and Its Consequences: An Investigation Based on Personal Narratives by Engelking-Boni, Barbara   940.5318 En57h
Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell about Life in the Segregated South. (with CD audio)  305.896 R386
Women of the Apache Nation : Voices of Truth by Henrietta Stockel 970.3 Ap639st

Bibliographies

        American Diary Literature, 1620-1799 by Steven Kagle  818.03 K11a
        Frontier Women: The Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-1880 by  Julie Roy Jeffrey.  301.412 J46f
        Appalachian Women: An Annotated Bibliography by Sidney Saylor Farr  301.412016 F239a
        Women in English Social History, 1800-1914 by Barbara Kanner  301.412016 K16w

        Reference Materials

Annals of America. Encyclopedia Britannica. 1493-  Ref 973 Am613
English Historical Documents. (covering A.D.500-).Oxford University Press. 1955-  Ref 942 En36
Historic Documents. Congressional Quarterly. 1972-  Ref 973.02 H673
New York Times. 1852-  microfilm  Index available in the reference room.
 

Some Online Sites for Primary Sources

AMERICAN HISTORY

American Memory (Library of Congress)
http://memory.loc.gov 
This is part of the National Digital Library and includes historical documents, recordings  and images from the Library of Congress and other major research collections.

Making of America (University of Michigan)
http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moagrp
Focusing on the period 1850-1877, this collection of primary sources in the social sciences is a collaborative effort of the University of Michigan and Cornell University. According to their web site “the collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The collection currently contains approximately 8,500 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints.”

American Colonist’s Library
 https://www.edline.net/pages/Catholic_Central_High_School/Classes/03842501/library
From the Confessions of St. Augustine (397 A.D.), to the English Bill of Rights (1689) to the Treaty of Greenville with various Indian Tribes (1795), there are hundreds of  documents on this site relating to early American history up to 1800, including many works that influenced the founders as well as documents written by them.
 

AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History (University of Kansas)
http://www.ku.edu/carrie/docs/amdocs_index.html 
The University of Kansas has created links to Leif Ericsson’s voyage account, a letter from Columbus to King Ferdinand (1492), TheMaryland Toleration Act (1679) and George W. Bush’s 2005 State of the Union address as well as hundreds of other documents relating to all periods of American history. There are even audio files, such as Franklin Roosevelt’s speech asking Congress to declare war on Japan, Dec.8, 1941.

           
Archiving Early America
http://earlyamerica.com
Although you have to put up with commercial pop-ups, and this site is not as well organized as others, there are sections for freedom documents, milestone events, music, maps, notable women, famous obituaries, etc. Fortunately there is a search screen to help you find what you want among the clutter. It is also one of the few sites that includes music with audio.

University of Oklahoma College of Law: A Chronology of U.S. Historical Documents 
http://www.law.ou.edu/hist
Neatly divided into 25-year time periods, and covering The Magna Carta to George W. Bush, The University of Oklahoma College of Law site has links to many historic documents, focusing mainly (as you would expect) on law and politics.

           
National Archives on American History, Civics and Service
http://www.ourdocuments.gov 
The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration has compiled what they consider the 100 most important documents in American History. Naturally the list includes The Declaration of Independence and The Civil Rights Act, but there are also lesser known items such as the 1803 Marbury vs Madison  Supreme Court Decision concerning governmental checks and balances, and the Zimmermann Telegramm (1917) which propelled the U.S. into World War I. There is an interesting page which lists the documents in order of importance according to a public vote.

           
Lewis and Clark

http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/lewisandclark/biddle/splash.html
The University has digitized a collection of letters, images and newspaper accounts relating to the Lewis and Clark expedition.

American Women’s History: A Research Guide to Digital Collections of Primary Sources (Middle Tennessee State University Library)
 http://www.mtsu.edu/~kmiddlet/history/women/wh-digcoll.html
This site is more a bibliography of digital collections on women rather than the text of the documents themselves, and is organized by topics, such as marriage, farm work, slavery, journalists, artists, etc.

American CIVIL WAR

University of Virginia Civil War Collection
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/civilwar

This site contains many sources on the Civil War, including letters, diaries, photos, maps and contemporary newspaper articles. It is part of a larger University of Virginia project called Etext Center which covers many subjects
 

Gettysburg
http://mciunix.mciu.k12.pa.us/~spjvweb/gettys.html 

During the Battle of Gettysburg union soldier Charles Goddard wrote to his mother, “We have engaged the enemy again but this time in a free country and our company as well as the regt has suffered much.” He did not think much of Pennsylvania or Pennsylvanians, as in another letter he said, “But if I ever saw such a leather, wooden country as Southern Pennsylvania, I hope to be shot again. There is no patriotism; everybody is stingy mean.” This primary source along with many others about the Battle of Gettysburg can be found at this site.

          Shotgun’s Home of the American Civil War

          http://www.civilwarhome.com

          Created by “a Southerner by birth and a Rebel by choice,” this site is a mixture of primary and secondary sources. It includes some documents, points of
          view, and trivia not as readily found elsewhere.

GENERAL

            In the First Person (Alexander Street Press)

            http://www.inthefirstperson.com

            A collection of first-person narratives from diaries, letters, autobiographies, and interviews, this fully searchable database can also be accessed by a 

            topical index. The site consists mostly of citations to the sources, but there is some full text and even some audio and video.

            Repositories of Primary Sources (University of Idaho)

            http://www.uidaho.edu/special-collections/Other.Repositories.html

Again, this site tells you where to find repositories of primary documents in many different countries. It does not have the documents themselves. It is “a listing of over 5000 websites describing holdings of manuscripts, archives, rare books, historical photographs, and other primary sources for the research scholar.” Its scope is worldwide.

There are so many digitized primary sources on the web that it is impossible to list even a large percentage. The above mentioned sites are a sampling of some available in the area of American history.

chw 10/2005

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