Researching American History Strategies and tools for identifying and locating primary sources for modern American history.

Using Secondary Sources to Find Primary Sources

Secondary sources, scholarly journal articles and books, are a great source for identifying potential primary sources. Find a few articles, books or dissertations related to your topic and then mine the footnotes and bibliography.

Books & Dissertations

• Find books located within the libraries by searching the UW Libraries Catalog.
• Other catalogs to try are Cascade, OhioLink, the Center for Research Libraries and OCLC Worldcat.
• Find dissertations written nation-wide by searching Dissertation Abstracts.
• Interlibrary Borrowing can get books and dissertations for you from other libraries.

Journal Articles

• Find articles by searching relevant databases listed on the History Subject Page. The most important one for U.S. history is America: History & Life. Others that can be useful are Expanded Academic Index and Research Library. Two collections of electronic journals contain some history journals and can also sometimes be useful (depending on your topic): JSTOR and Project Muse.
• Once you find some likely articles on your topic, locate them in the library by searching for the journal title in the UW Libraries Catalog. (If we do not have the journal, get a photocopy of the article through Interlibrary Borrowing.)
• Examine the footnotes used in the article for published material (we are much more likely to have published items than manuscript sources).
• Search the UW Libraries Catalog for these items.

Bibliographies

Bibliographies are also useful for identifying secondary sources (and sometimes primary sources) on a subject. Bibliographies list articles and other material on fairly narrow topics. If you are lucky, there will be a recent bibliography on your topic.

To locate printed bibliographies related to your topic search the UW Libraries Catalog:

• Choose the Keywords search
• Type in your topic keyword(s) and the following phrase:
  and su:bibliography
• Examples:
  • civil rights and su:bibliography
  • afro american women and su:bibliography
  • labor and united and history and su:bibliography

Finding Primary Sources -- Books

The UW Libraries has a huge collection of books that can be considered primary sources for American history. These include books written during the period for your topic (i.e., during the depression), books written by participants, published collections of correspondence and other personal writings, memoirs and reprints of collections of primary source material.

• Limit your search by publication date.
• Search for books written by key participants and organizations.
• Browse the shelves in the appropriate subject area.
• Use special subject headings that designate primary sources:
  sources, personal narratives, diaries, correspondence, interviews
• Examples:
  • women and suffrage and su:sources
  • civil rights and su:interviews
  • japanese americans and su:(diaries or correspondence or narratives)

Finding Primary Sources -- Articles

The UW Libraries has a strong collection of magazines and journals from the 19th and 20th centuries. Many of them are in print (either in Suzzallo Periodicals or in a storage area), others are on microfilm. There is limited electronic indexing for 19th and early 20th century material.

• Use Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature (Suzzallo Reference Index area A13 R47). The Readers' Guide covers American magazines from 1890 to the present.
• For Pacific Northwest history, use the Pacific Northwest Regional Newspaper and Periodical Index which is a cardfile in the Manuscripts, Special Collections and University Archives (MSCUA) division (basement Allen south). The online version has material from 1997 on.
• Use other specialized indexes covering the period (most cover the early 20th century on).
  • Alternative Press Index, 1969- (Suzzallo Reference AI3 .A48)
  • PAIS 1915- (Suzzallo Reference Index area Z7163 P9; 1972- online)
  • International Index to Periodicals, 1920-1965 (Suzzallo Reference Index area AI3.R49; also in Odegaard)
  • Periodicals Contents Index, indexes American and Western European social sciences and humanities journals from roughly 1900 to 1960 (Library CD-ROM).
  • JSTOR, a collection of back issues (from first issue to early 1990s) of electronic journals in a variety of disciplines.

Finding Primary Sources -- Newspapers

The UW Libraries has a basic collection of major U.S. newspapers on microfilm for the 19th and 20th centuries. Complete runs are available for such papers as the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Oregonian. The libraries has a strong collection on Northwest papers. Newspapers are housed in the Microform and Newspaper Collections on the first floor of Suzzallo.

• There a few indexes to newspapers predating the 1970s. To see what indexing is available, use the Searchable Guide to Indexes.
• The New York Times is the only major American paper completely indexed. The Historical Index to the New York Times covers 1863-1905 and 1913-1922. The complete index is available in print in the Suzzallo Reference Index area (AI21 .N44).
• For Pacific Northwest history, use the Pacific Northwest Regional Newspaper and Periodical Index which is a cardfile in the Manuscripts, Special Collections and University Archives division (basement Allen south). This file indexes the major Seattle papers. An index to the Oregonian is available on microfiche and paper.
• If you are using a paper without an index, use the one for the New York Times to pinpoint dates. If you are working on a particular event, then you can just browse newspapers from that week.

Finding Primary Sources -- Government Documents

The UW Libraries has a strong collection of U.S. government documents including federal agency publications, congressional hearings and reports and other material. Some material is printed while others are available on microfilm. The Government Publications section is in the basement of Suzzallo.

• Congressional hearings and reports dating back to 1789 are indexed in Congressional Masterfile which is available on CD-ROM in Government Publications.
• Other federal documents can be found by using the Monthly Catalog to United States Government Publications (GovPub. 328.73 Un37m) and its predecessors.
• The National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) has digitized a tiny portion (124,000) of their collection (a hodgepodge of material). These can be searched by using the NAIL database.

Finding Primary Sources -- Manuscripts

Manuscripts, Special Collections and University Archives (MSCUA) collects "letters, speeches, minutes, reports, writings, and miscellaneous other records [that] document the history and culture of Seattle and the Pacific Northwest." In addition the UW Libraries owns microfilmed collections of manuscripts dealing with the various subjects in U.S. history with special strengths in women, African American and labor. Check with the Microform and Newspaper Collections (McNews) for more information.

• For collections in MSCUA (basement Allen south), check the Comprehensive guide to the manuscripts collection and to the personal papers in the University archives (Suzzallo Reference desk Z6621 W37 1980 and elsewhere).
• Finding guides for our microfilm collections are housed in McNews. Some online finding guides are also available through History Universe. We do not own all the sets listed in History Universe.
• A list of microfilm sets dealing with late 19th and early 20th century U.S. history is available. There is also a searchable guide listing some of the major sets we own.

For manuscript collections elsewhere consult:

• National Union Catalogue of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC)
• OCLC Worldcat also includes citations to some manuscript collections
• Repositories of Primary Sources, a directory of web sites for manuscript repositories

Finding Primary Sources -- WWW

The World Wide Web is a growing source for primary sources dealing with U.S. history. The sites listed here have substantial collections of primary sources. See Web Starting Points for History for other history websites.

• Ad*Access Project
• American Memory, the premiere collection of primary sources created by the Library of Congress. There are over 80 multimedia digital collections dealing with American history such as the African American Experience in Ohio, 1850-1920, Votes for Women: Selections from the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, 1848-1921, and Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929.
• Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive
• Digital Images from the American Radicalism Collection
• FDR Library and Digital Archives
• FOIA Electronic Reading Room
• Free Speech Movement: Student Protest - UC Berkeley, 1964-65
• New Deal Network
• Truman Library documents
• Women and Social Movement in the United States, 1830-1930

Slides | Background Sources | Microfilm Sets | Search tutorial | History subject page | Information Gateway

1 October 2000
Theresa Mudrock
mudrock@u.washington.edu