LibGuides: HIST 3360: London from 'Great Wen' to World City: Primary Sources

Primary Sources - Search Stratagies, and (some) Archival Resources

Primary source research requires a slightly different approach. Here are a few tips/strategies:

Start by doing some background reading or "pre-research": The more you know about key events, people, laws, and especially common terminology used during the time period you are researching the more successful your research will be. You can use Wikipedia or the libraries' online encyclopedia collections to do this.

Limit to specific time periods: When searching for primary sources online always remember to use date ranges (usually on the advanced search page) to focus your search.

Depending on the time period, remember that it took time for news to get reported or to spread to other parts of the country. It often helps to include a few weeks after an event to ensure you get results.
Start with broader search times but limit to a narrow time period. For example: if searching for articles about the Massacre at Wounded Knee, search for: "wounded knee" limit to the date range of 12/29/1890-1/12/1891 (the word massacre may not have been used immediately after the event, but the location)

Use primary source keywords to find primary sources: Use search terms that reflect the types of primary sources you’re looking for, such as: diaries, pamphlets, correspondence, speeches, manuscripts, personal narratives, interviews, firsthand, eyewitness, sources, etc.

For example: slave AND diary | suffrage AND pamphlets | united states and race relations AND sources

Archival Finding Aids: are descriptive inventories of archival collections that help users find relevant materials. These can be very detailed or if the collection has been only marginally processed, can be very bare bones. It is important to remember that when searching for primary sources in the physical archive that you are not searching for their full text as you are when searching many other online sources. It sometimes helps to do broad searchers for general topics or names, places.

Archives Direct: Sources from the National Archives, UK

Archives Direct is a suite of collections sourced from The National Archives, the official archive of the United Kingdom. Containing diplomatic correspondence, letters, reports, surveys, material from newspapers, statistical analyses, published pamphlets, ephemera, military papers, profiles of prominent individuals, maps and many other types of document, it consists of the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from the British state’s point of view.
Archives of sexuality and gender

The Archives of Sexuality and Gender program provides a robust and significant collection of primary sources for the historical study of sex, sexuality, and gender. With material dating back to the sixteenth century, researchers and scholars can examine how sexual norms have changed over time, health and hygiene, the development of sex education, the rise of sexology, changing gender roles, social movements and activism, erotica, and many other interesting topical areas. This growing archival program offers rich research opportunities across a wide span of human history. The Archives of Sexuality and Gender program consists of four archives: LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940, Part I; LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940, Part II; Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century; and International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture.
British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries, from 1500-1900

include approximately 100,000 pages of published letters and diaries from individuals writing from the 1500 to 1900, plus several thousand pages of previously unpublished materials. Drawn from more than 1,000 sources, including journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings, much of the material is in copyright. Represented are all age groups and life stages, all ethnicities, many geographical regions, the famous and the not so famous. More than 500 biographies enhance the use of the database
British Library newspapers

Sourced from the extensive holdings of the British Library, British Library Newspapers delivers a wide range of irreplaceable local and regional voices to reflect the social, political, and cultural events of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. These newspapers, emerging during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a crucial channel of information in towns and major cities, provide researchers with a unique, first-hand perspective on history. With more than 160 newspaper titles, the series is comprised of approximately 5.5 million pages of historic content, from articles to advertisements. This collection illuminates diverse and distinct regional attitudes, cultures, and vernaculars, providing an alternative viewpoint to the London-centric national press over a period of more than 200 years.
British Periodicals

British Periodicals provides access to the searchable full text of British periodicals from the late seventeenth to the early twentieth century (the same periodicals as are covered in the UMI microfilm collection "Early British Periodicals"). It includes millions of high-resolution facsimile page images. Subject areas covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the fine arts and the social sciences.
Defining gender, 1450-1910

Defining Gender provides access to a vast body of original British source material that will enrich the teaching and research experience of those studying history, literature, sociology and education from a gendered perspective
Early English Books Online

Contains full-text page images of of about 100,000 of the 1250,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection. Also includes a growing collection of searchable full text provided by the EEBO Text Creation Partnership.
Eighteenth century collections online

Provides full-text and full-page-image access to a vast range of English-language and foreign-language titles printed in the United Kingdom between 1701 and 1800, along with thousands of important works from the Americas. Includes books, pamphlets, broadsides, and ephemera. Based on the extensive microfilm collection: the Eighteenth Century.
Gerritsen Women's History Collection of Aletta H. Jacobs

Covers years 1543-1945, bulk is 1880-1920, with monographs and serials from the U.S., the U.K., Canada, New Zealand, and continental Europe. The collection is especially rich in women's journals, scholarly medical and sociological studies, and housekeeping and advice manuals.
Illustrated London News historical archive, 1842-2003

"The Illustrated London News Historical Archive gives students and researchers unprecedented online access to the entire run of the ILN from its first publication on 14 May 1842 to its last in 2003. Each page has been digitally reproduced in full colour and every article and caption is full-text searchable with hit-term highlighting and links to corresponding illustrations."
The John Johnson collection: an archive of printed ephemera

This collection provides access to thousands of items selected from the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, offering unique insights into the changing nature of everyday life in Britain in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Categories include Nineteenth-Century Entertainment, the Booktrade, Popular Prints, Crimes, Murders and Executions, and Advertising.
Nineteenth Century collections online

A multi-year global digitization and publishing program focusing on primary source collections of the nineteenth century; will be comprised of numerous collections to be released over many years, including a variety of material types--monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, statistics, and more--in one cross-searchable location.

Food and Drink in History
Five centuries of primary source material documenting the story of food and drink throughout history. The materials in this collection illustrate the deep links between food and identity, politics and power, gender, race and socio-economic status, as well as charting key issues around agriculture, nutrition and food production. Explore a wide range of primary source material, including printed and manuscript cookbooks, advertising ephemera, government reports, films, and illustrated content revealing the evolution of food and drink within everyday life and the public sphere. Includes sources from across the globe to reflect a wide range of food cultures and traditions. The earliest documents are from the sixteenth century and the latest from the early twenty-first century. Includes six rare Apicius cookbooks, the earliest of which dates from the ninth century

You can search CLIO to find primary sources by adding keywords to your search, or look for them in subject subheadings or in the Subject - Genre filter. Here are some examples:

archives * correspondence * diaries * documentary * interviews * maps *memoirs * narratives * newspapers * pamphlets * oratory * speeches *

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Archives and archival collections unique constellations of records made in the course of normal activities which are preserved because of some perceived historicalvalue. Archives are comprised of primary sources, but not all primary sources are archival.
Archival research is the practice of performing primary research to extract information from archival records.
Different archives (college/university, government, historical society, corporate archives, government archives, religious archives etc.) collect different materials. For broader description of the types of materials various archives collect, see the Society of American Archivists’ Using Archives: A Guide to Effective Research, Types of Archives. *Note* The Society of American Archivists’ list is not inclusive of community archives which are collections, typically not found in institutional repositories, that are created and maintained by the community that produces said collections. For example: Interference Archive, the South Asian American Digital Archive, and the Lesbian Herstory Archive.
Archival materials are organized into collections, typically based on who created them. This is related to the principle of provenance.
For more information on the difference between archives and libraries, see the Society of American Archivists’ Using Archives: A Guide to Effective Research, What Are Archives and How Do They Differ from Libraries?
Also recommended: Dorothy Berry's "The House Archives Built" provides a review of the fundamental principles of western archives (provenance, original order, collective control) as well as a critique of them.

NYPL - Archives
NYPLs Research Libraries have a number of collections related to British History.
Archive Grid
Search Archival collections around the world

It is important to examine primary sources with a critical eye since they represent unfiltered records of the past. Below are some questions to consider once you've found a primary source(s):

RUSA's Guide to Evaluating Primary Sources:

Who is the author or creator?
What biases or assumptions may have influenced the author or creator?
Who was the intended audience?
What is the origin of the primary source?
What was the significance of the source at the time it was created?
Has the source been edited or translated, or altered in some way from the original?
What questions could be answered about the time period by using this source?
What, if any, are the limitations of the source?
Does your understanding of the source fit with other scholars’ interpretations, or does it challenge their argument?

The 6 C's of Primary Source Analysis:

Content - What is the main idea? Describe in detail what you see
Citation - When was this created?
Context - What is going on in the world, the country, the region, or the locality when this was created?
Connections - Link the primary source to other things that you already know or have learned about.
Communication - Is this source reliable?
Conclusions - Ask yourself: How does the primary source contribute to our understanding of history?

Adopted for USC Libraries Guide to using primary sources