LibGuides: HIST 3761: Childhood and Youth in African History: Primary Sources

Approaches to Finding Primary Sources

The "primaryness" of a source emerges in relation to the researcher's engagement with it. The UC Berkeley Libraries define primary sources as "either created during the time period being studied or...created at a later date by a participant in the events being studied (as in the case of memoirs)."

(source: Finding Historical Primary Sources: Getting Started, last updated 8/12/18, http://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/c.php?g=4409&p=15606)

When determining primary sources for your research, it's helpful to give yourself a historical context that defines your search. This could be a range of dates. It could also be determined by geographical sites of origin. You might also be interested in a specific type of source. Some examples include:

photographs
diaries
newspaper articles
advertisements
films
web sites
sound recordings
government documents
works of art

Databases and digital repositories can offer a multitude of paths to potential primary source material for your research. In addition, you might want to try searches in the CLIO catalog or articles+ search, limited by date of publication.

Using CLIO to Find Primary Sources

The CLIO Catalog and Articles searches can be useful tools for finding a range of primary sources. The key here is to define the boundaries (and potential) of your research. This can be done in several ways:

Using Search Terms:

Select words and phrases that you might expect to encounter in the kind of source you are looking for, rather than just words and phrases that would be use in a contemporary academic context.
Take advantage of connecting words like AND, OR, NOT as well as the symbol * (an asterisk that can be used to stand in for missing letters, i.e. migra* for migration, migratory, etc)

Using a Publication Date Range:

Set a range of years of publication for the sources you're open to finding. It helps to give yourself several years as a "cushion"---sometimes, a source is published years after its creation.

Limit by Content Type, Genre, and/or Language:

This could be a later step in your search, after you have pulled up a list of results. Look out for words like Maps, Statistics, and even the vague but promising term Sources!

Primary Source Collections : Various

African Blue Books, 1821-1953
British colonial officials required an ‘Annual Blue Book’ to be transmitted from each colony to the British Colonial Office. The Blue Book was an attempt to standardize statistical reports, primarily covering economic development as well as demographic, ecclesiastical and public records. This collection contains Blue Books and other archival material from 13 British colonies and protectorates in Africa dating 1821-1953. The standardized nature of the Blue Books enables comparisons to be drawn geographically (between colonies), and over time on issues from colonial economic practice to education and hospitals.
Africa's Historical Newspapers
Africa's historical newspapers provides full-text access to historical newspapers from Africa. Includes African Newspapers, Series 1 and 2, 1800-1925 as well as African newspapers--The British Library Collection, 1821-1900, offering coverage of the people, issues and events that shaped the continent during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Featuring titles from Algeria to Angola, Zambia to Zimbabwe, this resource chronicles the evolution of Africa through eyewitness reporting, editorials, legislative information, letters, poetry, advertisements, obituaries and other items. Also included is the Rand Daily Mail, 1902-1985 -- a 20th century newspaper containing unique perspectives on South Africa and the African continent, with deep coverage of the era of apartheid.
Aluka Struggles for Freedom, South Africa
brings together materials from various archives and libraries throughout the world documenting colonial rule, dispersion of exiles, international intervention, and the worldwide networks that supported successive generations of resistance within the Southern African region. It consists of 76 different collections of more than 20,000 objects and 190,000 pages of documents and images, including periodicals, nationalist publications, records of colonial government commissions, local newspaper reports, personal papers, correspondence, UN documents, out-of-print and other particularly relevant books, pamphlets, speeches, and interviews with those who participated in the struggles.
Apartheid South Africa 1948-1980
Contains British government files (from the Foreign, Colonial, Dominion and Foreign and Commonwealth Offices) and maps related to the apartheid government of South Africa, spanning 1948-1980. Materials in files include letters, diplomatic dispatches, reports, trial papers, activists’ biographies and first-hand accounts of events.
Colonial Law in Africa, 1808-1919
Originally known as the 'Government Gazettes', each item contains the colonial laws for the year they were published. The legal records also include property for sale, probate records and bankruptcy notices. These gazettes were published alongside the African Blue Books of Statistics during the 19th and 20th centuries. Includes coverage of law in Nigeria (Lagos), 1887-1919.
Colonial Law in Africa, 1920-1945
Originally known as the 'Government Gazettes', each item contains the colonial laws for the year they were published. The legal records also include property for sale, probate records and bankruptcy notices.
Confidential Print: Africa: 1834-1966
Includes digitized documents from the National Archives of Great Britain, covering the main years of British colonization of Africa. Features 300 full color maps. Other materials included are reports, dispatches, correspondence, descriptions of leading personalities, political summaries, and economic analyses.

Discovery: UK National Archives Search
Find records from the UK National Archives and numerous other archives across the UK. Discovery holds more than 32 million descriptions of records held by The National Archives and more than 2,500 archives across the country. Over 9 million records are available for download. (see Nineteenth Century Collections to download images and files)

Gale Primary Sources
Provides an interactive research environment that allows researchers to cross-search multiple Gale collections, including Archives Unbound, Archives of Sexuality & Gender, Associated Press Collections Online, Brazilian and Portuguese History and Culture, British Library Newspapers, the Indigenous Peoples: North America database, Nineteenth Century Collections Online, The Making of Modern Law, U.S. Declassified Documents Online, U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs, 1832-1978, and the Women's Studies Archive.
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.
Retrospective Government Gazette
Full text access to Government Gazettes of South Africa from 1910 to 1993, including all Government Gazettes from 1948 to 1993 as well as most of the Government Gazettes from 1910 to 1947.
U.K. Parliamentary Papers
Includes a range of digitized parliamentary documents from the United Kingdom, among them, House of Commons papers, House of Lords papers, public petitions, bills and acts, statistical abstracts, and command papers.