How to locate Primary Resources and Manuscript collections in U. S. libraries

What is a primary source? Distinguishing Primary from Secondary Sources

A *primary source* is:	A secondary source is:
a first-hand account by a participant or observer close to the time of the event, as reported in an article, diary, journal, speech, interview, letter, e-mail, memorandum, or autobiography	an analytical article or book about an event, including textbooks and encyclopedias an editorial a biography
visual and audio recordings	a documentary or reenactment
an original work of art or literature	reviews or literary criticism
original research or raw data, including public opinion polls	an article that describes or analyzes a third parties' research results
a government document that is produced in the normal course of governing (a law, congressional hearing, treaty, regulation or court decision) and those that: record an event (birth certificate) report data collected by the government (the census) confer a right (a permit, license or patent)	a government report that analyzes events after-the-fact, relying on evidence collected or documents generated at the time of the event United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Office of Policy and Plans. Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident. June 6, 1986. 24 April 2001 a law review article or treatise on the law an interest group report criticizing the government's statistical analysis of census data
records produced by organizations in the normal course of doing business	a report examining the commercial viability of a particular enterprise by a consultant
a laboratory report or field observation, including an ethnography	an article describing and analyzing the results of a third parties' work
artifacts of any kind

General Tips for Finding Primary Resources

Have a good understanding of the topic - read and absorb information in encyclopedias and secondary sources. You need to know more about when an event happened, the duration of the event, where it happened and what players might have been involved.

Good scholarly secondary sources will often list primary sources in the bibliography or in footnotes. Follow up on these leads.

Identify persons involved with the topic (government officials, eye-witnesses, writers of the time period). Biographical databases such as American National Biography and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography are great places to look for key British and American people and ach entry lists additional sources. For example to find key individuals associated with the East India Company search the DNB for that phrase.

Search the names of key people or organizations in author searches (including the position that they may have held, e.g. United States President, Ambassadors, Missionaries etc.), to find papers, letters, memoirs, autobiographies. Conduct these searches in our online catalog, ConnectNY, and Worldcat.

Identify materials written at the time of your event by using date limits in catalogs and indexes.

The presence of the word "sources" in a subject heading always indicates a primary sources or reprints of primary sources. For example, "Great Britain -- Colonies -- History -- Sources"

For some interesting ideas about reading and understanding primary sources see:
"Reading primary sources : the interpretation of texts from nineteenth- and twentieth-century history" / edited by Miriam Dobson and Benjamin Ziemann. London ; New York : Routledge, 2009. CASE Main D16 .R23 2009

Locating primary sources through Colgate's Library Catalog

Search the names of key people or organizations in author searches (including the position that they may have held, e.g. United States President, Secretaries of State, Ambassadors, Missionaries etc.), to find papers, letters, memoirs, autobiographies. These works will often contain information about the location of manuscript collections or the location of a specific manuscript.

The following words often appear in the subject headings for primary sources. Since keyword searches search the subject heading field, in addition to the title and author fields, you may want to include these terms in your searches:

sources
correspondence (used with names of people, families, ethnic groups, organizations)
description and travel (used with names of places)
diaries
journals
interviews
notebooks
speeches
sermons
personal narratives (used only with wars)
diplomatic history (used only with wars)
treaties (used with subjects, geographic areas, ethnic groups, wars)

Limit a search by date. For example search "fugitive slaves " in ENCORE and refine your search by date using the menu on the right hand side of the screen. In the classic catalog search "China" as a subject heading and then click the limit/sort search button at the top of the screen. In year of publication indicate before 1900. If you limit by date, be aware that you may miss modern reprints of old materials.

Limit a search to the location of "Case Special Collections." Most likely you will be searching for an author, but this will also work for Exact Subject or Subject Key word searches. Examine the records to determine if manuscripts are part of the collection you have discovered.

Search the catalogs of other libraries

Try these types of searches in Worldcat. Tip for searching for manuscripts: Use "advanced search" and search the "Notes" field for "manuscript+". In many cases it will be necessary to visit sites that have manuscript collections. In some instances copies of specific manuscripts may be requested. Some collections have also been reproduced on microfilm. If this is the case, borrowing or purchasing the film is often possible.

Search the holdings of the Center for Research Libraries. These records also appear in the ConnecyNY catalog. Tip for finding these records in ConnectNY: Choose "keyword search". Type in your keyword and choose location "crl".

Search Databases (Some of these databases are a little tricky to use. When in doubt ask a Reference librarian.)

The library subscribes to a large number of primary source databases. To find what we have choose "Articles" from the main library web site. Step one select a subject such as History. Step two check newspapers or primary sources on the source type menu.

Some notable newspaper databases available to Colgate: New York Times (1851—) Times (London) (1785-1985), African Americans newspapers (1827-1868), America’s Historical newspapers (1690-1922) and the 17th and 18th century Burney collection

Some notable databases containing older books, pamphelts, sermons, broadsides are: Early American Imprints I (1639-1800), Early American Imprints II (1801-1819), and Early English Books (1478-1700).

US Government Documents

Refer to the U.S. Government websites guide created by the Head of Government Documents.

Modern British History - finding guide for primary resources

OAIster

OAIster is a union catalog of digital resources. It provides access to these digital resources by "harvesting" their descriptive metadata (records) using OAI-PMH (the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting). OAIster can be searched by Title, Author/Creator, Subject, Language or Entire Record. Searches can also be limited by resource type (text, image, audio, video, dataset) and sorted by title, author, date and hit frequency. Results allow further limiting by data contributor (i.e., where the record was harvested from).

Further help for finding manuscripts

Ash, Lee.
Subject collections : a guide to special book collections and subject emphases as reported by university, college, public, and special libraries and museums in the United States and Canada / compiled by Lee Ash and William G. Miller, with the collaboration of Barry Scott, Kathleen Vickery, and Beverly McDonough. 7th ed., rev. and enl. New Providence, NJ : R.R. Bowker Co., c1993.
CASE Ref. Z731 .A78 1993

This is a good starting point since many subject collections contain manuscript materials. If you identify a library with collection of interest, it might be worth checking for a web site. Special Collections libraries may provide finding aids for particular collections and these are often available online. This can be a useful strategy anytime you identify a library with a collection of interest.

Survey the following ranges in the Reference Collection---CD 995-- CD 3447 and Z 723-- to see if there are any books that might help. These ranges contain catalogs of various types---regional, subject, time period, specific libraries. Many describe European collections of manuscripts. Of particular local interest is the set entitled Guide to Historical Resources in ... . Each volume describes collections in repositories within a county in New York State. (Call number CD 3407...).

Ask at the Reference Desk for further assistance.

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