We have over 500 databases of primary source materials. If not for this project, I very strongly suggest spending 30-90 minutes at some point skimming them just to see what we have. Collections of historic children's board games, manuals on talking to ghosts, broadsides, advertisements, travel literature, letters, image collections -- it is really useful to know what, exactly, we have. Even if you don't use it in your work, you may want to use materials for lectures, or just for the "huh, neat!" value.
The main library catalog searches about 60% of our databases, including most of our primary source databases. If you're not sure which databases to consult first, use the catalog and either narrow to publication period of interest or use genre headings (Ex "personal narratives" or diaries or broadsides) to find primary sources about your topic. Be sure to limit to books, ebooks, manuscripts, and archival documents.
Using the publication date limiters
Using Subject Headings
Librarians assign Genre headings to all materials in the catalog. Search any of these as subject to find materials of that type. Do NOT limit publication date because it will exclude republished facsimiles or compiled sources. Genre headings include
EXAMPLE: subject search for "Civil war" AND "united states" AND "personal narratives" AND women returns about 70 letters, diaries, and compiled collections of writings by women during the civil war, "Civil war" AND "united states" AND Sermons brings up hundreds of sermons;
Using the Subject Heading SOURCES or FACSIMILES or EARLY WORKS or MANUSCRIPTS you can find printed collections of translated primary sources.
You can also use the Subject Headings above to find reprinted translations of historic documents on your topic.
Example:
su:("personal narratives" AND "civil war" AND "African american soldiers")
^^ For most of your topics, we won't have material in the main catalog so you'll use worldcat.
This link opens in a new windowThis exact same approach works perfectly in WorldCat, and I often start with WorldCat when trying to find primary sources.
Most importantly, WorldCat will include archival and unpublished material in their listings. This is a great way to find archival collections.
These are not approved Lib. of Congress terms, but some archives use them anyway.