Research Guides: HIST 301: Historian's Craft (Benes, Spring 2025): Personal Papers

In the catalog and Worldcat

WorldCat
Materials held by thousands of libraries in the US and abroad. Books, websites, computer programs, films, slides, journals, magazines, papers, manuscripts, maps, musical scores, newspapers, sound recordings, videotapes, etc. Coverage: Before 1000BC-present.

Primo/catalog
Limit to books and ebooks

Use the subject headings "Personal narratives" OR correspondence. with the name or topic of interest. Limit to books, ebooks, and manuscripts.

EXAMPLES

("Personal narratives" OR correspondence) AND ("world war" AND 1918)
("Personal narratives" OR correspondence) AND ("world war" AND 1918) AND soldier*

For less well-known individuals, also look in worldcat. For example, ("Personal narratives" OR correspondence) AND "george Ticknor" we get no results in PRIMO but do find Life, letters, and journals of George Ticknor in worldcat.

In most cases, you can simply search ("papers of" OR "personal papers") AND NAME to find collections of papers in the catalog or WorldCat.

EXAMPLE

("papers of" OR "personal papers") AND "woodrow wilson"

Online Collections

Many personal papers are online. Some examples:

Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States
The Public Papers of the Presidents, which is compiled and published by the Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), began in 1957 in response to a recommendation of the National Historical Publications Commission. Note: The Public Papers of the Presidents were discontinued with the end of the Obama Administration. Official writings, addresses, and remarks for future presidents may be found in the Compilation of Presidential Documents collection.
Library of Congress Presidential Papers, 1780s-1920s
The Library of Congress holds the papers of 23 presidents from George Washington to Calvin Coolidge, all of which have been digitized and are available online as 3.3 million images. The selected documents represent the variety of materials available in the papers as well as some of the most important texts. A press release provides the web address for each collection.

One the best ways to find these is by searching in WorldCat first; if the materials are online via internet archive, hathitrust, nara, or a university, the link should be included in the Worldcat record.