Research Guides: HIST 223: Old Age in the Modern Age (HC): Primary Sources

Major Image Collections for U.S. History

American Memory This link opens in a new window
Provides information on, and access to, digitized versions of primary-source collections on American history and culture, including photographs, documents, sound recordings, and motion pictures.
ARTstor
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A digital library that provides access to thousands of digital images derived from a variety of museum, library and archival collections. Images support a variety of disciplines including architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, and design. Coverage varies.
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) This link opens in a new window
The DPLA allows you to search millions of photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more from libraries, archives, and museums around the United States. Each record links to the original object on the library or other content provider's website.

Flickr: The Commons
Images from many of the world's public photo archives, described by Flickr users so that some are very richly described.
Smithsonian Collections Search
Search over 8.59 million catalog records of museum objects, and library & archives materials. More than 963,000 of these records contain online images, video and sound files, electronic journals and other online resources.

Images as Primary Sources

Woman aged 70 from Nebraska (Photo by Dorothea Lange, 1940) (Wikimedia Commons)

Finding Primary Sources

Primary sources that have been edited, reprinted in facsimiles, or transferred to microfilm can be borrowed through E Z Borrow or interlibrary loan if they are not in Tripod. Many of them will be listed in Tripod and WorldCat under subject terms which include such words as "sources," "letters," "diaries," or "personal narratives." For example, the search (aged OR "old age" OR older) (diaries OR "personal narratives") produces results including:

Nobody's home : candid reflections of a nursing home aide /
Author: Gass, Thomas Edward.; Vladeck, Bruce C. Publication: Ithaca : ILR Press, 2004

Interpreting the aging self : personal journals of later life /
Author: Berman, Harry J. Publication: New York : Springer Pub. Co., 1994

Literature and Art as Primary Sources

Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database
Start out by searching the keyword aging and the genre memoir.

The New York University School of Medicine has created a database of literature and the arts with references to medical conditions. This material gives you a first-person point of view of the various ailments that older people develop.