HIST 091: Senior Research Seminar (SC)

Examples: Edited Collections of Primary Sources

• Indian voices of the Great War: solders' letters, 1914-18
• Freedom on my mind: the Columbia documentary history of the African American experience

How to Find Edited Collections:

Use these tools:

• Tripod - Search for print and online books from the TriCo Libraries.
  • Once you have search results, use the filter Genre to narrow them down.
  • Alternatively, you can go into Advanced Search. Set your search to Subject and search for "Personal Narratives" (or try Subject: Correspondence.)
• Worldcat - Go beyond Tripod. Search for books in library collections across the US and world.
  • Found a relevant book? Learn how to request it.

What to look for:

Specific subject headings are used in library catalogs (like Tripod) to describe primary source documents that have been collected and published. Here are some examples:

• "--Sources"
• "--Personal Narratives"
• "--Description and Travel"
• "--Facsimiles"
• "--Periodicals"
• "--Interviews"
• "--Correspondence"
• "--Pamphlets"

Click here for a full list of subject headings used to catalog primary sources and more information about how to search using these subject headings.

Here are two ways to look for primary sources in Tripod:

By name

• Through reading secondary sources, find names of people who were involved or observed in the events you're studying.
• You can look for diaries in Tripod by searching for the person's name.
  • For example: to research WWI, Neith Boyce's diaries. (She was an American writer who discusses her trips to Europe during WWI in her diaries.)

Profession, role, or category of person

• You can search for For example, you'll find multiple first-person narratives from this Tripod search: World War, 1914-1918 - Soldiers - Personal Narratives