Junior Seminar in United States History
Gender in the 20th Century
History 391

Finding Primary Sources

What are primary sources?
Primary sources are records or objects that have survived from the past, such as letters, photographs, diaries, audio recordings, video recordings, newspaper articles written at the time of an event, buildings, speeches, scrapbooks, pamphlets, furniture, tools, household items, clothing, toys...

Websites About Primary Sources
Explainations and examples of primary sources

• Primary vs. Secondary Sources (Bowling Green)
• Primary Sources (Library of Congress)
• Library Research Using Primary Sources (University of California, Berkeley)

Websites for Primary Sources

Gateway Sites

• Kalamazoo College Library Guide to Primary Sources
  A gateway website that links to other websites with primary sources
   
• Primary Sources on the Web from the Uni versity of California at Berkeley Library
   
• American History Since 1865
  A gateway website that Includes several sites from the later 20th century
  

Selected Sites with Primary Source Materials (The Nitty Gritty)

• American Memory Project
  Historical Collections for the National Digital Library From the Library of Congress.
  Topics include History, Political Science and Law, Social Sciences, and many others.
   
• Women Working, 1800 -1930
  "Focuses on women's role in the United States economy and provides access to digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard University's library and museum collections."
   
• Documents from the Women's Liberation Movement
  "The materials in this on-line archival collection document various aspects of the Women's Liberation Movement in the United States, and focus specifically on the radical origins of this movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The items in this on-line collection are scanned and transcribed from original documents held in Duke's Special Collections Library."
   
• Ad*Access
  A collection of images from over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines from 1911 through 1955. Subject areas include: radio, television, transportation, beauty and hygiene and World War II.
   
• Internet Archive: Moving Images
  Includes the Prelinger Archives, a collection of over 48,000 "ephemeral" (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films. Some 2,000 key titles are available here. The collection currently contains over 10% of the total production of ephemeral films between 1927 and 1987.
   
• Making of Modern Michigan
  Includes local history materials from communities around Michigan. Michigan's unique heritage is represented through photographs, family papers, oral histories, genealogical materials, and much more.

Online Sources for Newspapers and Journals

• New York Times 1851-4 years ago (ProQuest Historical Newspapers) < about >
  A full text archive of the entire historical run of The New York Times. Includes every page of every issue from cover to cover, with full-page and article images in downloadable PDF. Contains articles, classified ads, comics and cartoons, photos, maps, graphics, and editorials and commentary.
   
  Note: WMU has other online historical newspapers, such as the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, The Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post. See WMU's History Indexes and Databases page for more information. You can only use these resources from Western's campus.
  [How to get to Western]
   
• Reader's Guide Retrospective (1890-1982) < about >
  An index to articles in popular and general interest magazines published in the United States and Canada. (No full text.)
   
• JSTOR < about >
  Full text of about 117 core scholarly journals, many of which go back to the 1800s.

Primary Sources in the Kalamazoo College Library

Use these terms in Ariadne to locate primary sources (search by subject and keyword):

• Diaries
• Correspondence
• Speeches
• Autobiographies
• Films
• Photographs
• Audio recordings

Local Repositories of Primary Sources

• Kalamazoo College Archives
• Western Michigan University Archives and Regional History Collections
• Kalamazoo Public Library Local History Room

Finding Secondary Sources

What are secondary sources?
Secondary sources analyze, restate, describe, or explain primary sources. Secondary sources are generally at least one step removed from the historical event being described. Examples of secondary sources include textbooks, biographies, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and books and articles that interpret or review research works.

FINDING BOOKS

See the History Research Guide on Finding Books.

Using Subject Headings

Search by Keyword and look for Subject Headings in individual records.
To modify a search:

• Use words from the Subject Heading in a Keyword search
• Click on the Subject Heading itself

Examples of Subject Headings:

• Masculinity in literature
• Sex role -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• Sports for women -- United States -- History
• United States -- History -- 1961-1969 -- Sources
• United States -- History -- 20th century
• Women -- Employment -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• Women -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• Women's periodicals, American
• World War, 1914-1918 -- Women -- United States
• World War, 1939-1945 -- Women -- United States

Samples of Background Sources

Historical

• American Decades
  Ref. E169.12 .A419 1994 v.1-10
• The American years
  Ref. E174.5 .G753 2003 v.1-2
• Cold War America, 1946 to 1990
  Ref. E741 .G76 2003
• The Columbia chronicles of American life, 1910-1992
  Ref. E169.1 .G667 1995
• Encyclopedia of American History
  Ref.E174 .E53 2003
• Encyclopedia of contemporary American culture
  Ref. E169.12 .E49 2001
• Encyclopedia of Women in American History
  Ref. HQ1410 .E53 2002
• Encyclopedia of the United States in the twentieth century
  Ref. E740.7 .E53 1996 v.1-5
• The Greenwood guide to American popular culture
  Ref. E169.1 .G7555 2002 v.1-4
• Historical dictionary of the 1950s
  Ref. E835 .O44 2000
• Historical dictionary of the 1960s
  Ref. E841 .H58 1999
• Historical dictionary of the 1970s
  Ref. E865 .H57 1999
• The sixties in America
  Ref. E841 .S55 1999 v.1-3
• The sixties chronicle
  Ref. E841 .S59 2004
• Term paper resource guide to twentieth-century United States history
  Ref. E741 .M83 1999
• War and American popular culture : a historical encyclopedia
  Ref. E181 .W26 1999

Gender

• Encyclopedia of women and gender : sex similarities and differences and the impact of society on gender
  Ref. HQ1115 .E43 2001 v.1-2
• Encyclopedia of women's history in America
  Ref. HQ1410 .C85 2000
• Gay histories and cultures : an encyclopedia
  Ref. HQ75.13 .G37 2000
• Handbook of American women's history
  Ref. HQ1410 .H36 1990
• Men and masculinities : a social, cultural, and historical encyclopedia
  Ref. HQ1090.3 .M436 2004 v.1-2

FINDING JOURNAL ARTICLES

See How to Find Journal Articles

What Journals does the Library Own?

• In paper - Check Ariadne - search on your discipline or subject area, and in Step 2, limit the location to "Periodicals"
  • Or - Search Ariadne for a specific journal - enter the journal title into the Ariadne Title Search
• Online - Check Online Journals at K - to find out what online journals the Library subscribes to

Which index includes the journal I'm looking for?

• Periodical titles in FirstSearch indexes and databases
• Ulrich's Periodicals Directory < about >

JOURNAL INDEXES
Find citations to articles (secondary sources) with these indexes.

• America: History and Life < about >
   
• Humanities Abstracts < about >
   
• Periodical Abstracts < about >
   
• Social Sciences Abstracts < about >
  

FULL TEXT DATABASES
Find full text articles (secondary sources) online with these databases.

• JSTOR < about >
  Full text of about 117 core scholarly journals many of which go back to the 1800s
   
• Project Muse < about >
   
• Proquest Research Library < about >
  Includes the ability to limit by Full text documents only or Scholarly journals, including peer-reviewed
   
• Wilson Select Plus < about >

Types of Periodicals

Scholarly Journals (American Historical Review)

• Authors are scholars or researchers in their fields.
• Authors cite their sources in footnotes, endnotes, and bibliographies.
• Individual issues have little or no advertising.
• Articles must go through a peer-review process.
• Articles usually report original scholarly research.
• Most illustrations are charts, figures, or graphs.
• Authors use the specialized language or jargon of the discipline.

Popular Magazines (Smithsonian)

• Authors are free lance writers or magazine staff members.
• Authors may mention sources, but rarely cite them in notes or bibliographies.
• Individual issues contain many advertisements.
• There is no peer review process. Articles are reviewed by editors or publishers.
• Illustrations are numerous and colorful.
• Articles are meant to inform and entertain an educated audience.
• Language is written for the general adult audience (no specialized jargon).

  Scholarly or Not?
  Use Ulrich's Online
  Document Type MUST say "Academic/Scholarly Publication" to be considered scholarly!

Don't forget to use bibliographies contained in reference books, annotated bibliographies, circulating books, and journal articles!

Evaluating Web Sites

Use these points to evaluate the credibility of Websites:

1. Accuracy
How reliable is the information? Are there editors and fact checkers?
2. Authority
What are the author's qualifications? Is the publisher reputable?
3. Objectivity
Is the author trying to sway opinion? Is the information free from bias?
4. Currency
Is the publication date indicated? Is the source up to date?
5. Coverage
Does the site cover the topic comprehensively, or are there information gaps?

Sites that provide guidance on evaluating Websites:

• Evaluating Web Resources
  Widener University Library
• Evaluating Information Found on the Internet
  Johns Hopkins University Library
• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, or Why It's a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Resources
  New Mexico State University Library
• Thinking Critically about World Wide Web Resources
  UCLA College Library

Citing Your Sources in the Chicago Style

Examples of Citations in the Chicago Style:

Book citation:

Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America.
	New York: A.A. Knopf, 1985.

Journal Citation:

Edwards, Justin D. "Henry James's 'Alien' New York: Gender and Race in the
	American Scene." American Studies International 36, no. 1 (1998): 66-80.

Chapter in a Book:

Schlereth, Thomas J. "Country Stores, County Fairs, and Mail-Order Catalogues:
	Consumption in Rural America." In Consuming Visions: Accumulation and Display
	of Goods in America, 1880-1920 edited by Simon J. Bronner, 251-300.
	New York: Norton, 1989.

Chicago Manual of Style
14th ed. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Reference, Z253 .U69 2003.

Chicago Style
From the University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Center.
See the The Chicago Manual of Style FAQ web site for citing electronic resources in the Chicago Style.

See: How to Cite Sources

See also Citing Sources for help in citing print and electronic resources in various bibliographic styles (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.)