Other Primary Sources

Organizations/Governments/Corporations | AudioVisual | Aritifacts | Ancient and Medieval

Documents of Official Bodies, Organizations, and Corporations

Using a Catalog

Sources/catalogs for books/published primary sources: Miami's Catalog OhioLINK Worldcat RLIN	Search Techniques
	Search for who might have authored the primary source, especially if it was an institution or a group, such as a labor union, organization, or government agency Restrict your search by publication date(s) when the primary source was likely to have been published

Government Documents

Selected Indexes and Catalogs

• Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications. 1895- present.
  Government Documents Catalog Service http://www.auto-graphics.com/cgipac/mmx/muno
  Provides bibliographic citations to government documents produced by U. S. government agencies (ie. not Congress, the President or the Judiciary)
• CIS U. S. Serial Set Index 1817 – 1969.
  Documents and Law
  Serial Set includes selected House and Senate reports and documents, including documents submitted by government agencies to Congress. Indexes are divided into parts, by years. Parts of this index and or the material included in the serial set, may be included in other indexes available at your library.
• Lexis-Nexis Congressional.
  http://web.lexis-nexis.com/congcom.
  Fee based database, provided by Lexis Nexis which includes Congressional Hearings, public laws and other Congressional related publications, some back to 1789.
• BOPCRIS: British Official Publications Collaborative Reader Information Service.
  http://www.bopcris.ac.uk/
  You can use this web site to search and browse information from British Official Publications over the period 1688-1995. You can also read abstracts, and view detailed consistent subject indexing, of key documents. You can then read the digitized full-text version of a limited number of these documents.
  

Organizations

• International Documents Task Force (Godort)
  http://gateway.library.uiuc.edu/doc/idtf/links.htm
  Links to web pages of NGO's and IGO's and Governments. Some Documents may be historical.

Corporations

• Directory of Corporate Archives (SAA) http://www.hunterinformation.com/corporat.htm

Audiovisual/Video

• Great Speeches (History Channel) http://www.historychannel.com/speeches/
• History and Politics Out Loud http://www.hpol.org/
• Singingfish http://www.singingfish.com/
• American Memory http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/
• AP Multimedia Archive http://accuweather.ap.org/cgi-bin/aplaunch.pl
• ArtStor http://www.artstor.org/

Artifactual History (Clothing, Material Culture, Art)

• Library and Archival Exhibitions on the Web
  http://www.sil.si.edu/SILPublications/Online-Exhibitions/online-exhibitions-intro.htm
• ArtStor http://www.artstor.org/

Primary Sources for pre-Modern History (Ancient and Medieval)

Why are these different? Historians like to divide history into "modern" and "pre-modern" history. This age-old demarcation is based on the WESTERN division of history at the end of the Middle ages.and the invention of moveable type by Gutenberg. So 1450 is the magical dividing line for many indexes. One wonders what Chinese and the Ottomans/Middle Easterners might think about that. Realistically, I think it has much to do with finding multiple printed materials making it much easier to study and not having to use one of a kind or two or three copies that were hand copied and illuminated by monks. Information was just more prevalent to find, well, in a WESTERN language.

Finding resources. Finding primary source materials for students for Ancient and Medieval periods can be challenging. You will be looking in some cases for archaeological reports, artifacts (photographs in books), art, texts of philosophers and scholars that may be printed in modern editions. Its harder to find evidence of the common man, who often was not literate and would not have written anything down. Such evidence would be in the form of court, landowners records, and church records. Such records would include tax records, estate and household reports, census counts, baptismal records, deeds, etc. Many of these have been published, but under unusual names for our 21st century sense of government structure. As far as non-western materials,most student's do not read ancient Chinese, old style Turkish or Arabic, and no, little has been translated. We can connect the students with appropriate faculty though. For Africa, its also very tough, as most sources are through the colonizers eyes. Pre-colonial materials are often anthropological and early interpretations must be viewed with caution. Looking in the anthropological and art literature will produce artifacts. Probably best to refer a student to me, Bill Wortman, or Rob Withers.

Basic interventions for Pre-modern histories

• If the student is looking for a literary text, such as the Iliad, look for the AUTHOR, Homer, in the catalog. If there is no author, use keyword. Many early texts may have been anthologized or are too small to be published on their own.
• Look for archaeological reports for specific areas. The students usually have a name. The place often does not exist anymore and/or is quite famous.
• Look for information on the group of people that lived in the area.
• Search for the name noble or parish or government entity as author or keyword.