History Librarian
Library Activity
Primary Sources
- ARTstor This link opens in a new windowProvides over 1.5 million digital images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences.
- Early English Books Online (EEBO) This link opens in a new windowContains digital facsimile page images of works printed between 1473 and 1700.
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new windowCollection of 18th century books, pamphlets, broadsides, etc. published in the UK.
- FBIS: Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports This link opens in a new windowProvides CIA translations of newswires and broadcast services from around the world in full-text from 1941-1996.
- GallicaDigital library of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. These materials are in French.
- The Grand TourTravel narratives about European cities including Paris, Rome, Florence and Geneva.
- HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new windowSearchable access to over 17 million volumes--including over 8.3 million books, over 1.2 million government documents, and over 450,000 serial publications--with full text access to 9 million+ volumes.
- Leisure, Travel and Mass Culture: The History of Tourism This link opens in a new windowCollection of primary sources on the history of tourism from 1850-1980.
- Making of the Modern World,1450-1914 This link opens in a new windowDigital and searchable editions of more than 70,000 titles, published between 1450 and 1945.
- Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History This link opens in a new windowAccounts by American women of their travels across the globe from the early 19th century to the late 20th century.
- World’s FairsPrimary sources on the world's fairs including the Exposition Universelles in Paris.
- World Newsreels Online, 1929-1966 This link opens in a new windowNewsreels of significant historical events in streaming format.
A lot of primary sources are published in book form - for example, diaries, letters, sourcebooks. These are often a good bet if you want something that is translated. To find these, you have to use the Library Catalog and do some pretty specific searches. If you have any questions about this, or can't find something, please contact me.
Books have specific and standardized tags, some of which indicate they are primary sources. You have to use these in a SUBJECT search. Some common ones are:
- Sources
- Description and travel
- Personal narratives
- Correspondence
- Early works
- Correspondence
This is how you use them to search the Library Catalog (note that place names are also standardized tags as well):
Another good way to find primary sources is to use the bibliographies of secondary sources to identify the title of potential primary sources and then track those down. This is the best way to find literature, poetry, film, and sometimes art.
Finding Secondary Sources
Use the Library Catalog to find books. Be sure to pay attention to the date and publisher of the book - the Catalog does include older materials and primary sources.
- U-M Library Catalog Search This link opens in a new windowCatalog Search results will include everything in the University of Michigan Library physical collection (books, audio, video, maps, musical scores, archival materials, and more), as well as materials available online such as electronic books, streaming audio and video, and online journals.
Use these databases to find articles from scholarly journals. Scholarly journals also have features like book reviews, so make sure it's a research article.
If you only see the citation in the database, click on the M-Get It link to check our other databases. The link may take you to Interlibrary Loan, which is a free service to request articles from other libraries. Please do not pay for an article! The Library will get it for you, usually in a couple of days.
- Historical Abstracts with Full Text (EBSCO) This link opens in a new windowCovers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present, including world history, military history, women's history, history of education, and more.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowFull-text access to the archives of 2,600+ journals and 35,000+ books in the arts, humanities, social sciences and sciences.
- Project MUSE This link opens in a new windowFull-text access to scholarly journals and e-books published by over 120 scholarly societies and university presses.
- U-M Library Articles Search This link opens in a new windowUse Articles Search to locate scholarly and popular articles, as well as reference works and materials from open access archives.
Academic journals on French history. You can search them directly through these links.
Citations
- Chicago Manual of Style Online This link opens in a new windowProvides searchable online access to the 17th (2017) and 16th (2010) editions of the standard style manual.