HIST 101 : Communities, Environments & Spatial Dynamics in Social History

Searching OskiCat for Primary Sources

Certain words and phrases (part of the Library of Congress Subject Headings classification system) will find primary sources in library catalogs.  You can use these in OskiCat or Melvyl:magnifying glass and computer keyboard

-correspondence
-sources
-diaries
-personal narratives
-interviews
-speeches
-documents
-archives
-early works to 1800
-newspapers

Examples:

history victorian britain sources
women 19th century personal narratives


Primary Sources: California & the West

See also: UCB's Government Info page for more details on finding local, county and state records. There are a number of librarians available to help you unearth government documents.

  • Calisphere
    Gateway to digitized images from the libraries and museums of 10 University of California campuses and more than 100 cultural heritage organizations in California. Includes more than 150,000 photographs, diaries, documents, oral histories and other resources. Serves as a single point of access for more than 300 UC-created websites and collections.
  • Online Archive of California (OAC)
    A searchable and browseable resource that brings together historical materials from a variety of California institutions, including museums, historical societies, and archives. Contains over 120,000 images; 50,000 pages of documents, letters, and oral histories; and 8,000 guides to collections. Images are organized into thematic and institutional collections, such as historical topics, nature, places, and technology.
  • 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire Digital Collection
    A compilation of selected holdings form collections housed in the archives and special collections of The Bancroft Library and five other California institutions. Includes approximately 14,000 images and 7,000 pages of text. A finding aid to the collection is also available through an Online Archive of California guide.

Primary sources and news

In addition to scholarly journals, the Library subscribes to a number of news and other primary source databases. A few that are focused on 20th century western newspapers are included below. 

  • LexisNexis Academic
    Includes over 6,000 individual titles of international, national and local newspapers and wire services; radio and television transcripts; and business, medical, industry, and legislative magazines, journals, and newsletters. Wide geographic coverage and translations from foreign-language sources, as well as news services like the Associated Press, Agence France Press, El Pais and Xinhua (New China) News Agency.
  • California Digital Newspaper Collection
    Offers over 200,000 pages of California newspapers spanning the years 1849-1911: the Alta California, 1849-1891; the San Francisco Call, 1893-1910; the Amador Ledger, 1900-1911; the Imperial Valley Press, 1901-1911; the Sacramento Record-Union, 1859-1890; and the Los Angeles Herald, 1905-1907. Additional years are forthcoming, as are other early California newspapers: the Californian; the California Star; the California Star and Californian; the Sacramento Transcript; the Placer Times; and the Pacific Rural Press.
  • Chronicling America
    This site allows users to search and view newspaper pages from 1880-1922 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. To date, over 200,000 pages of California newspapers have been digitized.
  • Historical Newspapers Online
    Indexes newspapers covering all aspects of British life and world affairs in the 19th and 20th centuries. Contains four major historical resources: Palmer's Index to the Times which covers The Times (London, 1790-1905); The Official Index to the Times (1906-1980); The Historical Index to the New York Times (1863- 1922); and Palmer's Full Text Online (1785-1870).

Primary Sources: America and beyond

This is a small sampling of digital collections available from the Library. For a complete list, go to Archival Collections and Primary Source Databases.

Last Update: January 29, 2013 13:32