Finding Books That Include Primary Sources
To identify books that are primary sources:
1) Look for books written by people who were involved in the event or activity you are researching. (Tip: When you look at secondary sources, write down the names of people and then look for them as authors.)
2) In the BGSU Libraries Catalog, the OhioLINK Central Catalog, and WorldCat, books that have been assigned subjects with the subheadings in the list below might be primary sources. Not all books that include primary sources will include one of these words or phrases in a subject heading.
--Diaries
--Correspondence
--Biography
--Sources
--Anecdotes
--Personal narratives
--Interviews
Examples:
Pioneers -- Pennsylvania -- Correspondence
Boston (Mass.) -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Sources
Society of Friends -- History -- 17th century -- Sources
African Americans -- History -- To 1863 -- Sources
Useful Database To Identify Sources
- European Views of the Americas 1493-1750A guide to printed records about the Americas written in Europe before 1750. This database covers subjects such as European exploration, portrayals of Native Americas, and natural disasters, disease, and slavery during this period. This database is an online version of the authoritative bibliography European Americana: A Chronological Guide to Works Printed in Europe Relating to the Americas, 1493-1750. The database contains more than 32,000 entries for printed records about the Americas written in Europe before 1750 and is particularly valuable as a guide to primary sources on the history of European exploration and European portrayals of Native American peoples. The full text of the resources not available within this database.
Internet Archive
Internet Archive is a database of books, magazines, audio and video files, maps, etc. It's a good place to find books that are old enough to be no longer under copyright.
To search for a book, type in a search term in the search box on the home page and select "Texts" from the drop down search box.
If you want to do a more complex search, click on the Advanced Search link to the right of the search box on the home page. This allows you to customize your search in many ways.
Searching the Catalogs for Books
To identify books, you can search the three main catalogs:
Indexes books, magazines and journals, videos, music, and electronic resources that are owned by BGSU.
Indexes books, videos, music, electronic resources from college and university libraries, the State Library of Ohio, and some large public libraries in Ohio. Request online, with delivery to Jerome Main Circulation desk in 2-3 business days.
WorldCat Catalog
Identify materials at tens of thousands of academic, public, and special libraries internationally. You can request things not owned by BGSU or OhioLINK via interlibrary loan -- average delivery time is 17 days.
HathiTrust Digital Library
The HathiTrust Digital Library provides access to a database of digitized books and other materials. You can search the catalog, search full text, or browse the public collections. Note that not all books are available full text.
To find only those books that are available full text, you can search the catalog on the main search page and click on the box next to "Full View Only."
To do a more complex search, click on the Advanced Catalog Search link. You can also select "Full View Only" on this page.
Google Books
Google Books is a searchable database of books and magazine articles, but not all of the books are full text.
At the Basic Search page, you can simply type in keywords to do a search. You can also browse by subjects, listed on the left side of the page. Each book in the results list will include the designation:
- Full View -- You can view the entire text of the book
- Limited Preview -- You can view some pages of the book
- Snippet View -- You can see the publication information, plus a few sentences from the book
- No Preview Available -- You can see only the publication information about the book
To search for only full text books:
- Go to the Advanced Book Search
- Fill in the elements of your search
- From the Search: line, choose Full View Only
- Click on the Google Search button