Primary source assignment

Due Wednesday by 8 PM

 

A primary source is any historical evidence written or produced at roughly the time you are researching. For example, if you are writing a research paper on a trial from the second half of the nineteenth century, an article written and published in a magazine from 1867 would be a primary source, a book published in 1889 would be a primary source, and a letter written in 1905 would be a primary source. A study written in 1998 would not be a primary source, it would be a secondary source.

 

The most obvious primary sources are: newspapers, magazines, diaries, letters, legal materials (including legal decisions published around the time of the incident). Some of these materials will be published in books, some will be on line, some are on microfilm.

 

For this project, you need to begin to look into primary sources that are relevant to your research project.  There are a number of resources available to you at UF, this exercise is intended to introduce them to you.

 

For this assignment, you need to use the methods described below to identify two different primary sources that you think will be relevant to your project. For your assignment, I want you to send me an email in which you tell me: what two primary sources you identified, why you think they might be relevant to your paper, and how you found them.

 

  1. On line card catalog: There may be newspapers, diaries, or collections of letters published about subjects related to your paper. The catalog is the way to find those, using normal search techniques. You may find materials on microfilm this way, or materials that are on line, or materials that are bound as books.
    1. Newspapers: To try to find newspaper microfilms from the area you are researching your best bet is to try to find out the titles of newspapers from that area and search for their titles directly. If that doesn’t work, experiment with keyword searches that involve the words “newspaper” and “the name of the city or town” your trial takes place in.
    2. Court records: We have other old trials on microfilm and on line. You might want to look at some of them. You can find trials by searching the catalog for anything containing the word “trial” or you can try other more specific combinations, like “trial” and “adultery.”

                                                              i.      People doing projects that involve English materials might want to look through the “Old Baily” records, which we have on microfilm (we may also have it on line). These are records of trials.

 

  1. Databases: There are several data bases that might be helpful to you, the list that follows is not complete:
    1. Making of Modern Law: To get to this, go to the library webpage and click on the link to Database Locator. In the next screen, type in Making. You should link to Making of Modern Law, which is a collection of old books on legal principles.
    2. American South: To get to this collection, click on the Database Locator again, and type American South in the next screen. You will get to a database that collects digital materials on the South from a variety of libraries.
    3. Library of Congress: To get to this collection, click on Database Locator and type in Library of Congress in the next screen. You will get sent to the Library of Congress collection, which includes primary source materials about many aspects of American History.
    4. Using this same method, you can connect to other databases, including: Early English Books (on line books from England); North American Women’s Letters and Diaries (which contains on line editions of these materials); Proquest Historical Newspapers (which has the New York Times from 1851 on, and some other newspapers as well).
    5. You may go to the Making America collection at the University of Michigan, and search this collection which has all sorts of materials. The url is http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moagrp/
    6. You can use lexis/nexis to find cases from the state and time you are writing about.

 

  1. Another resource is the reference librarian at the library. Once you have identified your specific focus, you can go to the reference librarian and ask him/her if there are any databases or resources that might be specifically relevant to your project.