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Barnard College Library Research GuideBC3181:
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This guide is
intended as a starting point in your research; the databases and reference
tools listed here are a
selective list. Always remember that you can ask for assistance at the
Barnard Reference Desk at any point in
your research, and you can always request a consultation.
Finding Primary Sources | Electronic Resources with Primary Sources | Request a Consultation
SECONDARY SOURCES
Secondary sources can give you background information to help you choose your topic and to give an overview of the subject. They can also provide useful bibliographies.
REFERENCE
BOOKS:
The
AHA’s Guide to Historical Literature
BARNARD REF. D20 .A55 1995g
Points to secondary
sources. Use if you want one or two historical overviews about your topic
or time period.
American
Decades
BARNARD REF. E169.12 .A4192
This is a series going
back to 1900. The Barnard Reference Department has it from the 1910-1920
edition up to current editions. Each title in American Decades is
devoted to a 10-year period. A fun way to find out about political,
social, cultural and scientific events that happened during the time
period you are investigating.
Chronology
of World History
BARNARD REF. D11 .M39 1999
What else was happening in
the world?
Encyclopedia
of African American Culture & History
BARNARD REF. E185 .E54 1996
A comprehensive 5 volume set of articles devoted to African Americans and
the African American experience.
Encyclopedia
of American Cultural and Intellectual History
BARNARD REF. E169.1 .E624 2001
Three volume compendium of articles on aspects of American thought and
expression from early America to the present. Agrarianism, manhood and
science and religion are sample article topics included in this set.
Encyclopedia of American Social History
BARNARD REF. HN57 .E58 1993
Excellent overview essays
with bibliographies to secondary resources. Use to gain a quick
understanding of your topic and some background of the time period you are
searching.
Encyclopedia
of the United States in the Nineteenth Century
BARNARD REF. E169.1 .E626 2001
This work includes numerous articles on events, trends, movements,
inventions, cultural & social changes, and intellectual changes
relevant to 19th century America.
The
Reader's Companion to American History
BARNARD REF. E174 .R43 1991
Use for quick facts.
Answers the who, what, when, where questions that may crop up as you read
primary source material.
St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture.
Barnard
REF. E169.1 .S764 2000 5 vol.
Overview articles on many topics, circuses, pets and many more.
INDEXES
AND DATABASES:
Use
periodical indexes to identify journal articles about specific topics;
secondary articles' footnotes and bibliographies may point you to primary
resources.
For example:
America: History and Life
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indexes/amer-hist-life.html
A major periodical
index to scholarly journals containing articles on all aspects of American
history. This index is useful for finding articles about topics and it can
also lead to primary material. Check the Documentation Field (available by
viewing the full citation) to see if the article has footnotes, is based
on primary material, etc.
INDEXES:
These indexes
(some are online and some are in print) cite articles and essays
written during the time period you are interested in.
Essay
and General Literature Index
BARNARD REF. AI3 .E752 (Library has: 1900 - 1994)
Use to find essays
published in anthologies (books). Remember that terminology has changed.
For example, if you look under "African American" you won’t
find anything, nor under "Afro-American" or "Blacks."
You have to use "Negroes." Try CLIO first to find which library
owns the book; if the title does not appear in CLIO, check the card
catalog at Butler Library.
Historical Newspapers Online
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indexes/historical-news.html
This is an electronic
form of the print index (not the full-text of the newspaper); some people
may find the paper copy of the index easier to use. Includes the New
York Times and the Times of London.
Index
to Nineteenth Century American Art Periodicals
Citations with some abstracts for articles, poems, and illustrations from
over 40 19th century American art journals.
International
Index; a Guide to Periodical Literature in the Social Sciences and
Humanities
BARNARD REF. AI3 .R49 (1907 - 1974)
Covers early 20th
Century scholarly journals that are not in the Readers Guide, which
covers more popular magazines. When you find a citation for an article,
the title of the journal is abbreviated. Look at the front to find out
what the abbreviations stand for. Use CLIO to find which library owns the
periodical. If the title does not appear in CLIO, check the Union List
of Serials to see whether Columbia used to subscribe to the journal.
If Columbia stopped subscribing many years ago, it would not show up in
CLIO.
The
New York Times Index
BARNARD REF. Index Table (1933 - present) and BUTLER REF. R070
N481 (1851 - present).
The New York Times
Index for 1851-1923 is also available online as:
Nineteenth
Century Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature
BARNARD REF. AI3 .R496 (1890 - 1899, 2 volumes)
Index to about 60
periodicals including Atlantic Monthly, Edinburgh Review, Political
Science Quarterly, Popular Science Monthly, Quarterly Journal of
Economics, Scientific American, etc. These are primarily magazines
written for the general public, but some are more scholarly. Use CLIO to
find which library owns the periodical; if the title does not appear in
CLIO, check the Union List of Serials.
Nineteenth Century Masterfile
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indexes/pooles-plus.html
Includes several
19th-century periodical indexes as well as indexing of the New York
Daily Tribune (1875-1906) and the New York Times (1863-1005).
PCI
Periodicals Contents Index
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indexes/period-cont-ind.html
An international,
interdisciplinary index especially useful for finding articles published
in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Use CLIO first to find which
library owns the periodical; if the title does not appear in CLIO check
the serials catalog in Butler Reference or the Union List of Serials.
Poole's
Index To Periodical Literature
BARNARD REF. AI3 .P7 1938g(1802 - 1881)
Use CLIO to find which
library owns the periodical; if the title does not appear in CLIO check
the serials catalog in Butler Reference or the Union List of Serials.
Poole's is also available online in Nineteenth Century Masterflile.
Readers'
Guide To Periodical Literature
BARNARD REF. AI3 .R48 (1900 - 1997)
Use CLIO to find which
library owns the periodical; if the title does not appear in CLIO check
the serials catalog in Butler Reference or the Union List of Serials.
Readers'
Guide Retrospective
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indexes/readers-gde-ret.html
Citations to articles in popular and general interest periodicals from
1890-1982
JOURNALS AND NEWSPAPERS - online full-text:
Accessible
Archives
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indexes/access-archives.html
Searchable collection of U.S. history resources
including the Pennsylvania Gazette, the Civil War coverage of three
newspapers, Godey's Lady's Book, a group of African American and
abolitionist newspapers and selections from several 19th century Delaware
Valley newspapers. 1728-1870.
American
Periodical Series
Over 1,000 full-text periodicals including special interest and general
magazines, literature and professional journals, children and women's journals
and more.
HarpWeek
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indexes/harpweek.html
Page images of Harper's
Weekly, the popular illustrated American magazine, covering the years
1857 to
1912, a rich record of all aspects of life during those years. Contents
may be accessed by any of four
detailed indexes.
JSTOR
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indexes/jstor.html
Full-text articles
from more than 320 scholarly journals, some of which go back to the 1890s.
Nation
Digital Archive
Searchable full-text page images of a major U.S. journal of left/liberal
opinion with coverage from 1865-1999.
ProQuest
Historical Newspapers
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indexes/pq-hist-news.html
Full-text and full image articles from the New
York Times and the Wall Street Journal back to their first
issue.
American
diaries : an annotated bibliography of published American diaries and
journals (1983)
BARNARD REFERENCE Z5305.U5 A74 1983
The
published diaries and letters of American women : an annotated
bibliography (1987)
BARNARD REFERENCE Z5305.U5 G66 1987
ELECTRONIC
RESOURCES WITH PRIMARY SOURCES:
Barnard Library Subject Guide History - Web Resources
Other large collections:
American
Memory
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html
From the Library of
Congress, with over 80 collections online (texts, music, photographs,
films).
The
Gerritsen Collection: Women's History Online, 1543-1945
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indexes/gerritsen.html
Full-text collection of books and periodicals, the bulk of the collection
dates from 1880-1920.
Making
of America
http://moa.umdl.umich.edu/
A digital library
currently containing approximately 1,600 books and 50,000 journal articles
with 19th century imprints.
North
American Women's Letters and Diaries
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indexes/na-womens-ld.html
Diaries, journals, and letters written by women visiting or living in
North America. Release I, February 2001
includes the letters and diaries of 69 women.
Oral History Online
actual online oral histories covering a
various time periods.
Primary
Sources in African American
Studies
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indexes/afr-am-st-hist.html
Provides access to the
full-text of selected primary sources (including autobiographies,
speeches,
legislation, Supreme Court decisions) and secondary sources (articles from
reference books and scholarly
journals). Includes prints and photographs. Contains material from
colonial times up to the recent past.
OTHER:
American
Newspapers in the Columbia University Libraries
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indexes/us-newspapers-c.html
A checklist of U.S.
newspapers owned by the Columbia University Libraries, dating from 1704 to
the present, arranged by state and city of publication.
Union
List of Serials in Libraries of the United States and Canada (ULS)
Printed guide. BARNARD REF. Z6945 .U45 1965
This multi-volume set is
arranged alphabetically by the title of the publication and indicates
which periodicals major libraries subscribed to up until 1965. The code
for Columbia is NNC; the code for the New York Public
Research Libraries is NN. If ULS
indicates that Columbia had a subscription to a title you must still
check Butler Reference's Serials Catalog to find the call number and
whether Columbia has the volume you need. Using ULS will give you
a good idea of what's available at Columbia before trying to use the
Serials Catalog.
United
States government documents on women, 1800-1990 : a comprehensive
bibliography. (1993)
BARNARD REFERENCE HQ1410 H85 1993g
Women's
Journals in the Columbia and Barnard Libraries
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/subjects/womenstudies/fmjnls2.html
A checklist of women's
magazines and journals held by the Columbia/Barnard Libraries. You can
display the titles alphabetically by title, or by date.
Women's
Studies : Microform Collections
Guide to some of the
microform sets available at Columbia University, for example:
Americans for Democratic Action Papers, 1932-1965.
Black workers in the era of the great migration, 1916-1929.
Committee of Fifteen Records, 1900-1901
Japanese Camp Papers, 1942-1945.
CLIO and the card catalog:
When doing a subject search in CLIO or the card catalog look for the subdivision "sources".
For
example:
subject: women--united states--social
conditions--sources
subject: united states--history--1865 1921--sources
Looking
for books published during a specific span of years:
REMEMBER that CLIO does not list everything owned by the Columbia
University Libraries. Use the card catalogs in Butler Reference by finding
an appropriate subject heading (use the Library of Congress Subject
Headings books located in the Barnard or Butler Reference
Departments); once you've found a useful subject heading look through the
card catalog for items published in the years you are interested in.
Subject headings have changed over time, so you may need to check earlier
editions of the Library of Congress Subject Headings; check in
Butler Reference for the LCSH books that cover your time period.
Updated October 12, 2004
Karen
Dobrusky
Adapted from web page developed by Cynthia A. Johnson