To find book primary sources, use library catalogs like Barton and WorldCat.

• Do subject searches for topic + genre: 
  • Subheadings such as "correspondence," "sources," "personal narratives," "biography," "pictorial works," and "speeches" can point to primary sources.
  • Pair these subheadings with keywords or topical subject headings in Barton to identify relevant sources in the MIT Libraries.
  • See this table for other possible subheadings.
  • For example, do this advanced search to get primary sources documenting the experiences of Chinese Americans:
    • Keyword = Chinese Americans
    • Subject words = "Sources"

• Do advanced searches in Barton for relevant subjects and keywords with publication date limits. 
  • For example, do this advanced search to find books about the 1904 World's Fair that were published at that time:
    • Subject keywords = "Louisiana Purchase Exposition" [you can figure out that subject phrase by first doing a keyword search]
    • Year from = 1904
    • Year to = 1905

It's not cheating to check the footnotes and bibliographies in your secondary and reference sources (books, journal articles, and encyclopedias) to identify primary sources for your own work. Following footnotes is an approach used by many scholars to identify not only relevant seconary literature, but also primary source bases.