LibGuides: 21H.357: South Asians in the British Empire: Find Primary Sources

Using the Library Catalog to Find Primary Sources

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," 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 published collections of primary source documents:
  - Keyword = Mahatma Gandhi
  - Subject words = correspondence

Do advanced searches in Barton for relevant subjects and keywords with publication date limits.
- For example, do this advanced search to find books about India at the time of independence:
  - Keywords = India*
  - Year from = 1947
  - Year to = 1948

Digital Primary Sources at MIT

American Periodicals Series
Includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century. 1740 - 1940.
ARTstor
A digital library of nearly one million images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences. NOTE: Includes these collections: Cook's Voyages to the South Seas (Natural History Museum, London), First Fleet Collection (Natural History Museum, London) and Hill Ornithology Collection (Cornell University Library).
Illustrated London News Historical Archive 1842-2003
Digital archive of the world's first pictorial newspaper. Covers British and world events. Full-color facsimile and searchable text. 1842-2003.
JSTOR
A full-text scholarly journal archive, back to vol. 1, issue 1, in many fields.
National Geographic Archive, 1884-present
Proquest Historical Newspapers: New York Times
1851-2006
Smithsonian Magazine Archive, 1970-2010
South and Southeast Asian Literature in English
A searchable collection of fiction and poetry written in English by authors from South and Southeast Asia and their diasporas, spanning the end of the colonial era to the present 19th C to present.
World Newspaper Archive: African Newspapers, 1800-1922
Includes "more than 60 searchable African newspapers published in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Featuring English and foreign-language titles from Angola, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, African Newspapers offers unparalleled coverage of the issues and events that shaped the continent and its peoples between 1800 and 1922."
NOTE: From off-campus, connect through VPN first.
World Newspaper Archive: South Asian Newspapers, 1864-1922
"Featuring English-, Gujarati- and Bengali-language papers published in India, in the regions of the Subcontinent that now comprise Pakistan, and in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), South Asian Newspapers offers extensive coverage of the people, issues and events that shaped the Indian Subcontinent between 1864 and 1922."
NOTE: From off-campus, connect through VPN first.

Contemporary Newspapers and Periodicals - Online Through MIT

LexisNexis Academic
Full text of many newspapers and periodicals.
Proquest International Newsstand
Newspaper database containing hundreds of the world's top newspapers.
Academic Search Complete
A multi-disciplinary database that includes articles from many different kinds of publications, including newspapers and magazines.

Digital Primary Sources from the Boston Public Library

With a BPL card or e-card, you can access a wealth of online historical primary sources.

19th Century British Newspapers
Full runs of 48 newspapers specially selected by the British Library to best represent nineteenth century Britain.
Financial Times Historical Archive 1888-2009
Complete searchable run of the world’s most authoritative daily business newspaper. Every item ever printed in the paper, from 1888-2009, can be searched and browsed article by article and page by page.
Making of the Modern World, 1450-1850
Over 62,400 books, serials, pamphlets, essays and more. Tracks the development of the modern, western world through the lens of trade and wealth. In English and other languages.
Smithsonian Global Sound
Musical recordings in a diverse range of styles from around the world. Search or browse by country of origin, cultural group, instrument, artist, language and more.
Times [of London] Digital Archive, 1785-1985
Two hundred years of "the world's newspaper of record," the Times of London, is offered in searchable full text, including news articles, editorials, obituaries, and advertising. Either individual articles or entire pages can be viewed as facsimile images.

Subject Guide

Ece Turnator

Contact:

Ece (pronounced AJ)
turnator@mit.edu
Hayden Library Consultation Suite 14S - 2nd floor
617.253.4979
Make an appointment with me

Tip: Follow the Footnotes!

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.