LibGuides: 21H.380: People and Other Animals: 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 = environment* [This will search for "environment," "environmental," "environmentalist," etc.]
  - Subject words = "history sources" [without quotes]

Do advanced searches in Barton for relevant subjects and keywords with publication date limits.
- For example, do this advanced search to find books about animal experimentation from the beginning of the 20th century
  - Keywords = "animal experimentation"
  - Year from = 1900
  - Year to = 1925

Digital Primary Sources at MIT

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).
CAB Abstracts
Index to the applied life sciences literature. Coverage includes agriculture, environment, veterinary sciences, plant sciences, mycology and parasitology, food science, human health and nutrition. 1973-present.
Free trial; expires Nov. 6. From off campus, use VPN.
CAB Archives
Index to the applied life sciences literature. Coverage includes agriculture, environment, veterinary sciences, plant sciences, mycology and parasitology, food science, human health and nutrition. 1910-1972.
Free trial; expires Nov. 6. From off campus, use VPN.
Early English Books Online (EEBO)
Contains scanned reproductions of the works of thousands of authors published prior to 1700 in all fields and genres. Overall dates of coverage: 1475-1700.
Eighteenth Century Collection Online (ECCO)
Includes every major work in all fields printed in either English or a foreign language in Great Britain during the eighteenth century, as well as many important eighteenth century works from the Americas.
Environmental Issues: Essential Primary Sources
European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750
Comprehensive guide to printed records about the Americas written in Europe before 1750.
History Research Guide
Find additional primary sources on the History research guide.
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.
The Nation Archive
Backfile of The Nation magazine back to volume 1, issue 1. Updated monthly 1865 - present.
National Geographic Archive, 1884-1994
NewspaperArchive.com
Thousands of newspapers, available in full-page facsimile, with searchable full text. Most are U.S. titles, with some international coverage, and most are fairly small-circulation newspapers. 1759-present.
Proquest Historical Newspapers: Atlanta Constitution
1868-1942
Proquest Historical Newspapers: Boston Globe
1872-1979
Proquest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Tribune
1849-1986
Proquest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles Times
1881-1986
Proquest Historical Newspapers: New York Times
1851-2006
Proquest Historical Newspapers: Wall Street Journal
1889-1992
Proquest Historical Newspapers: Washington Post
1877-1993
Reader's Guide Retrospective (1890-1982)
Indexing and abstracting for many general interest magazines. Great source for historical material on the 20th-century.

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.

17th & 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers
The newspapers and news pamphlets gathered by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817) represent the largest single collection of 17th and 18th century English news media available from the British Library.
19th Century British Newspapers
Full runs of 48 newspapers specially selected by the British Library to best represent nineteenth century Britain.
19th Century US Newspapers
Full-text content and images from numerous newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S.
Archive of Americana: 1639-1980 (Boston Public Library)
Contains unique primary source material relating to nearly every aspect of United States history from over three centuries.
Includes:
* American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I (1760-1900)
* America's Historical Newspapers (1690-1922)
* Early American Imprints Series I: Evans (1639-1800)
* Early American Imprints Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker (1801-1819)
* American State Papers (1789-1838)
* U.S. Congressional Serial Set (1817-1980)
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.
Sabin Americana
Contains works about the Americas published throughout the world from 1500 to the early 1900's. Included are books, pamphlets, serials and other documents that provide original accounts of exploration, trade, colonialism, slavery and abolition, the western movement, Native Americans, military actions and much 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.

Free Primary Sources on the Internet

AnimalBase
Provides digitized zoological books and journal articles (most from prior to 1900) and manually verified lists of names of zoological genera and species. Maintained by the University of Gottingen, Germany.
Biodiversity Heritage Library
Online collection of the historical literature of biodiversity from a consortium of natural history and botanical libraries.
BioOne
Search a collection of scholarly and peer-reviewed content in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences. (Note: we may or may not have online full text access to this material.)
Expeditions and Discoveries: Sponsored Exploration and Scientific Discovery in the Modern Age (Harvard)
Field notes, letters, maps, photographs, and published materials relating to a range of worldwide expeditions from 1626 to 1953.
Time Archive (1923-present)
Back issues of the popular news magazine. (Hint: you can use the free online search to identify articles and then make a scan/copy from the print version in Hayden, or request through ILB if that issue is not in the library, to see the original article in context.)

Primary Sources at Nearby Libraries

Harvard Libraries E-Resources
Harvard has a number online databases of primary source material in the biological sciences, including: Agricola, Biosis Previews, PrimateLit, and Zoological Record. With your Harvard Special Borrower card, you can visit Harvard libraries and use these databases on the premises (sorry, you can't use them remotely). Take a look at the lists of biology and history databases for anything promising for your primary source research!
Museum of Comparative Zoology
With a Harvard Special Borrower Card, you can visit the MCZ Library and use their extensive print and online resources, including Zoological Record, the world's oldest continuing database of animal biology.
Tufts Webster Veterinary Library
"The Webster Family Library, located in Grafton, MA, contains the largest collection of clinical veterinary medicine literature and resources in New England."
Note that MIT community members can use any of Tufts’ electronic resources from any of the Tufts campuses on a walk-in basis (includes Agricola, Biosis Previews, Zoological Record).
Boston Central Public Library - Copley Square
This page links to lists of BPL historical newspaper holdings on microfilm. Their holdings include papers from China and Hong Kong, but coverage is spotty.
Widener Collection of Newspapers on Microfilm
A database of the newspapers on microfilm at Harvard's Widener Library, searchable by geography and date span. The newspaper microfilm are accessible with a Harvard Special Borrowers Card.

Subject Guide

Kai Alexis Smith

She/ Her

Contact:

kaias@mit.edu
Room 7-238
617.258.5593

How can Kai help you?

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.