LibGuides: Women in American History: Primary Sources

Finding Books that are Primary Sources

To identify books that are primary sources:

1) Look for books written by people who were involved in the event or activity you are researching. (Tip: When you look at secondary sources, write down the names of people and then look for them as authors.)

2) In the Moody Library Online catalog, books that have been assigned subjects with the subheadings in the list below might be primary sources. Not all books that include primary sources will include one of these words or phrases in a subject heading.

--Diaries
--Correspondence
--Biography
--Sources
--Anecdotes
--Personal narratives
--Interviews

Examples:

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1882-1964 -- Correspondence

Women pioneers -- Kansas -- Diaries.

Boston (Mass.) -- History -- Sources

Society of Friends -- History -- 18th century -- Sources

United States -- History -- Queen Anne's War, 1702-1713 -- Personal narratives

Some Online Primary Sources

The primary souce materials listed below are all located in Ebsco E-books a digital library of full-text e-books. HCU owns access to the books below and more than 50,000 more. Direct links to these books are provided in the online catalog record or you may go to the Ebsco site to search the content of our books.

Reader's companion to U.S. women's history [electronic resource] / by editors, Wilma Mankiller ... [et al.].
Call Number: Credo HQ1410 .R43 1998 (also Ebsco)
ISBN: 058506847X
This accessible resource, which "effectively covers five centuries of women's experiences" ("Bloomsbury Review"), includes more than 400 articles by more than 300 writers from diverse areas of expertise. 74 illustrations.

Primary Sources in the Reference Collection

Annals of America
Call Number: E173.A793 vol. 1-21
ISBN: 0852299605
Covering Columbus to the 21st century, it now includes more than 2,000 primary documents—proclamations, speeches, poems, songs, newspaper and magazine articles, sermons, letters and editorials by the people who made history. In addition to such widely available texts as the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Gettysburg Address, it includes essential works by Jane Addams, Clarence Darrow, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Noah Webster, Walt Whitman and more than a thousand others.
Historic documents
Call Number: Ref. E839.5.H57 1972-2011
ISBN: 1568027249
The Historic Documents series makes primary source research easy by presenting in one volume key excerpts from documents relating to the important events of each year for the United States and the world. Each volume includes eighty to ninety documents from a particular year, from official or other influential reports and surveys, to speeches from leaders and other opinion makers, to court cases, legislation, and testimony, and much more.

Examples of U.S. History Primary Sources

Columbia documentary history of American women since 1941 / by edited by Harriet Sigerman.
Call Number: HQ1420.C65 2003
ISBN: 0231116985
From the Hoover vacuum cleaner to the fax machine, from the pill to reproductive rights, from Rosie the Riveter to Martha Stewart and Hillary Rodham Clinton, American women have grappled with a sometimes dizzying rate of social and economic change and continually shifting conceptions of gender. This collection of documents seeks to chronicle the exciting and tumultuous recent history of American women, beginning with the watershed event of World War II and the lasting impact of the war effort on women's social and economic opportunities. Subsequent documents speak to the ideas and changes brought about by the women's movement; the challenges to and defense of reproductive rights; the backlash against feminism in the name of family values; and new visions for women's lives in the twenty-first century.

Some examples of primary source materials are presented below.